"The Globalization of Corporate Governance? Reform Pressures and Processes in
an Era of Financial Crises"
Colloquium
17-18 September 2008
Queen’s University Belfast
under the aegis of the School’s ESRC-funded project, “Regulatory Regime Change
in Financial Markets: the Case of Sarbanes-Oxley,” based at the Institute of
Governance, School of Law, QUB
http://www.qub.ac.uk/sox/
Keynote speakers to be confirmed.
***Call for Papers***
Applicants are invited to submit abstracts on any area relevant to the theme of the
Colloquium.
Expressions of interest should be submitted to Dr Patrick McWilliams by 4 July 2008.
Overview
Amidst a spate of continuing corporate scandals and financial crises, the Twenty-First
century began with a wave of activity in the field of corporate governance, both in terms of
regulatory reform and scholarly debates that attempted to distill common recurring patterns
and causal factors.
Clearly corporate governance has become an issue of global concern due to:
1. the practice of cross listing
2. the extra territorial impact of scandals and crises
3. jurisdictional issues raised by certain regulatory reforms and intensifying regulatory
competition; and
4. the introduction of a series of international standards and codes of best practice
(accounting, auditing, securities, corporate governance.)
Yet despite these developments, existing empirical research has repeatedly shown that
distinctive patterns of national divergence remain, even if in some cases national
distinctiveness co-exists with elements of `hybridization´. What are the dominant patterns
in corporate governance reform around the world? What is causing and driving corporate
governance reform in different countries? How do processes of reform and subsequent
outcomes differ across regions and countries? What pressures for convergence exist?
How are those pressures mediated, negotiated, resisted and promoted by national actors,
structures and interests? How should we conceive theoretically of the phenomenon of
corporate governance reform? Who is promoting corporate governance reform, where,
with what effects and for whose benefit? What does corporate governance tell us about
public-private relations and the role and influence of professional associations and bodies?
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This ESRC-sponsored conference workshop is the end of award reporting session for the
ESRC World Economy and Finance project "Regulatory Regime Change in World
Financial Markets: The Case of Sarbanes Oxley" (RES-156-25-0023). It will act as a stock
taking exercise striving to make sense of this spate of regulatory reform and scholarly
activity. We are particularly interested in contributions that document and evaluate
contemporary patterns of change in national systems; provide comparative case studies
of corporate governance reform; contribute to a theoretical understanding of the causal
factors and the principal agents driving corporate governance reform; and papers that
situate and explain patterns of corporate governance reform in a wider global or
international context of exogenous pressures, including the embryonic global regime and
its attendant norms, global legal activism, the search for global competitiveness, the desire
of MNCs to open new revenue streams and sources of capital, and issues raised by the
current Anglo-American `credit crunch´. The disciplines of Law, Accountancy, Economics,
Management, Political Science, Political Economy and International Relations will all
be represented at the workshop.
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