Corporate and regional governance antecedents of the Legality Rating of private Italian companies

Fabio La Rosa (), Sergio Paternostro and Francesca Bernini
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Fabio La Rosa: University of Catania
Sergio Paternostro: LUMSA University of Palermo
Francesca Bernini: University of Pisa

Journal of Management & Governance, 2023, vol. 27, issue 1, No 11, 297-329

Abstract: Abstract As Legality Rating (LR) for Italian companies was only recently introduced, it is an under-investigated phenomenon that is difficult to univocally interpret or structure within a well-defined theoretical framework. Given that certain governance characteristics can drive strategic decisions and have a crucial role to play in the legitimacy process, this paper sets out to explore how governance can influence a firm’s attitude and signal its socially responsible behaviour, in terms of legality. We investigated both corporate and regional governance antecedents using a sample of 1049 private Italian firms with a listed LR in 2016. We analysed hierarchical linear models with the LR score as a dependent variable, ranging from one to seven points. As a first in governance studies, we adopted the European Quality of Government Index to investigate differences in regional-level governance. We found that board size, ownership concentration, foreign ownership and being a cooperative were positively related to LR. Our results show that, where governance features make firms more inclined to safeguard their reputation, the LR is higher. Thus, rather than encouraging changes oriented to greater respect for the principles of legality, the LR primarily highlights companies that already behave honourably. Finally, a battery of robustness tests and further analyses on the role of regional governance quality reveal a substitution effect between regional and corporate governance.

Keywords: Legality Rating; Private companies; Legitimacy theory; Corporate governance; Regional governance quality; Legal behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s10997-021-09612-7

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