Governance and enterprise restructuring in Southeast Europe

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is examine governance and enterprise restructuring in Southeast Europe (SEE) (Western Balkans) transition economies. International organizations classify the following countries in SEE (Western Balkans): Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Design/methodology/approach – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has governance and enterprise restructuring as a basic indicator of economic transition and defines it as effective corporate governance and corporate control exercised through domestic financial institutions and markets, fostering market‐driven restructuring. The corporate governance is most often defined in terms of the roles, responsibilities, and interactions of top management and the board of directors. Using data of SEE economies, the interrelationships between governance and enterprise restructuring and set of policies that influence the governance patterns will be examined. Findings – Due to the analysis of the first assumption where a relation was made between governance and enterprise restructuring and imposed set of policies, the results have shown that there are mixed outcomes. The second hypothesis analyzed the importance and progress of corporate governance and enterprise restructuring. Originality/value – The paper shows that the overall outcome of SEE countries is mixed, as there are significant improvements in some countries and noteworthy lags in others. Indeed, needed considerable improvement is needed in corporate governance, institution‐building controlling agency problems and in imposing already adopted regulation; as well as adopting new ways of enterprise restructuring policies within existing policies of overall transition economy restructuring.