Corporate governance in India: A systematic review and synthesis for future research

Abstract The present study aims to review systematically the state of the art of corporate governance in India. The study uses a sample of 161 published research papers extracted from 101 journals and 17 publishers’ databases. The results indicated that 151 studies investigated the board of directors’ issues, 90 studies analyzed ownership structure, 64 studies discussed audit committee attributes, and 11 articles studied audit quality. The results provided that among corporate governance issues, board and audit committee independence, foreign and institutional ownership have the highest and majority focus of research in India. In terms of the relationship of corporate governance with other areas, the results exhibited that financial performance has a major concern in prior research. The results also indicated that there is a lack of studies that have samples after 2015. Further, the results observed that there are numerous conceptual repetitive studies and the majority of the studies followed either descriptive statistics or basic regression analysis. The current study provides an insight for academicians, policymakers (e.g., Securities and Exchange Board of India and Ministry of Corporate Affairs—Government of India) research organizations and funding agencies of what has been done and what is left to be done. The study makes a novel contribution to the strand literature of corporate governance in India. It highlights the substantial knowledge gaps in this field and provides a potential agenda for academicians, research organizations, and funding agencies for future research.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Corporate governance has been gaining momentum and considerable attention from regulators, policy makers and academicians in India especially, in the past two decades due to economic growth and business failure. During this period, different studies have been conducted to assess different areas of corporate governance in India however, there are a large number of repetitive and conceptual studies. The present study has significant implications for government and private research funding agencies, stock markets, policy-makers, and academicians in India. The present study provides a clear picture of the status of corporate governance in India that will enable funding research agencies and academicians to direct their future research towards unhighlighted areas ignored by prior studies. This study brings reflective insights related to corporate governance mechanisms. It warns regulators and policy makers to revise the existing regulations of corporate governance and increase the disclosure and compliance levels in these regulations.

