This thesis uses a new institutional sociology perspective to examine the adoption of corporate governance practices in Libyan commercial banks (LCBs). In particular, it investigates the perceptions of various stakeholders towards corporate governance in LCBs in order to provide a general understanding of how different types of institutional pressures (isomorphism) have influenced and shaped the current corporate governance practices of LCBs and to investigate whether LCBs have adopted the same corporate governance practices or whether there are any differences across different banks. For this purpose, two pieces of empirical work, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey were conducted respectively. The interviews were held with a number of stakeholders in Libya in 2009 to ascertain their views on corporate governance in LCBs. The extant literature and the findings from the interviews have informed the second part of the empirical work of this thesis examining the corporate governance of three different banks: a state-owned bank; a bank with part Western ownership as a strategic partner; and a privately owned Libyan bank. A questionnaire survey of different stakeholder groups was conducted in 2010 about the practices of these three banks to establish whether the ownership structure or any other factors have affected the governance practices of these three banks and whether certain features have been institutionalised. The main findings indicate that the concept of corporate governance is new in LCBs, only introduced in 2006 when the CBL issued its Corporate Governance Guidelines for Boards of Directors in LCBs, and thus its adoption in Libya still in its early stage. Although such guidelines were very important for LBCs to establish their own corporate governance system and practices, LCBs are not yet ready to accept and adopt corporate governance because of the boards and executive managements are not focused on adopting corporate governance. Moreover, the guidelines are not mandatory and need board members that are practised in dealing with corporate governance issues, and therefore, the guidelines have been mostly ignored leading to many poor practices. The findings illustrate that different types of institutional pressures are shaping the current corporate governance practices and reforms in LCBs, especially coercive pressure from the CBL and the Libyan Bank Law requirements. However, such pressures are inadequate, as they only focus on the composition of the board. Further, the influence of these institutional pressures, to some extent, varies according to the ownership structure of LCBs, making some differences in responding to institutional pressures, and thus in corporate governance practices between LCBs. Overall, the findings illustrate that there is a need for more effort and pressure from the CBL to encourage and press LCBs to adopt better corporate governance practices. In this context, the latest developments indicate that the CBL is continuing to exert coercive pressure on LCBs to comply with sound corporate governance practices. The CBL developed and replaced the voluntary Corporate Governance Guidelines by the Corporate Governance Code for the Banking Sector (2010), which will mandatorily apply in 2011.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629586 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Zagoub, Ali A. |
| Publisher | University of Dundee |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds