Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how internationalisation of corporate governance mechanisms influences firm performance.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on the data collected from annual reports of the year 2004, from all 239 Swedish corporations listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, on which a quantitative analysis was performed.

Findings – The findings suggest that internationalisation of corporate governance does not have a straightforward influence on firm performance, which can be due to: the fact that mechanisms with governance functions have several functions, of which governance is but one; and the fact that governance mechanisms cannot be analyzed in isolation, since they are included in a coherent corporate governance strategy.

Originality/value – The paper is the first to investigate the corporate governance mechanisms' internationalisation issue.