Introduction
Different studies have explored corporate governance reforms in India (e.g., Guha et al., 2019;Gupta & Shallu, 2014;Khanna & Palepu, 2004;Shikha, 2017;Srivastava et al., 2018). Shikha (2017) states that there is a growing dialogue on how corporate governance should evolve to cope with the increasingly dynamic and global nature of the capital market. Khanna and Palepu (2004) indicate that the globalization of product and talent markets has affected corporate governance of firms in the Indian software industry. Further, Gupta and Shallu (2014) report that the major challenge to the corporate governance in India is the power of the dominant shareholders that can exercise influence over the political system of the country. India has a weak monitoring system with a multiplicity of regulators. Recent corporate frauds are sufficient to justify this phenomenon.
Different studies have been conducted in the field of corporate governance either used a systematic review (e.g., Ahmad & Omar, 2016;Azila-gbettor et al., 2018;Cucari, 2019;Daiser et al., 2017;Dinh & Calabrò, 2018;E-Vahdati et al., 2019;Nomran & Haron, 2020;Schiehll & Martins, 2016) or meta-analysis (e.g., García-meca & Sánchez-ballesta, 2009;Lagasio & Cucari, 2019;Mutlu et al., 2018). Snyder (2019) differentiated among systematic review, Semi-systematic, and Integrative approaches of literature reviews. He indicates that systematic review aims to Synthesize and compare evidence, has specific research questions and systematic strategy, samples and evaluates quantitative articles, and contributes by informing policy and practice. The purpose of a "systematic review is to identify all empirical evidence that fits the pre-specified inclusion criteria to answer a particular research question or hypothesis" (Snyder, 2019, p. 334). Ahmad and Omar (2016) indicate that there is a difference between meta-analysis and systematic review where meta-analysis may utilize different econometric and statistical procedures for analyzing and synthesizing the data and findings; systematic review does not use such tools. In this regard, (García-meca & Sánchez-ballesta, 2009;Lagasio & Cucari, 2019;Lin & Hwang, 2010) conducted a meta-analysis for corporate governance mechanisms using different statistical analysis such as effect size and subgroups analysis. Further, Mutlu et al. (2018) used meta-analytical regression analysis (MARA) and Hedges (1985) meta-analysis (HOMA) to estimate the metaanalytic mean association between firm performance and corporate governance mechanisms. From the other hand, some other studies used systematic review in corporate governance based on frequencies for published studies, studies by journals and publishers, applied statistical tools, methods, time frame, topic and area wise studies, primary and secondary research studies, and summary of the main findings (Ahmad & Omar, 2016;Azila-gbettor et al., 2018;Cucari, 2019;Daiser et al., 2017;Nomran & Haron, 2020;Schiehll & Martins, 2016). Following prior studies that used systematic review for corporate governance, we conducted a systematic review for corporate governance research in India that published between the years 2000 and 2020 subject to quality assessment which will be described later in this manuscript.
The current study aims to provide an overview of the state of the art and the existing research on corporate governance in India. We highlight how corporate governance studies in India are fragmented across a range of disciplinary fields. To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first comprehensive review of corporate governance research in India that offers a navigation window into the existing research and methods related to corporate governance studies in India. We follow the methodology of Tranfield et al. (2003) in conducting a systematic review. We also follow Ahmad and Omar (2016) and Li et al. (2018) who conducted a systematic review for corporate governance research. Our review offers multiple opportunities and benefits to researchers and practitioners by highlighting the importance of corporate governance research in India making a novel contribution to the strand literature of corporate governance in India. Building from this foundation, this review then discusses future research possibilities.
The present study is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces the literature review, section 3 provides the methodology of the study. Section 4 discusses the process of selection and quality assessment for inclusion the research studies in the current study, section 5 presents a discussion and data synthesis, and section 6 concludes.
Majority of corporate governance studies in India are linked with financial performance (e.g., Arora & Sharma, 2016;Bansal & Sharma, 2016;Bhatt & Bhattacharya, 2015;Kandukuri et al., 2015;Mishra & Mohanty, 2014;Palaniappan, 2017;Rani et al., 2014;Sanan, 2016;Singla & Singh, 2019;Yameen et al., 2019). The results of these studies are inconsistent and the findings are conflicted in some cases. Some studies reported that there is an association between corporate governance indicators and financial performance (Arora & Sharma, 2016;Kandukuri et al., 2015;Rani et al., 2014). Some other studies revealed that some corporate governance attributes only have a positive influence on firms' performance; larger board size and attendance of the board members (Bhatt & Bhattacharya, 2015), promoters' ownership (Mishra & Kapil, 2017), board age diversity (Kagzi & Guha, 2018), board size and CEO Chairman dual role (Bansal & Sharma, 2016), independent women directors (Sanan, 2016), board independence, board size and busyness (Mishra & Kapil, 2018). Contradictory, different studies reported that corporate governance attributes have no association with firms' performance. For example, Mishra and Mohanty (2014), Kagzi and Guha (2018), Bansal and Sharma (2016), Bhatt and Bhattacharya (2015), and Mishra and Kapil (2017) respectively declared that gender and tenure diversity of the board, audit committee independence and its meetings frequency, independent directors in the board, and board independence have insignificantly impact on firm performance. However, Bhatt and Bhattacharya (2017) showed a negative impact of board structure on firm performance in family firms compared to nonfamily firms. Further, Palaniappan (2017) found a statistically significant negative relationship between board size and firm performance. Kagzi and Guha (2018) indicated that education diversity negatively affects firm performance.
Firm value also has been a subject of investigation by different corporate governance studies in India (e.g., Chauhan & Kumar, 2017;Khosa, 2017;Kumar & Singh, 2013;Mishra & Kapil, 2017. Kumar and Singh (2013) reported a negative relationship between board size and firm value and a positive association of promoter ownership level and corporate performance. Khosa (2017) revealed that there is a reverse relationship between board independence and firm value of group-affiliated firms in India which shows that foreign monitoring directors are largely influenced by the institutional setting and ownership structure. Singla and Singh (2019) declared that board independence bears a significantly negative relationship with firm value however, audit committee independence was positively and significantly related to the firm value.
In another context, several studies explored corporate governance practices (e.g., Abraham et al., 2015;Al-Mudhaki & Joshi, 2004;Bose, 2009;Chatterjee, 2011;Haldar et al., 2018;Islam, 2016;Katarachia et al., 2018;Kiranmai & Mishra, 2019;Kota & Tomar, 2010;Mayur & Saravanan, 2017;Prasad et al., 2019;Sarkar et al., 2012;Srivastava et al., 2018;Subramanian, 2017;Subramanian & Reddy, 2012). Abraham et al. (2015) stated that Indian companies have a high level of compliance with corporate governance disclosure requirements especially, after amendments to Clause 49 as the penalties for noncompliance increase in severity. Importantly, they reported that government-controlled firms have a low level of compliance than privately owned firms. However, Katarachia et al. (2018) declared that there is a need for improvement in corporate governance disclosure by Indian companies, as they fail to comply with the majority of the proposed disclosure items. Subramanian and Reddy (2012) showed that firms gain competitiveness in international markets when they voluntarily disclose more about their board practices, but ownership-related disclosures reduce market share. Al-Mudhaki and Joshi (2004) concluded there is a lack of audit committee independence in their representation and composition. Prasad et al. (2019) found that CEOs directors who belong to controlling shareholders got higher pay as compared to professional CEOs. Chauhan and Kumar (2017) pointed out that female directors face more attendance problems compared to male directors, and are less likely to be employed in monitoring-related committees.
In another quest, corporate governance studies in India can be divided into three streams according to the research approach and data used by these studies. These three streams are: (1) studies based on primary data and indices, (2) research studies based on secondary data, and 3) conceptual or review research studies.

Studies based on primary data and indices
Different studies have been conducted and linked with corporate governance. Some of these studies utilized a qualitative approach using primary data in the form of interviews or content analysis and some other studies used a quantitative approach in the form of surveys. There are 10 studies that used questionnaires and 22 other studies that employed corporate governance score or index to investigate corporate governance issues. Table 1 illustrates corporate governance studies in India that utilized surveys, interviews, and indices.

