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This study examines how financial distress affects the capital structure of Egyptian firms following the 2016 currency flotation, examining the moderating roles of board characteristics and ownership structure.

Utilizing data from non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2022, we apply two-stage least squares (2SLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) to address endogeneity and selection bias.

Our findings indicate that financially distressed firms tend to increase their debt burden, but robust governance mechanisms, such as higher board independence, larger boards and strong blockholder and institutional ownership, significantly mitigate this effect. Managerial ownership shows a stabilizing influence during distress, while chief executive officer duality does not significantly impact leverage decisions. These findings underscore how robust corporate governance promotes more conservative capital structure decisions during economic volatility.

Our study focus, country and period could limit the generalizability of our findings to other regions or sectors.

Investors and policymakers are advised to focus on firms with effective governance structures to mitigate distress-induced leverage increases. Governance reforms that enhance board effectiveness and ownership structure, e.g. increasing board independence requirements and promoting greater institutional investor participation, can further stabilize capital structure during downturns. Managers, in turn, should diversify financing and adopt prudent debt strategies to reduce overreliance on leverage.

In contrast to most studies, this research reverses the lens by exploring how financial distress shapes capital structure decisions in an emerging market context, specifically post-Egypt’s 2016 currency flotation. Employing both 2SLS and PSM to address endogeneity and selection bias, the study highlights the mitigating role of governance mechanisms, which can buffer firms against heightened debt reliance under economic volatility.

When facing capacity bottlenecks, manufacturers of configurable, multi-variant products may adjust the product mix to uphold the scheduled output. However, maintaining market attractiveness by choosing the right product configurations as substitutes is a non-trivial task as it involves anticipating the substitution behaviour of customers. Substitution behaviour models currently used in quantitative production planning models for configurable products are either based on domain knowledge of experts, which makes them bias-prone, or they require extensive market research. The purpose of this study is to present a data-driven approach.

Based on data science concepts, distance measures are applied to derive distances between different product configurations from historical order data. Different design options for such a distance measure are discussed regarding configurable products and tested with automotive industry data. Furthermore, the study shows ways to validate the distance results.

The experiments show that the presented distance measure represents the expected customer substitution behaviour quite well. A context-sensitive distance measure including rank information of ordinal product features is most suitable for the automotive data sets.

This study presents a new approach to model the substitution behaviour of customers. The attractiveness of a potential substitute is represented by a distance from the customer’s first-choice configuration. The presented distance measure provides an inexpensive tool using existing data instead of expensive market research. Thus, it supports the integration of substitution into quantitative production planning models that deal with a large variety of configurable products.

This study aims to examine the effect of audit quality (auditor expertise and discretionary accruals) on financial communication quality and to distinguish the moderating role of corporate governance mechanisms (board size, CEO duality, board gender diversity and block ownership) on this relationship.

Linear regression is used to analyze the annual reports of 150 nonfinancial firms that belong to the CAC All-tradable index for the period 2015–2023.

The empirical results show that auditor expertise has a positive and significant effect on financial communication quality. Furthermore, board size reinforces the negative effect of discretionary accruals on financial communication quality. However, CEO duality and block ownership attenuate the positive effect of auditor expertise on the dependent variable.

Our research covers three areas of research, i.e. audit quality, corporate governance and financial communication research. It presents the moderator role of some governance mechanisms on the relation between audit and financial communication quality. Furthermore, it aims to identify best practices in the governance system that attempt to facilitate and improve the positive impact of audit quality on the quality of financial communication, which increases stakeholder confidence in the firm. We caution readers from generalizing the findings of this study, as our study is based on a well-developed sample. Also, it is limited only to annual reports to measure the financial communication index without looking at other information transmission channels.

This study investigates the moderating role of internal governance mechanisms in the relationship between audit quality and financial communication quality in the French context.

This chapter describes current trends in academic leadership in the Nordic context, also prevalent in other Western societies. There has been a gradual but steady move toward more top-down leadership approaches resulting in the erosion of collegiality and decentralized decision-making. This is a paradox given the increasing complex and volatile environment under which higher education institutions operate, where more rather than less decentralization is thought to be beneficial in fostering responsiveness and agility. By drawing upon developments in Nordic higher education, this chapter sheds light on the consequences associated with the widespread and uncritical adoption of individual leadership approaches and provides conceptual insights and empirical evidence toward embracing more systemic and organic approaches centered on resilient or adaptive leadership postures and structures.

This study aims to examine the extent to which information asymmetry affects investment efficiency and whether the presence of blockholders moderate this relationship.

We employ the data of firms listed on the Malaysian stock exchange for the period 2010–2018, to compose our sample. Our final sample includes the 100 largest non-financial firms based on market capitalization. Collectively, these 100 companies contribute 84.2% to the total market capitalization (MYR 1,730bn) which is representative of the whole market. The ordinary least squares regressions were used as the main estimation technique. The system generalized method of moments, two-stage least squares and propensity score matching were also used, to address potential endogeneity concerns.

We document a positively significant association of information asymmetry with investment inefficiency. These results imply that information asymmetry reduces investment efficiency and enhances sub-optimal investments. We also document that blockholders negatively moderate the relationship of information asymmetry with investment inefficiency. Further analyses show that investment inefficiency is higher in low-growth firms than in high-growth firms because of higher information asymmetry.

