More Accountable, More Ethical, Yet Less Trusted: Misplaced Corporate Governance in the Era of Big Data

In this paper, we investigate the corporate governance and ethical practices of firms in emerging technologies. We argue that because they have unique characteristics and face unique institutional challenges and legitimacy controversies, compared to their non‐emerging technology counterparts, these firms tend to over‐conform with respect to their corporate governance and ethical practices. Drawing on corporate governance deviance theory and legitimacy theory, we develop a number of hypotheses, which we test using data from 68 matched pairs based in the USA for the period 2009–2017. Our findings indicate that emerging technology firms over‐conform regarding both corporate governance and ethical practices, yet, despite such over‐conformity, they have lower legitimacy levels compared to their non‐emerging technology counterparts.