Research studies based on secondary data
The majority of corporate governance studies in India used secondary data in the form of financial information derived from annual reports of firms or from some other data sources. There are 92 research studies that used a firm-specific/bank-specific quantitative data or quantitative score to investigate corporate governance issues. These studies linked corporate governance attributes with different areas of research such as firm performance, stock market performance, earning management, cash flow, and some other areas of research. The following is Table 2 which demonstrates corporate governance studies in India that utilized secondary data.

Conceptual and review studies
There are a large number of corporate governance research studies that have a conceptual or review approach in India. Thirty-three research studies discuss various issues of corporate governance such as governance regulations, governance reforms or compare Indian with some other countries. Following is Table 3 which shows conceptual or review corporate governance studies in India. The corporate governance quality of the issuer tends to contribute to the fulfillment of its obligations.
3 Klapper and Love (2004) Governance is associated with the extent of the asymmetric information and contracting imperfections that firms face.

4
Haldar and Raithatha (2017) The quality of governance practices particularly, the composition of audit committee significantly enhances financial disclosure practices of the firm.  (2017) Firms have improved governance and CSR framework provides an impetus for firms and regulators to further improve CG practices and firm's value gradually.

9
Mishra and Mohanty (2018) Corporate governance is positively related to financial performance 10 Bajpai and Mehta (2014) Lack of disclosures regarding the lead independent directors in the annual reports.

11
Chatterjee (2011) Although disclose information regarding corporate governance reporting, the disclosure is still inconclusive and the variation within the companies is also high.
12 Abraham et al. (2015) Indian companies are highly compliant with governance disclosure requirements of Clause 49. Government controlled firms disclose significantly less than privately owned firms 13 Kandukuri et al. (2015) Firms with better corporate governance practices perform better in financial terms as well.
(Continued) 15 Goel (2018) There is a significant improvement in corporate governance structures however, board independence is less after the reforms. Corporate governance reforms do not impact financial linkages in the Indian market.
16 Goel and Mciver (2015) Stock market development is associated with lower gearing, while improvements in the quality of development of India's institutions are associated with higher gearing.
17 Puri and Kumar (2018) "VCGP of Indian firms is significantly affected by their size, financial leverage, ownership concentration, industry type, the effectiveness of their audit committees, foreign listing status and type of external auditors".
18 Iqbal et al. (2019) Results confirm the endogenous nature of corporate governance and financial performance 19 Kang and Nanda (2017) The presence of remuneration committee is significantly related to the disclosure and compliance index of managerial remuneration.
20 Kohli and Saha (2008) Strong significant relationship between CG and market value of a firm.
21 Morey et al. (2009) There is a significant improvement in corporate governance 22 N. Das and Pattanayak (2016) "Higher Educational Institutions in India may be more likely to exhibit a hybrid of both stewardship and stakeholder models of governance" 23 Heinberg et al. (2018) Corporate image is a more effective signal in China than in India 24 Shikha (2017) The regulatory structure of corporate governance in India and its effectiveness in given market structure in the context family ownership is studied.
(Continued)  Rani et al. (2014) "A positive relationship between corporate governance standards and the performance of the acquiring firms in short-run as well as long-run".
26 Kansil and Singh (2018) "Five key governance issues have been identified in this study based on fuzzy set theory namely, Ownership structure of the companies, Code of best practices of corporate governance, Regulatory framework including monitoring institutions of the country, Untrue independence of independent directors in decision-making and Judiciary system".

27
Subramanian and Reddy (2012) Firms gain competitiveness in international markets when they voluntarily disclose more about their board practices, but ownership-related disclosures reduce market share.
28 Singla and Singh (2018) The responsiveness of the public sector firms is significantly lower than the private sector firms to incorporate the regulatory requirements related to corporate governance  "Cross-sectional evidence of a positive relationship between firm market value and an overall governance index, as well as a sub index covering shareholder rights" 8 Prasanna (2014) There is a positive evidence of the impact of recent corporate governance reforms introduced in India.

9
Singh and Kansil (2017) "Foreign investors can be instrumental in strengthening corporate governance framework of the firm's they have invested in by exerting the ownership rights which revolves around the type of investment and its time horizon".

10
Al -ahdal et al. (2020) Indian firms are better than Gulf countries in terms of corporate governance practices and financial performance.
11 Sayed and Chawla (2017) "Analysts working in countries with better corporate governance standards have higher boldness with target price forecasts reflecting higher confidence in a more transparent environment".
(Continued)  (2016) "Positive association of board size and CEO Chairman dual role with firm performance but no effect of audit committee independence and its meeting frequency on the financial performance of Indian firms".
17 Narayanaswamy et al. (2015) Satyam failure had a limited effect on Indian audit committees.

18
Mishra (2016) "There is a significant impact of audit committee size, multiple directorships of audit committee members and frequency of audit committee meetings on earnings quality".
19 Sarkar et al. (2012) A strong correlation between the Corporate Governance Index and the market performance.
20 Yameen et al. (2019) "Corporate governance practices in the hotel industry need a huge effort to be improved in order to be considered as a good practitioner of corporate governance".

