University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

Research Questions
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To explore corporate governance and its linkages to sustainable development, the
following questions will be addressed as guiding themes for a multi-method data
gathering exercise.
1. What are the linkages between the four main principles of corporate
governance and broader sustainable economic development? This will serve
as the main or overriding question for this study and the following sub
questions will help the deeper investigation of this question.
1(a) What are the differences in the corporate governance frameworks in
Finland and Zambia for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and listed
companies? This question will be addressed through the lenses of
institutional and agency theories because it is partly a structural
question and an institutional question. This approach is also due to my
belief that for good governance to be achieved in business and politics,
institutional reform is vital and in order to have sustainably managed
business houses, corruption free institutions, there is need for corporate
governance reforms that seek to implement and strengthen its four
basic principles in the companies’ management and strategic structures.
1(b) How can corporate governance principles be used to fight corruption,
corporatism and cronyism? This question will be addressed from the
premise that corruption is one of the biggest deterrents to economic
development and as long as it is not addressed, poor countries like
Zambia can forget about attaining the millennium development goals.
Corporatism and cronyism are vices widely known for increasing
inefficiencies and distorting the proper functioning of markets; in the
end, they negatively affect the entire economy if they are not prevented.
Generally, literature shows that in countries where good corporate
governance has been implemented, companies and government
institutions are sustainably run because good corporate governance
makes it difficult for individuals to engage in bribery; promotes and
protects whistle blowers, and also contributes to the broader climate of
transparency and fair dealing both in private businesses and public
service.
1(c) What are the common ownership structures used in these companies?
This question will seek to test whether the case companies (both in
Zambia and Finland) use pyramids, cross-sharing and/or multiple share
classes as corporate control structures. The reason for my wanting to
investigate this is that in theory, these three techniques can effectively
be used by insiders to expropriate or divert resources from corporations
in ways that would deprive non-controlling investors, andother