External Corporate Governance Mechanisms in Brazil

Scandal cases involving weak corporate governance practices are prominent in several countries, especially in Brazil. This article aims to highlight the importance of external corporate governance mechanisms and the need to develop further studies on this topic in Brazil. Through the bibliometric survey, with an analysis of 432 national and international articles, from 1990 to 2016, it was possible to verify that that in Brazil there are only six studies that cite the external mechanisms of corporate governance, but only one of them operationalizes these mechanisms empirically. On the other hand, in the United States, China and England there is an advance in articles on this subject, precisely because of the commitment to corporate governance practices of companies. With the findings of this research, the focus is to contribute theoretically and empirically to a) describe the state of the art of research on the external mechanisms of corporate governance in Brazil and in the world; b) synthesize the role of external mechanisms as complementary tools of transparency and good corporate governance; c) indicate future research possibilities that deepen the evaluation of external mechanisms and their interaction with internal mechanisms in reducing asymmetries of information and interest among the agents involved.