21
Hundal (2016) A lower (higher) level of busyness of audit committee members enhances (deteriorates) financial reporting quality of firms.

22
Kota and Tomar (2010) Non-executive independent directors have failed in their monitoring role. (Continued)

23
Bhatt and Bhattacharya (2015) "Larger board size had a positive impact on firm performance but independent directors and board diligence have no impact. Family firms showed better performance compared to non-family firms".

24
Kumari and Pattanayak (2017) "Corporate governance practices (such as board characteristics, audit practices, and performance-based remuneration) basically work as restricting variables for earnings management practices".

25
Islam (2016) A positive relationship has been found to be existing between the CGP and financial performance of the firm.

26
Kiranmai and Mishra (2019) There is no direct effect of CG variables on the firm performance of companies.
27 Kaur and Singh (2018) Board size and ownership pattern influence the assessment of a company's reputation.

28
Jackling and Johl (2009) "Larger board size has a positive impact on performance. While frequency of board meetings is not associated with performance, outside directors with multiple appointments have a negative effect on performance".

29
Mohapatra (2016) Board independence has a positive impact on firm value. The study found no direct impact of board independence on operating performance.
30 Zulkafli et al. (2010) It is evidenced that only CEO Duality is positively significant with market-based corporate performance. 31 S. S. K. Jaiswall and Bhattacharyya (2016) "CEO compensation attributed to ownership characteristics in the private sector is positively related to future firm performance, whereas remuneration attributed to board and CEO characteristics in both private and public sectors are not".

32
Dwivedi and Jain (2005) "Higher proportion of foreign shareholding is associated with increase in market value of the firm but institutional shareholders is not associated. Board size has a positive but weak relationship with firm value".
(Continued)   (2009) There is a positive relation between pay and a firm's performance.
(Continued)  (2007) Large firms gain 4.5 percent on average, relative to small firms, over a three-trading day event window beginning on the announcement date.
43 Mishra and Kapil (2018) Positive association between board independence, busyness directors, size of the board, firm performance.

44
Singla and Singh (2019) "A significant negative relationship of board independence but a positive relationship of AC independence with firm value. Product market competition negatively moderates the effectiveness of AC independence in enhancing the firm value but it does not moderate the effectiveness of board monitoring".

45
Haldar et al. (2018) The independent board directors do not significantly affect the corporate performance in Indian context.

46
Palaniappan (2017) An inverse association between board characteristics and the firms' performance and negative significant relationship between board size and Tobin's Q, as well as, ROA and ROE.

47
Kapoor and Goel (2019) Independent directors' diligence and auditor committee have a significant impact on earning management practices. They found to improve the quality of financial reports.

48
Sanan (2016) Independent women directors have a significant impact on firm performance.

49
Bhatt and Bhattacharya (2017) "A negative effect of board structure is found on firm performance in family firms compared to non-family firms.
Higher proportion of independent directors, larger board size or an independent chairman does not appear to improve the insignificant relationship between family firms and firm performance".
50 Kagzi and Guha (2018) A positive relationship between the overall board demographic diversity index (board gender, age, tenure, and education) and corporate performance.

51
Mishra and Kapil (2018) Market-based measure is affected more on corporate governance than accounting-based measure. (Continued)

52
Kumar and Singh (2013) A negative relationship was found between board size and firm value and a positive association of promoter ownership level and corporate performance.

53
Muttakin and Subramaniam (2015) "Corporate social responsibility disclosure is associated positively with government ownership, foreign ownership, and board independence and negatively associated with CEO duality".

54
Khosa (2017) "There is a reverse relationship between board independence and firm value of group-affiliated firms in India which shows that foreign monitoring directors are largely influenced by the institutional setting and ownership structure".

55
Mayur and Saravanan (2017) An increase in board size is correlated with better firm performance. An insignificant relationship between composition and frequency of board meetings with firm performance.
56 Prasad et al. (2019) "A positive association is found between the proportion of gray directors on the board and executive compensation with a higher sensitivity of executive compensation to gray directors among family-controlled firms. CEOs directors who belong to controlling shareholder got higher pay compare to professional CEOs".

57
Kaur (2017) Board independence reduces violations of SEBI but size of the board and its meetings have no relationship.
58 Kavitha et al. (2018) Discretionary disclosures is positively influenced by independent directors but negatively by boards with duality and the busyness of the director 59 Chauhan and Kumar (2017) Female directors face more attendance problems compared to male directors, and are less likely to be employed in monitoring-related committees.

61
Aggarwal and Ghosh (2015) There is no significant association between the director's remuneration and firm's performance 62 Helmers et al. (2017) Both R&D and patenting affected by board interlocks 63 Narwal and Pathneja (2016) A weak relationship is observed between individual governance variables and performance variables 64 Sidhu and Kaur (2019) Active audit committee will result in better monitoring of financial reporting mechanisms and hence higher stock market liquidity 65 Patibandla (2006) The study investigate the effects of foreign institutional investors and government financial institutions on corporate governance  (2018) There is a significant positive association between board size and firm performance. Separation of chief executive officer and chairman of the board is found to be value-creating, and overburdened directors affect firm performance adversely.
68 Haldar et al. (2016) Flexibility in corporate governance significantly affects International Competitiveness.

