Corporate Governance and Firm Performance: The Case for Turkey

Sammanfattning: In recent years, with corporate scandals and the global financial crisis there is continuous attention in the area of corporate governance which is the new concept in corporate world these days. It is seen as a moral duty and includes supporting the conformity to law and showing ethical guide. Corporate Governance is seen as a significant tool as firms’ financial performance when investors take an investment decision is turning into a more serious topic so the relationship between corporate governance tools and financial performance measurements caught researchers’ interest in the last decade primarily on developed countries as well as developing countries. In this study, we try to examine the effects of corporate governance on corporate financial performance for Turkey, using a sample of 90 companies on BIST for the time period between 2008 and 2014. Like previous papers, board size, ceo duality, board committees, board independence, firm size and firm age are the independent variables and their effects were measured on financial variables that are ROA, ROE and Tobin’s Q.Various tests were used to investigate the relationship such as descriptive analysis, pairwise correlation and ordinary least squares by using secondary data over a period. Under the lights of this research, it was found that overall, corporate governance variables have significant impact on firm financial performance and market value measurements. When we look at it separately, while no significant relationship between board size and all dependent variables was found, board independence has a significant and positive impact on all measurement variables. Moreover, the association between Ceo duality and all dependent variables was negative and it was found that having high number of board committees is positively correlated with all measurement variables but only significantly related with ROA.