Qualitative insights into corporate governance reform, management decision-making, and accounting performance : semi-structured interview evidence from Kuwait

This chapter considers the relations between corporate governance reform, management decision-making and firm accounting performance in Kuwait by focusing on the role of important but difficult to quantitatively measure factors, including religion, politics and Kuwait’s tribal system. Using semi-structured interviews and both coding and quoting approaches in their analysis, we find that these external cultural factors, along with economic and financial circumstances and accounting standards, significantly impact upon the corporate governance-firm performance relationship in Kuwait. Further, we reveal the incentives for shareholders and managers to seek improved firm performance through good corporate governance, especially for better-performing firms. There is also evidence of broad support by firm managers and directors for recent reforms concerning Kuwait’s corporate governance code and guidelines.