69
Arora and Sharma (2016) Larger boards are associated with a greater depth of intellectual knowledge. Return on equity and profitability is not related to corporate governance indicators. CEO duality is not related to any firm performance.

70
Saggar and Singh (2017) "Board size and gender diversity have a positively significant effect on risk disclosure, identity of the largest shareholder having ownership concentration negatively affects disclosure of risk information in the case of Indian promoter body corporate, foreign promoter body corporate and noninstitutions in comparison to family ownership".
(Continued)  (2014) The board and the proactive indicators influence the firm performance significantly whereas legal compliance indicator does not do so. The CG measure is a good predictor of firm performance.

72
Palaniappan (2017) "A significant negative relationship between board size and performance. Board independence and meetings moderate the relationship between ROE and ROA by enhancing these measures among CG mechanisms".

73
Chahal and Kumari (2013) Boardroom characteristics have an insignificant impact on business performance, while audit committee and ownership structure have a significant impact on business performance.
74 Buvanendra et al. (2017) "Firms in both countries partly adjust to an optimum capital structure over time. Furthermore, there are international differences existing in the significant determinants of capital structure adjustments between Sri Lanka and India".

75
Prasanna (2013) "The corporate governance legislation through Clause 49 had a significant impact on the Indian stock market volatility. There has been substantial reduction in market volatility in the post-governance act period".

76
Fruin and Dossani (2012) Private-equity funded firms display higher standards of corporate governance than firms that do not receive such funding due to the application of developed country standards of CG arising from the investors that own the private equity funds.

77
Subramanian (2017) There are significant differences in the proportion of "Vote Against" recommendations based on the type of "controlling ownership" of the firms.

78
Mishra and Kapil (2017) "Market-based measure is more impacted by corporate governance than accounting-based measure. There is significant positive association between promoter ownership and firm performance. Board size is found to be positively related to ROA; however, board independence is not found to be related to any of the performance measures". (Continued)

79
Kang and Nanda (2017) Managerial remuneration increases as the accounting performance of companies improves, foreign institutional shareholding is significantly and positively related with managerial remuneration.

80
Kamath (2019) CG characteristics influence the IC performance of only largecap firms in India.
81 Sarkar and Sarkar (2000) Blockholdings by directors to increase company value after a certain level of holdings, no evidence that institutional investors, typically mutual funds, are active in\governance 82 Connor et al. (2013) Investors look beyond the seemingly weak country-level governance structures, and focus on corporate governance.
83 Sarkar and Sarkar (2009) Multiple directorships by independent directors has a significant positive association with firm value.

84
Braga-alves and Morey (2012) Firm governance is better in countries with lower political risk but firms are more likely to improve their governance in countries with higher political risk.

85
Gill (2013) Non-compliance with the corporate governance provisions with regards to the required number of independent directors on the board did not have any concomitant effect on their performance.

86
A. Das and Dey (2016) Board involvement and board diversity positively influence firm performance, while CEO duality, board compensation, and promoters' presence do not have an influence on firm performance.
87 Bell et al. (2012) Board independence and country of origin effects are powerful signals.
88 Masud et al. (2018) Environmental sustainability reporting performance has a positive association with foreign and institutional ownership, board independence, and board size 89 De Jonge (2014) State-owned firms do comparatively better in India than in China, possibly reflecting the fact that women's political empowerment in India is more advanced than in China, and much more advanced than women's economic participation in India.
(Continued)  (2017) Emerging market firms' bond to higher corporate governance standards of the developed markets through cross-border acquisitions.

92
Nagar and Raithatha (2016) Cash flow manipulation is likely to increase with an increase in the controlling ownership. Further, board diligence and better audit fail to curb such manipulation. Diallo (2017) The study investigated corporate governance and economic growth 6 Balasubramanian and George (2012) The study discussed the key internal mechanisms of corporate governance, their institutional context, board structure and their assigned role.

7
Shikha and Mishra (2019) It suggested a fresh regulatory measure that could catalyze the process of effective governance.
8 Kavitha and Nandagopal (2013) Convergence towards the Anglo-American model of CG may not suit the Indian circumstances. Corporate governance model followed in a country should be specific to its micro and macro environment.
9 Chakrabarti et al. (2008) "Indian corporate governance has taken major steps toward becoming a system capable of inspiring confidence among institutional and, increasingly, foreign investors".

10
Rajablu (2016) "The Asian experience of imposing Western CG models is more of a simplification of tasks based on political, cultural and globalization needs rather than the regions' economic, financial and social development reality".