We focus on Malaysia, which is a predominantly common-law Anglo-Saxon country. Graff (2008) documented that the investors are treated differently across legal systems and there are differences between the continental European and Anglo-Saxon countries. La Porta et al. (1999) documented that investors tend to have more legal protection in Anglo-Saxon countries. Therefore, our results may not be generalized to countries with different legal systems.

An important implication of our findings is that stakeholders may encourage the presence of blockholders and give them a voice to weaken the positive relationship between information asymmetry and investment inefficiency.

This study contributes to the contingency literature by investigating the moderating effect of an important governance mechanism, i.e. the presence of blockholders on information asymmetry-investment efficiency nexus. Despite being important, this moderating effect has been largely overlooked in the literature. Our study contributes by providing an understanding of how blockholders can influence investment decisions, offering insights for academics, investors and policymakers focused on improving the efficacy of investment decisions and governance structure.

Purpose: To investigate the key technologies facilitating the transition towards Industry 5.0 and analysing the contributions of Nvidia, a prominent leader in this field, to these technological advancements.

Significance of the study: Technology companies such as Nvidia play a critical role in this transformation through their innovative solutions. This study addresses the need to understand this evolving landscape and the significant impact of the Nvidia.

Methodology: This study is a qualitative approach that examines the existing literature and secondary case studies pertaining to Industry 5.0, and Nvidia. This study examines Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), the digital twin platform Omniverse, and the humanoid robot technology development platform, Isaac.

Findings: The next generation of GPUs with the Blackwell architecture is expected to further advance the development of large language models. The Nvidia Omniverse platform contributes significantly to the development of digital twins, a crucial technology for Industry 5.0. The Nvidia Isaac platform focuses on the development of humanoid robot technology, which is a key component of Industry 5.0. Utilizing realistic simulations with Isaac Sim, imitating human behavior with GR00T, and leveraging the high-performance processing power of Jetson Thor, the platform facilitates the creation of robots capable of safe and effective human–robot collaboration. Nvidia has emerged as a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and gaming sectors because of its innovative and agile company culture.

Practical implications: Companies can leverage Nvidia’s technological solutions to optimize production processes and enhance both efficiency and sustainability. The human–machine collaboration emphasized by Industry 5.0 will necessitate the reshaping of workforce skillsets and operational approaches.

This study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance on the speed of adjustment (SOA) of capital structure in a developing market, Pakistan.

The study's sample includes 173 non-financial enterprises that were listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) between 2011 and 2020. The capital structure of the sample companies is determined by the ratio of total debt to total debt plus the market value of equity. Corporate governance is measured by board size, independence, CEO duality, management ownership, blockholders ownership and institutional ownership. A two-step difference GMM model was used to achieve the study's objectives.

Through applying the reduced form model approach, we discovered that corporate governance variables have a considerable negative impact on the speed of targeted leverage adjustment in sample firms. Additionally, to check the robustness of results, the two-stage technique used to examine this corporate governance-SOA relationship. Furthermore, we discovered that smaller enterprises modify their capital structure more than larger firms. Furthermore, corporations prioritize short-term debt adjustment above long-term debt adjustment.

The study's findings provide further information to company managers and investors on the relationship between corporate governance quality and the pace of adjustment towards targeted leverage across Pakistani enterprises. Furthermore, this study adds new information from growing countries such as Pakistan to the existing literature, which can help regulatory authorities and policymakers improve the quality of corporate governance. It is commonly known that improving the quality of corporate governance practices improves the firm's capital structure, which benefits all stakeholders.

In the context of developing economies, the academic literature lacks research that examine the impact of corporate governance on dynamic capital structure decisions. This study intends to fill this gap.

This study evaluates parental time investments in adolescents with disabilities relative to their siblings and to nondisabled youth in other families. Parents with several children must allocate time and attention to each, which may not be equal due to the challenges that arise from child disabilities, possibly reinforcing preexisting differences between siblings. In contrast, parents may seek to compensate for health deficiencies by allocating more parental time to a child with disabilities. Using the nationally representative American Time Use Survey (ATUS) (2008–2019) and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to make across-family comparisons of parental time with disabled children relative to families in which no children had disabilities (N = 18,140), the study further focused on families with a disabled child and used fixed effects regression to evaluate within-family sibling comparisons of parental time investments (N = 648). Results indicate for families with a child with a disability, and parents spend the most one-on-one time with children who have disabilities and less one-on-one time with their other children. One-on-one time with children with disabilities is also higher than one-on-one time in families without children with disabilities. Differences were most pronounced in households in which a child had both cognitive and physical disabilities and in households in which no parent had a bachelor’s degree. Additional parental time for youth with disabilities aligns with theories of compensation and likely promotes development for these youth. Parental time investments may also be a plausible mechanism for explaining some difficulties experienced by siblings of disabled youth.

This study investigates the link between board compensation and corporate philanthropy, in which the financial incentives given to board members are considered as a factor that affects a firm's philanthropic activities. The sample of publicly listed companies from 2014 to 2020 is adopted to conduct a multiple regression on the impact of board compensation on corporate philanthropic contributions. Our study results indicate that board compensation, especially when it is tied to long-term performance indicators, is positively related to greater levels of corporate philanthropy. This relationship demonstrates the direction that the financial motivations of board members take in shaping the agenda of social responsibility of a company. This research incorporates the views of agency theory and stakeholder theory into the literature on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR), thus offering practical implications for policymakers, shareholders, and corporate executives who want to develop a culture of philanthropy in their organizations. Along with that, the study outlines possible directions for further research such as the impact of nonmonetary incentives and the role of board diversity on philanthropic results.