Title: Review of the literature on board committees: taking stock and looking ahead

Authors: Szymon Kaczmarek; Richard Nyuur

Addresses: Atos IT Services, ul. Kraszewskiego 1, 85-240 Bydgoszcz, Poland ' Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, City Campus East, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK

Abstract: Committees on a board of directors are now subject to recommendations by regulations in practically all jurisdictions. At the same time, scholarly work on the topic has escalated since the mid-1990s. In this review article, we examine relevant literature on board committees of audit, compensation and nomination, as part of corporate governance research in general, over the period of 1988 to 2011. We observed an exponential growth in contributions over time, the majority of which can be attributed to management and accounting scholars. The audit committee is the most researched of all three committees, with the nomination committee being the least researched. An analysis of the literature generated a picture that included the following features: 1) the dominance of the agency theory; 2) a lack of other unifying theoretical frameworks; 3) a strong US-centrism; 4) the prevalence of quantitative research methods.

Keywords: agency theory; board committees; corporate governance; literature review; board of directors; audit committee; compensation committee; nomination committee; auditing; quantitative research.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBGE.2016.078200

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2016 Vol.11 No.2, pp.89 - 115

Received: 27 Aug 2015
Accepted: 04 Mar 2016
Published online: 08 Aug 2016 *

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