11
Claessens and Yurtoglu (2013) Better corporate governance benefit firms through greater access to financing, lower cost of capital, better performance, and more favorable treatment of all stakeholders. (Continued)

12
Shikha (2017) There is a growing dialogue on how corporate governance should evolve to cope with the increasingly dynamic and global nature of capital market.
13 Machold and Vasudevan (2004) The study discussed the governance reforms and developing countries 14 Uzma (2018) A theoretical review of the various CG codes and regulations enacted in the Indian paradigm with special reference to the Indian Companies Act 2013 (cited as Act 2013).
15 Rajagopalan and Zhang (2008) The study discussed theatrically corporate governance reforms in China and India: Challenges and opportunities 16 Reed (2002) The study discussed theoretically corporate Governance Reforms in India 17 Lakhani (2012) The study discussed theoretically the legal requirements for corporate governance in China and India 18 Koirala et al. (2018) The study discussed theoretically corporate governance reforms 19 Bose (2009) "Amendments to Clause 49 are introduced for greater transparency. They include more independent directors on boards, a code of conduct for board members; a larger role for AC; mandatory risk assessments" 20 Guha et al. (2019) Change in shareholder primacy corporate governance has little effect on financial market growth in India.

21
Gupta and Singh (2018) The major challenge to the corporate governance in India is the power of the dominant shareholders that are able to exercise influence over the political system of the country.
22 Khanna and Palepu (2004) The globalization of product and talent markets has affected corporate governance of firms in the Indian software industry.
23 Gollakota and Gupta (2006) Shifts in values resulted in shifts in institutional and legislative frameworks, which, in turn, gave rise to different forms of business ownership.
(Continued)  (2008) This paper has argued, both at the macro level of the regulatory framework and at the micro level of corporate compliance, India has to cross several milestones.

25
Muniapan and Shaikh (2007) There are many concepts from Kautilya's Arthashastra, which are still applicable in today's corporate management.

26
Dash (2012) There is no attempt to gauge the influence of media reports on corporate governance in India.

27
Patra (2013) Infosys has set new and effective standards in communicating with shareholders, stock exchanges, and general public at large.

28
Ravi (2012) Weaknesses of Indian corporate governance practices were identified and recommended strategic change measures necessary for harmonizing the Indian corporate governance practices with those of the USA.

29
Singh et al. (2011) "Analyses the issues and challenges posed in the era after independence and post-liberalisation regime and examines the development of CG during these periods to address these issues with a focus on the Companies Act, 1956 and Clause 49 of the Listing Agreement".

30
Estrin and Prevezer (2011) "China and some states of India, "substitutive" informal institutions, whereby informal institutions substitute for and replace ineffective formal institutions, are critical in creating corporate governance leading to enhanced domestic and foreign investment".

31
Gopinath (2008) "It is noted that the Indian Banking Industry has a checkered but fairly stable history with no major financial crises that have threatened the foundations of the financial and real economy super structures".
32 Kimber et al. (2005) "There is a strong need for HRM practitioners to take the lead in shaping, communicating and representing the firm's values and behaviours, internally and externally, to reinforce ethical behaviour and business integrity".

Methodology
The present study uses a systematic review of prior studies related to corporate governance in India. The systematic review approach is widely used by researchers (e.g., Petticrew & Roberts, 2006;Tranfield et al., 2003;Walker, 2010). Tranfield et al. (2003) advocate that systematic review is a genuine piece of investigation science and enhances the quality of the review. Similarly, Petticrew and Roberts (2006) state that systematic review is an appropriate and effective approach in identifying the areas where little or no evidence exists. Further, Tranfield et al. (2003) argue that "traditional or narrative reviews frequently thoroughness, and in many cases are not undertaken as a genuine piece of investigation". Accordingly, the present study follows a systematic review of the pertinent literature of corporate governance in India. Tranfield et al. (2003) described three stages with nine phases to conduct a systematic review in management research. However, Ahmad and Omar (2016) in their systematic review of corporate governance customized these phases into five-step process which are presented in Figure (1) as follows:

Defining research questions
Three research questions are formulated for the present study in order to address the state of the art related to corporate governance in India which are as follows:

RQ1:
What are the research outlets that have been used to publish corporate governance studies in India?

RQ3:
What are the different types of sampling units, data, statistical tools, and time frame that have been used by prior corporate governance research in India?

RQ4:
What are the different areas of research that have been linked with corporate governance research in India?

Identification of keywords
Different keywords used to extract the research studies required for the present study. At the outset, a general term of corporate governance was used regardless of the area or aspect of the research. This yielded a huge number of studies and reports about corporate governance. Some of these sources were not useful for the present study. Consequently, different terminologies were used to limit the search such as corporate governance mechanisms, corporate governance attributes, board of directors, audit committee, and ownership.

Databases
At the time of search, we identified different databases that contain such studies, these databases include Emerald, Since Direct, Springer, Taylor and Francis, Wiley online Library, Sage Journals, Inderscience, and Google Scholar. Besides to the identified databases, we identified different websites and databases that have some research related to corporate governance in India. Some of these research databases and publishers are either predatory or commercial journals that publish manuscripts without peer-review. However, some studies published by these publishers have some citations which make us to consider them among our review because they are cited by different studies and leading some other publications. The criteria for selection of research studies are discussed in the next section.

