This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported License, permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ISSC 2016 : International Soft Science Conference Corporate Governance Research in Emerging Economies: The Need for Alternative Perspectives Nor Zalina Mohamad Yusof a * * Corresponding author: Nor Zalina Mohamad Yusof, nzalina@uum.edu.my a School of Accountancy, Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010 Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia Abstract This paper argues that corporate governance research in emerging economies is dominated by agency theory perspective. While agency theory is important in explaining corporate governance in these economies, this paper argues that it is not sufficient. Alternative perspectives are needed in explaining the practice of corporate governance in emerging economies more holistically as emerging economies have different institutional context and non-economic factors as compared to more advanced economies. In doing so, this paper reviews corporate governance literature, focusing on those studies conducted in emerging economies, with the purpose to provide a detailed commentary on the nature of existing research on corporate governance in these economies and identify gaps in this literature. This paper proceeds by explaining on why Agency Theory is not sufficient and suggests for future work. © 2016 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.uk Keywords: Corporate Governance; developing economies; agency theory; institution. 1. Introduction Review of corporate governance literature shows that both research and practices of corporate governance are dominated by the agency theory. Under this perspective, corporate governance is seen as a mechanism by which to deal with the issue of separation of ownership and control. Research and practice focus on how to reduce the loss of the firm’s value as a result of this separation of ownership and control. Review of literature also shows that despite the dominance of the economic perspective, efforts have been made to explain corporate governance from other views including institutional view, power, and politics. However, in emerging economies, research utilizing institutional perspective is http://dx.doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2016.08.113