Tony Abdoush, Khaled Hussainey and Khaldoon Albitar
Due to stakeholders’ concerns on the contribution of corporate governance in monitoring insurance companies during financial crisis, this study aims to investigate whether and how…
Abstract
Purpose
Due to stakeholders’ concerns on the contribution of corporate governance in monitoring insurance companies during financial crisis, this study aims to investigate whether and how various corporate governance practices would have affected firm performance of listed and non-listed insurance firms in the UK during financial crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a unique manually collected data set from listed and non-listed insurance firms in the UK and applies different regressions models to test the hypotheses and to address the endogeneity problem.
Findings
The findings show that board non-duality and the presence of a majority shareholder improve firm performance in insurance companies. Furthermore, the findings for the sub-samples indicate a stronger positive association between board of directors and firm performance in listed insurance companies after the financial crisis, while a positive impact has been found between large shareholders and external audit firms in non-listed insurance companies before and during the crisis.
Practical implications
The results offer important practical implications for the government, management, shareholders and policymakers. For example, regulators and policymakers should benefit from these results to revise the recommendations for corporate governance mechanisms that prove to be effective on firm performance, as well as those mechanisms that have different or unexpected effects among listed or non-listed firms and/or during the turbulent periods. Investors should be aware of those specific corporate governance mechanisms that would have higher effect on performance of UK insurance firms in which they are considering to invest in.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the current literature by exploring the effect of corporate governance on financial performance by comparing between listed and non-listed insurance companies during financial crisis. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use two new insurance-related performance measures, the revenue growth ratio and the adjusted combined ratio, as performance proxies to explore whether these new variables create any insights.
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Alasdair Marshall, Udechukwu Ojiako, Tony Abdoush, Nicholas Vasilakos and Maxwell Chipulu
This paper aims to draw on historical conceptions of true and false prudence within the broader context of virtue ethics ideas, to create a prudence framework for developing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to draw on historical conceptions of true and false prudence within the broader context of virtue ethics ideas, to create a prudence framework for developing risk-and-ethics cultures in organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a theoretical analytical approach as a means of examining plausible representations of risk as ethical practice.
Findings
While the ethical ideal of true prudence is explained primarily with reference to psychological theories of generativity, false prudence is explained as undesirable, primarily with reference to psychological problems of narcissism and the broader dark triad. True and false prudence are represented as centring upon very different motivations for foresight, each of which might set the cultural tone for organisational risk management.
Originality/value
This paper’s main contribution is therefore to call attention to the benefits for organisations of reflecting upon differences between true and false prudence when planning the risk management they want.