Boolean search
The present study analyses the governance literature from 2000 to 2020. The reason behind starting the time period from 2000 is that India introduced its Desirable Corporate Governance Code by CII in 1998. Further, the formal enactment of corporate governance code in India represented by Clause 49 of listing agreement which is issued by Securities Board Exchange of India (SEBI) was started in the years between 2000 and 2004.
Different Boolean search operators were used to extract the required studies from the databases and search engines. At the outset, AND was used to connect different concepts and limit our search. Further, OR Boolean search operator was used to find different ways to phrase a concept and expand the search. At the same time, Truncation was used to search any ending on a root word. For better results, different advanced Boolean search operators are used such as: Wildcards, Quotation marks, "adj," publication date, material type, language, and country of origin. Finally, snowballing as an effective way of identifying further keywords and synonyms for our search was used. Table 4 shows the different Boolean search operators used by the study.

Selection of studies and quality assessment
Based on the preceding step, different criteria for inclusion and exclusion of a research study are applied in order to avoid duplications and select the relevant and high-quality papers; the following criteria are followed: a-Including articles that only related to India or have empirical evidence from India. b-Studies that explicitly related to audit committee, board of directors, ownership structure, and some other related issues of corporate governance such as board committees, remuneration, audit quality, and some other issues.
c-Studies that are published based on peer-reviewed journals. As noted in Figure 2, a general search opted which yielded about 325 studies related to corporate governance in India. Consequently, to reduce the search limit, Boolean operators were used which produced 221 studies. Further, after applying the selection criteria, a number of 182 studies were selected for screening and final check. Then, a final selection and quality assessment of studies were conducted which exclude 19 studies and left with 158 research papers. Finally, to make sure that at least the majority of the quality studies are included, we conducted a snowballing analysis in which the bibliographies of the selected research papers were checked. This step produced 3 studies that were added to the final selection and to produce 161 studies as a final sample for the current study.

Data synthesis and discussion
The retrieved literature is analyzed and categorized to meet the research questions framed above. Following is a discussion of the analyzed studies:

Publishers and journals outlets
This classification summarizes the retrieved studies based on the journals that the studies published in. Further, it provides a classification of these studies based on different periods that the studies have been published with their number of citations. This subsection provides an answer for the first question framed for this study which asks about the different research outlets used by prior corporate governance research in India. The highest number of research articles were published in the International Journal of Corporate Governance, Inderscience publishers which have 9 papers. With regards to the publisher's outlet, the results provide an idea about the forums that the studies have been published in. The studies are mostly published in Emerald and Elsevier which have 46 studies each followed by Inderscience which has 29 papers, Springer which has 19 studies, 4 studies for SAGE, 2 articles for Wiley and the remaining studies are distributed among the other publishers (Please see Table 5 below). Further, the results show that Elsevier journals have the highest number of citations; 4336 followed by Wiley (1051), Springer (852), and Emerald (658) which indicates that these journals are leading corporate governance studies in India. Table 6 below shows the publishers' and journals' outlets with a detailed description of the number of citations for each manuscript and the period of publishing each article. The rationale behind providing the number of citations for each article is to show the manuscript that has high numbers of citations. Logically, some research articles published in early years may have higher numbers of citations compared to recent years' articles. However, when an early published issued article is cited by recent years' manuscripts, it indicates that the early issued articles are the main  Table ) N=221

Number of published studies by Years
No.

Corporate governance attributes studied by prior research
This section provides an answer to the second question outlined for this study which asks about how corporate governance attributes have been addressed by prior studies in India? The results show that there are 151 studies that investigated board of directors' issues which is the highest frequency among corporate governance attributes, 90 studies that analyzed ownership structure, 64 studies are discussed audit committee attributes and 11 articles studied audit quality by Big-Four audit companies see (Figure 3). More specifically, Figure (3) proposes that among board of directors' issues, board independence has the majority focus by prior research in India (91), followed by board size (72), CEO duality (53), board diligence (50), board diversity and gender (22), board committees (16) and board expertise (5). Further, 113 studies investigated different issues of board such as board interlocks, multiple directorships, board profile, remuneration, and some other issues. Similarly, audit committee attributes investigated by prior research in India were distributed in different areas such as Audit committee size, independence, diligence, expertise, and some other issues with a frequency distribution of 16, 30, 22, 9, and 29 respectively. This means that audit committee independence and diligence have the majority concentration by the majority of prior research in India. Finally, ownership structure has been a matter of research by several studies in India. However, both foreign and institutional ownership have the highest frequency of research articles (32 and 31 respectively) as compared to other ownership variables like; government ownership, insider ownership, and ownership concentration (8, 10 and 16 respectively).

Sampling units
With regards to the sampling units investigated by prior studies of corporate governance in India,  been conducted using data from different industries. These studies are distributed as 35 qualitative studies, 15 qualitative studies based on index and score, 3 quantitative scores, 9 studies which are based on a questionnaire, and 2 conceptual and review studies. Likewise, studies are distributed among different industries including non-financial industries, service industries except financial, financial industry and manufacturing which have 24, 13, 13, and 10 respectively. However, there are 27 review and conceptual studies and 21 papers that we could not identify their research field.
Concerning sectors wise studies, Table 7 panel B also shows that 87 studies have mixed data from both private and public sectors. However, corporate governance studies focused on the public sector have a frequency of 6 studies as compared to the private sector which has 18 studies.

