Evolution of corporate governance in India from 1850 to 2020 provides significant insights into how discontinuities in the corporate Eco system impacts corporate governance practices. Although the concept of corporate governance and monitoring board emerged in 1972 in USA and spread across the globe in 1990s, after the Cadbury Committee in UK submitted its report, the issues on the governance of joint stock companies bothered regulators and academicians, and of course, minority shareholders, much before the emergence of the term corporate governance. India saw three significant structural discontinuities from 1850 to 2020. The period 1850 to 1947 was the colonial era when Indian business groups were emerging. The managing agency system emerged during that period as an institution to address the twin challenges of capital scarcity and scarcity of managerial skills. This facilitated industrialisation and also increased concentration of ownership. 1947 to 1991 was the period when the Indian government adopted the command economy framework and implemented the same through five-year plans and the licensing system.

Author(s)
Asish K. Bhattacharyya

Url
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3747512