Corporate Governance Research in Accounting and Auditing: Insights, Practice Implications, and Future Research Directions

Over the past two decades, the corporate governance literature in accounting and auditing has grown rapidly. To better understand this body of work, we discuss 12 recent literature review or meta-analysis papers and summarize selected results (i.e., clusters of papers with new and interesting results) from recent empirical research papers, after reviewing the findings of over 250 studies. Our corporate governance focus is primarily on corporate board and audit committee issues. We discuss the major insights from this literature and the practice implications of these findings. In addition, we identify a number of opportunities for future research. In particular, we make suggestions for: (1) improved research paradigms in corporate governance, (2) extensions of existing research, and (3) new or emerging lines of research.