CORPORATE GOVERNANCE PRACTICE OF TAIWAN LISTED CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES AND ITS CORRELATION WITH INDUSTRIAL FEATURES

Corporate governance is a system articulating the division of responsibilities among different company members, and defining the running rules and procedures for making decisions on corporate affairs. The separation of ownership and management in modern enterprises brings agency problems to the company shareholders, and it is wildly believed that good practice on corporate governance is essential to prevent managers from taking actions by which profiteering their own benefits but compromising the interests of shareholders. This research investigates the level of companies' compliance with the corporate governance codes to find whether significant differences in corporate governance practice exist between the listed construction companies and the national leading companies in Taiwan. Further exploration focuses on the correlation between the compliance level and the industrial features. The investigation finds that: (1)Construction companies display lower levels of corporate governance compliance; (2)Construction companies display lower levels of structural board independence and respect for stakeholders; (3)Compliance levels of construction companies are correlated with the number of employees and the ownership concentration; (4)Compliance levels of the whole sample companies are correlated with the factors representing firm size, such as turnover, capital and number of employees, but are independent of profitability as well as stock price volatility. The above empirical evidence characterizes the features of corporate governance in Taiwan listed construction companies, including: (1)Large companies lurking high risk of agency problems have more willingness to conduct corporate governance and meanwhile can afford higher costs for the conduction, so that their compliance level would be higher than smaller companies; (2)Construction companies in Taiwan have higher ownership concentration, on account of the industrial tradition of family business, and therefore pay less attention to the compliance with structural board independence and respect for stakeholders. However, the conclusions indicate that further studies are essential to clarify whether the above disparities would lead to a negative cycle of corporate governance practice in construction industry. The benefits of corporate governance should unfold more evidently to convince construction companies for improving their investment environment and stimulating their healthy growth.