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Previous studies have considered the presence of women directors on corporate boards and their impact on financial performance in isolation, disregarding their interaction with other corporate boards and firm-level attributes. Consequently, the results of such studies are largely inconclusive. This study addresses this gap by adopting a system’s approach to corporate governance characteristics and firm financial performance, rooted in a configurational approach.

The authors used fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to investigate the association of outside executive women directors and family-affiliated executive women directors with financial performance in the presence of board and firm-level characteristics in 216 listed non-financial family firms in Pakistan over the period of 2014–2019.

The findings reveal that various configurations of board and firm characteristics lead to high financial performance, underscoring conjunction, equifinality and asymmetry. The authors note that, the presence of outside executive women directors on corporate boards is frequently associated with high financial performance compared to family-affiliated executive women directors. Additionally, results indicates that presence of either outside executive women directors, family-affiliated executive women directors or both on corporate board associates with low level of leverage and vice versa. Moreover, high proportion of independent directors, large board size and large firm size are frequently associated with high ROE and Tobin’s Q.

This study introduces a novel perspective by integrating board and firm-level characteristics using a configurational approach. Focusing on listed non-financial family firms, the study highlights the asymmetric association between women directors and financial performance, suggesting that their impact fluctuates based on their combination with other board- and firm-level attributes. The study’s findings challenge the notion of a one-size-fits-all approach to board gender diversity and call for a more contextual understanding of how different types of women directors contribute to firm performance in family firms.

Although intellectual capital (IC) and human dynamic capabilities (HDCs) play a significant role in decarbonization processes, their measurement and reporting is under-researched. Hence, this study aims to identify the link between HDCs, carbon accounting and integrated reporting (IR) in the transition processes, investigating IC and HDCs in decarbonization processes to achieve net-zero business models (n-ZBMs).

A systematic literature review with a concise bibliometric analysis is conducted on 229 articles, published from 1990 to 2023 in Scopus database and Google Scholar. Reviewing data on publications, journals, authors and citations and analysing the article content, this study identifies the main search trends, providing a new conceptual model and future research propositions.

The results reveal that the literature has rarely focussed on carbon accounting in terms of IC and HDCs. Additionally, firms face pressure from institutions and stakeholders regarding legitimacy and transparency, necessitating a response considering IR and requiring n-ZBMs to be developed through IC and HDCs to meet social and environmental requirements.

Not only does this study link IC with HDCs to address carbon emissions through decarbonization practices, which has never been addressed in the literature to date, but also provides novel recommendations and propositions through which firms can sustainably transition to being net-zero emission firms, thereby gaining competitive advantage and contributing to the nation’s sustainability goals.