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This paper aims to examine the relation between CEO board membership and firm performance.

This paper investigates the relationship between firm performance and CEO board membership, applying two-stage least squares, propensity score matching and correcting for self-selection bias across a unique sample of publicly listed New Zealand firms that demonstrate a definitive variation in CEO board membership.

This study finds that CEO board membership has a positive impact on firm performance, and these benefits are greater for more complex firms.

Firms with CEOs independent of the board are associated with lower firm performance. The results are consistent with CEO board members providing an important information transfer mechanism to the board, resulting in an increase in average firm performance. This benefit is greater for larger firms with more business segments.

The paper tests for the impact of CEO board membership using a data set that demonstrates a definitive variation in CEO board membership.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between board independence and firm performance for publicly listed New Zealand (NZ) firms over the period 2004-2016.

To address endogeneity concerns, the relationship between firm performance and board independence is modelled using three different approaches: firm fixed-effect estimation, difference-in-difference estimation and two-stage least squares estimation, while controlling for firm and governance characteristics.

The main finding is that the mandated board independence introduced by the Best Practice Code does not improve operating or market performance for listed NZ firms.

The fact that NZ firms choose greater board independence than required is puzzling. Research examining director characteristics and connectedness, not captured by the NZX Code, may be a fruitful area for future research when disclosure allows.

Regulators may need to review reasons for mandating changes in factors affecting firm governance before implementing further regulations concerning board structure.

The findings cast doubt on the benefit of mandated board independence for NZ firms. The results imply that “good” governance practices proposed by regulators are not universal.

This paper tests the impact of mandated board independence following the adoption of the Best Practice Code in 2004 using methodologies that account for endogeneity using 13 years of data.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between board gender diversity and private firm performance.

The authors test the association between board gender diversity and private firm performance by estimating pooled multivariate regressions using an unbalanced panel data set of 115,253 firm-year observations.

The authors find that younger, less busy and local women directors enhance private firm performance. Firms with 40% or more women directors report triple the economic benefits compared to boards with at least 20% women directors. Considering firm size, women directors significantly increase small firm profitability, and the effect is more pronounced for high-risk firms. Greater board gender diversity enhances small firm performance as the monitoring role of women directors benefits the firm even in the presence of busy men directors. Consistent with the agency theory framework, the authors find that women directors improve small firm profitability in the presence of agency costs.

Due to the lack of availability of data about private firms, many factors are not directly observable. The analysis uses accounting-based performance measures that may be subject to managerial discretion. Nevertheless, the authors report highly significant results using cash-based performance measures that substantiate the overall findings.

The results of the present study point to the need for private firms to increase board gender diversity and consider women director busyness, age, nationality and firm size when making board director appointments.

This study adds to the scarce existent literature investigating private firms. The results contribute to the understanding of gender-diverse boards as well as the attributes of women directors that enhance private firm performance.

This study aims to examine the association between mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) regulations (CSR mandate) and social disclosures (SOCDS) in India. It also investigates whether CSR committees mediate the relationship between CSR mandate and SOCDS. Furthermore, this paper explores how business group (BG) affiliation moderates CSR committee quality and SOCDS.

This study uses a data set of 5,345 observations from the Bombay stock exchange (BSE)-listed firms over 10 years (2011–2020) to examine the research questions. Baron and Kenny’s (1986) three-step model is estimated to examine the mediating role of CSR committees on the relationship between CSR mandate and SOCDS.

The study reveals that the CSR mandate positively impacts SOCDS in India due to coercive pressures. CSR committees mediate this relationship, with higher CSR committee quality leading to increased SOCDS. Furthermore, the authors report that SOCDS in India is positively related to CSR committee quality, and this relationship is stronger for BG firms. Finally, the supplementary analysis reveals that promoting CSR committee quality enhances firms’ likelihood of meeting CSR mandatory spending and actual CSR spending in India.

This research contributes to the academic literature by shedding light on the intricate dynamics of CSR mandates, CSR committees and SOCDS in emerging economies. Notably, the authors identify the previously unexplored mediation role of CSR committees in the link between CSR mandates and SOCDS. The creation of a composite index that measures complementary CSR committee attributes allows us to undertake a novel assessment of CSR committee quality. An examination of the moderating influence of BG affiliation documents the importance of CSR committee quality, particularly in governance, for enhancing SOCDS transparency within BG firms.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of MFI-level governance on microfinance institutions' (MFIs’) risk in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The study uses data from a sample of 151 MFIs operating in 21 SSA countries during 2005–2014. The Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) regression model is applied to investigate the relationship between MFI level governance mechanisms and risk.

The study provides new evidence that board characteristics have differential effects on for-profit (FP) and not-for-profit (NFP) MFI risk. Board independence reduces credit risk of NFP MFIs. Foreign director presence increases MFI failure risk. Furthermore, greater female director representation reduces (increases) FP (NFP) financial risk whereas female CEOs are associated with higher (lower) FP (NFP) financial risk.

