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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between board composition and firm performance variance in the context of recent corporate governance reforms, based on the agency and organisational literatures.

This paper uses 384 of the top 500 Australian companies as its dataset. Board composition measures include the percentages of affiliated, executive and independent members on the board. Firm risk is represented by the standard deviation of shareholder return. Several control variables are introduced in the regression analysis.

The results show a negative impact of executive directors on subsequent risk. Affiliated and independent directors, however, have no significant effect on the level of performance variance. Blockholders give a positive influence on firm risk. Moreover, companies with poor dividend payout or low managerial shareholdings tend to be riskier.

This paper does not examine the actual risk preference of individual directors, which could involve an attitudinal survey of board members. Future research may also examine the specific attributes towards risk for each type of affiliated directors.

The findings cast doubts on the hope that promoting board independence would reduce agency conflicts relating to managerial risk aversion, and support the proposition that, although firms may comply with the demands for more independent directors, they could employ a number of tactics to neutralize the power of outsiders.

The empirical work surrounding this topic has been scant. This study may present the first Australian empirical evidence on the relationship between board composition and firm performance variance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify some key issues for the analysis of corporate governance based on the papers within this special issue including the Guest Editor's perspectives.

The five papers included in this special issue are summarized and their main contribution to the literature is highlighted.

The paper collectively deal with the role and impact of corporate boards on the quality of information provided to capital markets.

The theoretical and empirical research included in the special issue advance the understanding of corporate governance which provides impetus for practitioner and policy change.

The normative concepts of best practice need to be validated by empirical testing in the context of firms and their institutional settings. This suite of papers provides evidence of the effectiveness of corporate governance in improving accounting quality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Austrian public universities (APUs) respond to the challenge of maintaining academic freedom while complying with legal requirements and enhancing competitiveness by using Management Control Systems (MCSs). Specifically, it examines how APUs respond to the co-presence of academic, government and business logic.

The perspective of institutional logics as a theoretical lens and the framework of MCSs by Malmi and Brown (2008) serve to analyse how APUs respond to the existence of different institutional field-level logics. In-depth expert interviews from the perspective of APUs’ research management are conducted to identify the applied management control practices (MCPs) and APUs’ responses to the different institutional field-level logics.

This study identifies how academic, government and business logic are represented in field-level-specific MCPs and field-level-specific corresponding narratives. Reflecting upon APUs’ responses to the co-existence of academic and government logic, compliance or rather, selective coupling with government logic or decoupling from government logic became obvious.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study at higher education institutions representing academic, government and business logic in the applied MCPs in research management. The study reveals that APUs have developed specific responses and narratives regarding the existence of different institutional field-level logics.

While the customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction literature is extensive and continually expanding, there has been little focus on pre‐purchase satisfaction of first‐time buyers and its likely impact on buying behaviour. Applies a field‐based approach to examine and assess the nature of pre‐purchase satisfaction and investigate its impact on first‐time buyer behaviour. Indicates that pre‐purchase satisfaction can be distinguished from anticipated satisfaction and that it helps to predict first‐time purchases. Discusses the implications of the findings and provides directions for further research.

This paper has two purposes: one is to analyse how the policy of freedom of choice emerged and was formed in the Swedish health care discourse; the second is related to how free choice influences the discourse in health care and how subjects are formed within the field, i.e. what the language of choice in health care does.

The research strategy is inspired by a combined theoretical framework borrowed from Michel Foucault's concepts of “discursive formation” and “subjectivization” completed with Judith Butler's concept of performativity.

The language of “freedom of choice” calls to mind the rhetoric of promises, i.e. that the patient should be free and responsible, in his or her relation to health care. Since patients seem to be insufficiently informed and supported about the actual benefits of possibilities and limitations associated with the severely restricted reform of free choice, the statements concerning opportunities to make personal health decisions will lose their significance. The advocacy of discourses of freedom of choice seems therefore mostly like empty words, as they are producing weak patients instead of free and empowered people.

As the reform was initiated in the beginning of 2000 it is rather fresh.

The paper produces insights into the rhetoric of political promises and the limitations of the reform dealing with freedom of choice in health care.

Given the now well‐recognised risk of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) for adults with Down's Syndrome (DS) as they reach middle age, services for people with learning disability (LD) need to meet this new challenge. Good practice guidance from the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities (Turk et al, 2001) recommended that every service for people with learning disability should set up a register of adults with DS, conduct a baseline assessment of cognitive and adaptive functioning before the age of 30 years, develop specialist skills in this area, offer training to other professionals, front‐line staff and carers, and seek high‐quality co‐ordination between agencies. This article reports the progress of one LD service in meeting these challenges, highlighting the successes and difficulties that may guide other teams considering such a development.