Data types
With regards to the type of data, panel (C) of Table 7 shows that the majority of corporate governance studies used secondary data 56% of 154 articles sourced from annual reports of listed firms, stock markets databases, Prowess Q data base or/and some other sources. However, only 7% of the researches conducted have primary data using questionnaire surveys. Further, the results report that 84 studies have been found to have quantitative aspects with secondary data from annual reports. These studies were focused on absolute financial and non-financial data. However, there are 22 studies that were based on Qualitative Index and 15 other studies that were based on quantitative `scores. These studies either frame a compliance index of 0 and 1 or a quantitative score based on a list of items of corporate governance issues.

Modeling and analyzing tools
As far as the statistical tools are concerned, the majority of prior studies of corporate governance in India have applied multiple regression models. Table 7 in its panel (D) demonstrates that 73 studies used regression analysis 21 studies adopted panel analysis with fixed or random effect models, 14 articles analyzed their results using descriptive statistics and frequency distributions, 3 articles utilized non-parametric tests, 3 research papers used GMM, and 18 other articles used different statistical tools such as event analysis, GARCH analysis, and some other tools. Table 8 provides a description of sample size, time frame and sampling periods considered by prior studies of corporate governance in India. Panel (A) of Table 8     Note: Panel A shows the frequencies of sample size by categories that have been employed by prior studies. The sample size is categorized into different categories which starts with a sample size of less than 10 firms and ended by a sample size of more than 2000 firms. The frequency of studies that employed these samples are given accordingly. Panel B illustrates that there are some studies that compared India with some other countries or investigated some Indian firms as a part of the sample from different countries. It shows the number of countries investigated and the frequency of studies that have compared these countries.

Time frame and sampling period
Panel  Table 9 demonstrates that among the areas linked with corporate governance attributes, firm performance has the highest frequency among other studies which have been a subject of an investigation by 51 studies. The other areas that statistically functioned by corporate governance mechanisms are corporate governance disclosures which have 7 articles, stock performance which has 8 studies, earning management with 3 manuscripts, remuneration with 6 studies, CSR with 3 papers, cash flow and dividends with 2 articles each and some other issues that have 33 research.

Conclusion
The present study highlights a review of corporate governance research in India. More importantly, this study discusses the different types of studies, publishing outlets, sampling units, data types, statistical tools, and the most researched areas that have been linked with corporate governance in India. The results found that the sampled studies are published in different numbers of journals spreading in 101 journals and are mostly published in Emerald which has 46 studies followed by Elsevier which has 46 articles, Inderscience which has 29 papers, Springer which has 16 studies and 4 studies for SAGE and 2 for Wiley each and 18 other studies were published by different publishers. Concerning corporate governance attributes studied, the results indicated that 151 studies investigate board of directors' issues which is the highest frequency among corporate governance attributes, 90 studies that analyzed ownership structure, 64 studies are discussed audit committee attributes and 11 articles studied audit quality by Big-Four audit companies. More specifically, board independence has the majority focus by prior research in India 91 research, followed by board size 72 studies. Further, the results showed that there is a lack of studies that have samples after 2015. The results also observed that there are numerous conceptual repetitive studies and the majority of the studies followed either descriptive statistics or basic regression analysis. With regards to the research areas linked and studied with corporate governance attributes, the results found that firm performance has the highest frequency amongst other studies which have been a subject of investigation.
The present study has significant implications for government and private research funding agencies, stock markets, policy-makers, and academicians in India. Generally, research funding agencies and academicians conduct research in corporate governance; however, there is no clear picture of the current status of corporate governance research in India. The present study provides a clear picture of the status of corporate governance in India that will enable funding research agencies and academicians to direct their future research towards unhighlighted areas ignored by prior studies. Different research areas can be investigated by future studies such as IT governance, the impact of corporate governance on environmental disclosure, the impact of corporate governance on financial reporting quality post-Ind. AS convergence, corporate governance and compliance with accounting standards, corporate governance practices during COVID-19, the role and impact of board and audit committee expertise in India. Further, some other research areas which need to be addressed in India are also narrative reporting and corporate governance, green governance, and sustainability reporting.
Regulators and policymakers should revise the existing regulations of corporate governance and increase the disclosure and compliance levels with these regulations. This study brings reflective insights related to corporate governance mechanisms. The pertinent literature points to the existence of a gap in practice, not only in the issues of transparency and disclosure of corporate governance mechanisms but also the methods, sampling periods and the statistical tools that have been used by prior research. Further, corporate governance practices after the revised corporate governance code in India have not been covered adequately by research studies. Therefore, the present study adds to the existing stock of knowledge and the body of literature by providing an opportunity to understand the status of corporate governance research in India.