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This study aims to examine whether, and which type of, busy audit committee (AC) directors affect the quality and quantity of forward-looking disclosure (FLD).

The authors use content analysis to measure the quality and quantity of FLD. The authors use a sample of Omani financial institutions listed on the Muscat Securities Market for the period 2014–2018.

The authors find that overlapped AC chairs and total overlapped AC directors negatively (positively) affect disclosure quantity (quality). The authors also find that overlapped AC directors with financial expertise and those with multiple directorships positively affect disclosure quantity and quality.

This study offers new insights to policymakers (and managers) as it informs them about the benefits of overlapping AC directorship. It suggests that corporate governance codes should not limit overlapped AC direcotorship.

This study aims to examine the impact of a firm’s financial performance on forward-looking disclosure (FLD) tone and assess whether managers are engaging in impression management or providing truthful explanations when their companies have good or poor performance.

This study used the content analysis method to measure the tone of FLD in the chairman’s statements of Omani financial institutions for the period 2014–2018. Regression analysis is then used to test the research hypotheses.

The authors found that good-performing firms are disclosing more good news, whereas poor-performing firms disclose more bad news. The results provided evidence that managers in Oman are providing truthful explanations in their narratives.

This study offered interesting policy and practical implications for policymakers, managers and stakeholders. This paper provided insights to policymakers regarding the FLD tone practices used in the chairman’s reports in Oman. Policymakers should be aware of the importance of the chairman’s reports in the eye of multiple stakeholders and, therefore, need to set guidelines on the type and quality of non-financial voluntary information that should be disclosed in such reports in the context of emerging economies. For academics, evidence has been provided by this study’s results regarding the impact of corporate performance on disclosure tone.

This study offered a novel contribution to disclosure studies by being the first to examine the performance-disclosure narrative tone relation, in the context of Oman.

In recent years, the field of financial technology (Fintech) has garnered significant attention due to advancements in technology, evolving consumer preferences and the growing need for financial services that are more accessible and user-friendly. The exponential expansion of Fintech is presenting novel prospects and obstacles for business. This study aims to investigate the relationship between gender diversity on corporate boards and firms’ performance, with a particular focus on the moderating role of Fintech.

The study sample consisted of financial sector firms listed on the Bahrain Bourse (banks and insurance firms) during the period 2016–2022. The data were gathered primarily from annual reports and the Bahrain Bourse website. The independent variable represents the percentage of female directors on corporate boards while firms’ accounting and market-based performance were measured using return on assets and Tobin’s Q variables. The moderating variable, Fintech, was measured using a checklist developed using the Global Fintech Adoption Index. Fixed effect (FE) regression was used to analyze the study data. An alternative gender diversity measure was used to test the reliability of the main regression analysis.

The results of the study indicate a positive relationship between gender diversity on corporate boards and financial performance. Additionally, the findings of the study highlighted the positive impact of Fintech practices on firms’ performance. Nevertheless, the impact of Fintech on the relationship between board gender diversity and corporate performance was found to be insignificant.

The study sample included a particular sector in a single country, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Also, the current study applied FE regression to analyze the data; however, other econometric approaches could be used to overcome the endogeneity issue.

The findings of this study may have implications for policymakers and society, particularly in terms of promoting gender diversity and Fintech innovation.

This study contributes to the existing body of research by examining the potential impact of the percentage of female directors and the utilization of Fintech on firms’ performance in Bahrain. Given the ongoing endeavors to provide advanced Fintech solutions in the financial sector and the increasing focus on enhancing gender diversity in Bahraini corporate boards, this research aims to provide additional evidence in this domain. Moreover, this study stands out as one of the limited number of research endeavors that use Fintech as a moderating variable in the investigation of the impact of female directors on firms’ performance.

Modern slavery is a significant issue addressed in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. In 2015, the UK Government introduced the Modern Slavery Act as part of a crucial broader set of initiatives that aimed to attack modern slavery. Regardless of the initiatives taken to mitigate this risk, little is known about how modern slavery disclosure affects corporate financial performance (CFP). Hence, our study aims to examine the impact of MSD on CFP empirically. It also examines the moderating role of governance quality on the MSD–CFP nexus.

We use computer-based content analysis to assess MSD levels for a sample of non-financial companies' annual reports. We use regression analysis to test our research hypotheses for a sample period of 2013–2019 for Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) All-Share non-financial UK firms. Our sample consisted of 786 observations.

We provide new empirical evidence that externally communicating modern slavery information in annual report narratives is associated with CFP. The finding is in line with stakeholder theory, which states that engaging in social responsibility practices and responding favourably to the stakeholders’ interests and desires would enhance corporations’ reputation and ultimately improve their performance. We further highlight the role of governance quality in this nexus and find that the interaction between governance quality and MSD is negative, suggesting a replacement effect.

Our findings can be of interest to government, policymakers and other stakeholders. Policymakers need to establish a new, broader set of enforcement arrangements for MSD that may lead to better CFP.

Our research idea is original as it links emerging global issues (e.g. MSD) with traditional corporate concerns (financial performance) in a way that is likely to provide new insights as well as managerial and policy implications.

This paper aims to examine the effect of audit firm governance on audit quality. Audit firm governance is broken down into two categories, namely, board ownership and engagement partner ownership.

Audit firms from Borsa Istanbul and their clients who are quoted there as well were used to test the hypotheses. The final sample covers 1,291 observations at the client level between 2013 and 2019. Ordinary least square was conducted to test the hypotheses. Heckman selection model and instrument variable regression with two-stage least square (IVREG with 2SLS) were also used to control the self-selection and endogeneity problems, respectively. To enhance the validity of the main results, alternative audit quality measures were used.

The empirical findings show that board ownership and engagement partner ownership have an impact on audit quality. The results indicate that engagement partners with high shares enhance audit quality only in Big4 audit firms. The positive effect of higher board ownership on audit quality is more prominent in non-Big4 firms. The Heckman two-stage procedure and IVREG with 2SLS were conducted, both of which were consistent with the main results. The results regarding alternative audit quality measures are in accordance with the main estimation results.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study examining the impact of audit firm board ownership on audit quality. In addition, this paper further advances the literature by investigating the effects of ownership at engagement partner levels on audit quality in the context of an emerging market, Turkey.