Convergence of National Corporate Governance Systems : Localizing and Fitting the Transplants

The purpose of this thesis is to elucidate the phenomenon of legal transfers from the perspective of the dominant comparative corporate governance research paradigm. Drawing on legal studies and empirical observations, the thesis develops a terminology for understanding the legal transplant metaphor in comparative corporate governance and problematizes the debate on the convergence or divergence of corporate governance systems. This purpose is achieved through five empirically-based articles that are included in the thesis. The first article concerns a change in the Swedish Companies Act that allows for stock repurchases. The second article discusses the voluntary and then mandatory introduction of nomination committees. The third and the fourth articles focus on the introduction of the Swedish corporate governance code. Finally, the fifth article discusses the role played by independent directors in the Swedish corporate governance setting. The focus on legal transplants broadens the framework of comparative corporate governance in three respects. First, it develops and applies a clearer framework for distinguishing between accepted and rejected legal transplants (based on Watson, 1974, Miller, 2003 and Mattei, 1994), thus refining the debate regarding convergence or divergence of corporate governance systems (e.g. Hansmann and Kraakman, 2004, and Branson, 2001). Second, the empirical studies demonstrate how imported regulations can be “localized” (Gillespie, 2008a) by local regulators and/or “fitted” (adapted from Kanda and Milhaupt, 2003) by other local actors. The studies show that fitting often precedes localizing. Third, the thesis ads to a growing body of research (e.g. Buck et al., 2004; Lutz, 2004 and Collier and Zaman, 2005) emphasizing that convergence and divergence are not necessarily two empirically or analytically distinguishable processes. Rather, depending on the perspective of the scholar, convergence and divergence might refer to very similar – or even identical – processes. Finally, in focusing on the transplant process, this thesis offers a description and analysis of the role played by various key actors in the Swedish corporate governance system