Corporate governance looking back to look forward in Pakistan: a review, synthesis and future research agenda

Abstract The basic aim of this paper is to systematically review the corporate governance research trends in Pakistan and to give directions for future researchers in this field. The methodology adopted in this paper is “Systematic Literature Review,” 108 papers have been used from the period 2002–2020 along with 17 research theses in this study. The findings of this study show two trends in corporate governance research first one form 2008 to 2016 and the second one is from 2017 to 2020. The first trend shows that corporate governance (variables) is linked with traditional topics such as firm performance, dividend policy, capital structure, cost of capital and earnings management. The theory which is mostly used in the first corporate governance trend is the agency theory. In the second trend, corporate governance (variables) are linked with multiple issues while taking various theoretical perspectives such as risk taking, tunneling, CSR, investment portfolios, board-related issues, financial distress and much more. This paper has identified and filled the research gap by writing a comprehensive review paper of the prevailing corporate governance literature and has given directions for future researchers to consider it. To the best of researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study that has systematically reviewed and synthesized the corporate governance literature by adopting the systematic literature review methodology in Pakistan an emerging economy. It is an extensive effort for the purpose to encourage the interested researchers/scholars to add and expand their contributions to the corporate governance literature in Pakistan on the potentially identified areas of corporate governance.