Estuary or Confluence? A Critical Analysis of Anglo-American Governance’s Implementation within an Emerging Economy Context

This paper draws upon a critical framework of theorising, comprising of postcolonialism and neopatrimonialism perspectives, to analyse the state of corporate governance (CG) and transparency within an emerging African economy. Data consists of a combination of twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with key CG stakeholders, together with field observations and archival evidence. We uncover how foreign-originated accounting and CG systems interact with dynamisms of Kenya’s institutional and postcolonial reality, including powerful neopatrimonialism order. These includes ineffective corporate boards, rampant corruption, inadequately-skilled accounting professionals, weak regulatory and enforcement systems and lack of shareholder engagement. We find that implementation of Anglo-American governance and accounting innovations, such as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), has done little to improve CG practices within Kenya’s corporate sector. In particular, ‘institutional collision’ is manifested in our findings, where we evidence conflicts between demands of formal structures and vigorous informal institutions, such as corruption and cronyism in board appointments. We argue that it is delusive to assume that Kenya’s capital markets, or those of other similar African countries, can achieve advanced countries status by merely adopting western accounting and CG structures. We conclude by recommending ways of improving CG practices in Kenya, including: re-design of corporate sector regulatory framework to remedy conflicts in regulation, encouraging shareholder activism and adoption of inclusive approach to corporate reporting.