Project

Impact of Board Structure on Performance of SOEs and Private Sector Firms in India

A Project on Corporate Governance Challenges

Over the last three decades, the Government of India has undertaken several reform measures to improve the profitability and efficiency performance of state owned enterprises in India.  The Guidelines for Corporate Governance (2007) was one such reform measure with a focus on improving the transparency and accountability of the management of SOEs.  Though these guidelines covered all the SOEs under their purview, the SOEs that were listed with the Indian capital markets were expected to comply by the corporate governance regulations of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) under Clause 49. The Clause 49 of listing agreement among other norms included the norms relating to definition, role and responsibility of board of directors.

In the empirical literature there are several studies that have analyzed the impact of board characteristics on firm performance. While most studies have focused on the private sector firms, there are no study to the best of our knowledge that has studied the relationship between board characteristics and firm performance under differential ownership structures of SOE and private owned firm in a single unified empirical framework. Our study is an attempt towards filling this gap in the literature. The main objective of the proposed research is to study the impact of board structure on the performance of SOE and private sector ownership groups. The methodology of the above study consists of collection of secondary data relating to corporate governance from Prowess and econometric analysis.