Corporate Governance in GCC Countries: A bibliometric and Content Analysis

This study aims to highlight the current trends in the literature on corporate governance in Gulf Cooperation Council countries by applying a bibliometric and content analysis of papers on corporate governance. This research intends to identify gaps in the corporate governance literature by conducting a complete bibliometric assessment. Design/methodology/approach- Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative approach to analyzing bibliographic data that focuses on the key theoretical and empirical contributions to a certain research subject. It enables a researcher to categorize the information according to many aspects, such as the paper, journal, author, indexation, organization, or country. This study reviews a total of 704 articles on corporate governance published in the GCC countries. Bibliometric analysis was performed using VOSviewer, and content analysis was performed using the Bibliometrix package by R. Findings – The research findings indicate that corporate governance research can be categorized into subfields. The results identify four major clusters: financial reporting quality, corporate social responsibility, earning management, and ownership types. This study also presents recommendations for future research in this field. Practical implications – The findings of this study have implications for corporate governance research, such as the impact of earning management on environmental, social, and governance disclosure. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the only one to review the key corporate governance research topics on which papers published in the GCC are focused. It can be largely used for corporate governance practices. Originality/value—This study provides an overview of how the literature on corporate governance research has developed in the region. It summarizes the most influential authors, countries, organizations, and journal sources. This provides an opportunity for further study in this area in future studies.