The paper contributes to existing literature on microfinance governance and risk, by exploring the impact of governance on MFI risk based on MFIs profit orientation. In addition, the study uses three different risk measures unlike previous microfinance studies.

Based on the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective and agency theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how the introduction of the 2006 Corporate Governance (CG) Guidelines and family governance affected the level of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting of non-financial companies in Bangladesh.

The authors use multivariate regression to analyse 2,637 firm-level annual observations, from 1996 to 2011 annual reports of Bangladeshi publicly listed non-financial-sector companies, to investigate how firm-level CG quality affects CSR disclosure in family and non-family firms.

CG quality significantly increases the level of CSR disclosure and this relationship is stronger prior to the new CG Guidelines. Family firms’ CSR reporting levels are significantly lower than non-family firms’, and this effect is stronger after the change in the CG Guidelines. CEO duality, the presence of an audit committee and profitability improve family-firm CSR reporting in Bangladesh, while non-family CSR disclosures are positively associated with board size and firm competition. Board independence is not related to CSR disclosure.

The authors provide evidence of the benefit of the CG Guidelines’ introduction on company CSR disclosure in an emerging economy and the importance of specific governance mechanisms that differentiate family and non-family-firm CSR disclosures in Bangladesh using a SEW framework.

This paper aims to synthesize the corporate social responsibility decoupling (CSRD) literature, CSRD's causes and consequences and discuss other organizational attributes examined by CSRD scholars during 2010 and 2020. The authors provide suggestions for a future research agenda in this domain.

The authors' systematic literature review (SLR) uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework to extract CSRD studies. The authors filter collected articles against quality and relevancy criteria and finally review 175 published articles.

A theme analysis identifies and structures the many themes related to CSRD. The authors discuss the drivers of CSRD and reveal the consequences companies face after CSRD. The authors also provide a comprehensive CSRD discussion in the context of developed and developing economies. CSR communication is also identified as a tool for decoupling and recoupling.

The identified themes provide a thorough illustration of CSRD literature for new CSRD scholars. The authors also provide suggestions for future research, such as examining country-level policy-making and implications of CSRD variance and identifying cultural and economic hurdles to achieving core CSR purposes.

Policymakers and scholars may adopt the approach that CSRD is a misreporting of information similar to accounting fraud. This is particularly relevant given that an increasing number of CSRD scandals indicate that the purpose of bringing change through corporate CSR has not been adopted well by corporations.

The authors' study offers a comprehensive literature review for the period of 2010–2020. The studies identified are structured into meaningful themes which can provide groundwork for future researchers.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of female director affiliations to governing families on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in the context of Bangladeshi firms.

This study uses a quantitative empirical research method grounded in Socioemotional Wealth (SEW) theory. Data was sourced from Bangladeshi publicly listed non-financial sector companies’ annual reports and stock exchange trading and publication reports and consists of 2,637 firm-year observations from 1996 to 2011. Pooled multivariate regression models are used to test the association between corporate social and environmental disclosure and female directors, and the family affiliation (or not) of those directors.

The findings provide strong evidence that female directors who are affiliated to the governing family, founders and other board members reduce CSR disclosure in family firms; unaffiliated female board directors enhance CSR disclosure, and this effect is significant in both family and non-family firms.

Definitions of family firms and affiliated directors may lead to over-generalization in the results.

The study highlights variation in the nature of female board appointments in emerging market family-controlled firms. The findings bring attention to the role of affiliated female director appointments in family ownership structures and speak directly to family business owners, advisors and policy makers about the importance of unaffiliated female directors as catalysts of improved CSR disclosure in family and non-family firms.

This article describes the background to the What Works initiative launched by Barnardo's in the early 1990s, with a focus on the What Works for Children series of reports published from 1995 onwards. The author describes the intellectual and social context of the initiative, the approach taken, and some of the barriers to and levers for the adoption of research in practice are identified. The article describes more briefly the ways in which those in the Research and Development (R&D) team at Barnardo's worked towards knowledge transfer, both inside and outside the organisation. The article concludes with reflections on the impact of Barnardo's initiatives, the journey still to be travelled to strengthen the knowledge base of those providing services to children in education, health and social work, and the need for further work both to strengthen the evidence base and to increase synergies between research, policy and practice.

From 2007, New Zealand firms must report the cost of granting employee stock options (ESOs). Market‐based option pricing models assume that option holders are unconstrained in their portfolio choices and thus are indifferent to the specific risk of any firm. By contrast, ESO holders are frequently required to hold portfolios that are over‐exposed to the firm that employs them and so adopt exercise policies that reflect their individual risk preferences. Applying the model of Ingersoll (2006) to hypothetical ESOs, we show that ESO cost can be extremely sensitive to employee characteristics of risk aversion and under‐diversification. This result casts doubt on the usefulness of any market‐based model for pricing ESOs, since such models, by definition, produce option values that are independent of employee characteristics. By limiting employee discretion over the choice of exercise date, vesting restrictions help reduce the magnitude of this problem.