افزایش شرکت سهامداران یا ذینفعان در ساختارهای حاکمیت Does corporate governance structures promote shareholders or stakeholders value maximization? Evidence from African banks

1. Introduction Corporate governance involves a set of relationships between a company’s management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders. Corporate governance also provides the structure through which the objectives of the company are set and the means through which those objectives are determined (OECD, 2004; Shleifer and Vishny, 1997). It also involves monitoring performance of firms. This means that corporate governance has emerged as a critical mechanism for accelerating firm performance and economic growth (Aggarwal et al., 2011; Stafsudd, 2009; Jadhav and Katti, 2012; Hasan et al., 2014). Corporate governance structures in prior studies are evidently represented as CEO duality, board size, board gender, audit committee independence and nonexecutive members on the board. Given the potential of corporate governance promoting economic growth and firm performance, many studies have explored these benefits associated with it at the national and firm levels (La Porta et al., 2000; Hasan et al., 2014). Studies including Shleifer and Wolfenzon (2002), Abdullah (2004) argued that effective or strong corporate governance structures form a corporate atmosphere that discourages corporate insiders or managers from pursuing their own value, alleviates the risk of mismanagement or negligence and hence enhances firm value or performance. In effect, in the presence of effective corporate governance structures, corporate insiders have a disincentive to pursue their own opportunistic interest, as these good corporate structures serve as a deterrent or disciplinary measure that guides the corporate dealings to maximize firm value (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Epps and Cereola, 2008; Judge et al., 2003). This suggests that some corporate governance structures promote firm performance. Although corporate governance is generally accepted to enhance the firm value, this is done through two varying perspectives or theories. These two perspectives include the shareholder perspective and the stakeholder perspective (Abdullah, 2004). While the shareholder perspective has been the traditional view and of course the more dominant view, the stakeholder theory only emerged recently. Corporate governance modeling has closely followed the Anglo-American approach popularly referred to as the shareholder model (Abdullah, 2004). The proponents of the shareholder perspective argue that corporate governance structures should focus on the promotion of shareholders’ value (return on equity [ROE]) because of the separation of management (control) and ownership (shareholder), as managers may pursue their own interest at the expense of the interest of shareholders (Keenan, 2004; John and Senbet, 1998; Jensen and Meckling, 1976).