Dilemmas of corporate governance in state-owned companies in Trinidad and Tobago.

This is an interpretivist study based on a general inductive approach of dilemmas that compromise the optimal discharge of corporate governance in state-owned companies in Trinidad and Tobago. This qualitative study investigates and analyses the views and insights of ten (10) Chairmen of state-owned enterprises; it considers similarities and variances of thinking and establishes patterns or modes based on their perception and cognition of corporate governance, risk management and accountability. The statements of cognition are those that recognize how corporate governance ought to be administered; those of perception reveal how corporate governance is discharged on a day-to-day basis in the state-owned companies. The research vindicates the initial hunch and anecdotal evidence; it establishes the existence, nature and chief cause of the dilemmas, the intractable, chronic problems that have defined the practice of corporate governance from the inception of state-owned companies in Trinidad and Tobago. The texts offer rich insights into the practice and understanding of corporate governance while the research methodology teases out from the fabric of the interview literature key words and phrases, placing these words and phrases in matrices, decoding the matrices, and discovering three key and unique patterns. It reveals the struggle chairmen have experienced and still experience as they try to discharge their corporate responsibility. The research environment is one where there is urgent need but too little genuine support for meaningful change; the distortion of corporate governance is aided and abetted by a culture of seeming indifference and apathy. The investigation reveals the extent to which politics (the pericentric pattern) domineers and hinders the attainment of proper corporate governance. It simultaneously demonstrates that there is an understanding of what is required to effect proper governance and it surfaces the chief dilemma which retards the attainment of corporate governance. It examines the importance of governance as a crucible in which ethical maturity is measured and tested and informs thinking that is desirous of instituting fundamental change in a practical and straightforward manner.