A longitudinal study of the implementation of the corporate governance code in a developing country: the case of Mauritius

This exploratory study investigates firms’ implementation of a new corporate governance code in Mauritius, a developing economy. The authors rely on annual report disclosures during a four-year period (2004-2007). The authors analyze the level of corporate engagement with the code’s requirements, including corporate social responsibility initiatives, relative to a 2004 (when the code was enacted) benchmark over the three subsequent years. The study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it provides much needed evidence of longitudinal implementation within developing economies that exhibit, or have started to exhibit, a combination of ownership and control features found in more advanced economies and characterized in the literature as an “emerging governance” model. Second, the authors develop a more comprehensive assessment of implementation using a scoring system that combines trichotomous weighting of each governance component (as 1, 3, or 5) and trichotomous rating of implementation of each component (as 0, 0.5, or 1). The authors argue that this system is superior to the un-weighted, dichotomous approach typically used in the literature. The analysis of weighted assessment scores for reveals a significant implementation of the code initially after 2004; but implementation began to level off by 2007 well below maximum assignable scores. Detailed requirements regarding directors’ appraisal and training, remuneration policies and remuneration information appear to be ignored by companies through 2007. A correlation analysis of the corporate governance scores and firm-based measures (level and changes) shows that the association between these different variables fluctuates significantly over the implementation window.