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This paper aims to empirically analyse specific characteristics of an audit committee that could be associated with the likelihood of corporate fraud/scandal/sanctions.

The sample includes all firms that were investigated by the Financial Reporting Council through the audit enforcement procedure from 2014 to 2019, and two matched no-scandal firms. It uses logistic binary regression analysis to examine the hypotheses.

Results based on the logit regression suggest that audit member tenure and audit committee meeting frequency both have positive associations to the likelihood of corporate scandal. Complementing this result, the authors find negative but insignificant relationships amongst audit committee female chair, audit committee female members percentage, audit committee qualified accountants members, audit committee attendance, number of shares held by audit committee members, audit committee remuneration, board tenure and the likelihood of corporate scandal across the sample.

The results should help regulatory policymakers make decisions, which could be crucial to future corporate governance. Additionally, these results should be useful to investors who use corporate governance as criteria for investment decisions.

The authors extend, as well as contribute to the growing literature on the audit committee, and therefore, wider corporate governance literature and provide originality in that it is the first, to the knowledge, to consider two characteristics (i.e. remuneration and gender) in a UK context of corporate scandal. Also, the results imply that the structure and diversity of the audit committee affect corporate fraud/scandal/sanctions.

This study aims to examine the impact of board structure on risk-taking measured by research and development (R&D) intensity in OECD countries.

The study uses a panel data of 200 companies on Forbes global 2000 over the 2010-2014 period. It uses the ordinary least square multiple regression analysis techniques to examine the hypotheses.

The results show that the frequency of board meetings and board size are significantly and negatively related to risk-taking measured by R&D intensity, with a greater significance among Anglo-American countries than among Continental European countries. The rationale for this is that the legal and accounting systems in the Anglo American countries have greater protection through greater emphasis on compliance and disclosure, and therefore, allowing for less risk-taking.

Future research could investigate risk-taking using different arrangements, conducting face-to-face meetings with the firm’s directors and shareholders.

The results suggest that better-governed firms at the firm- or national-level have a high expectancy of less risk-taking. These results offer regulators a resilient incentive to pursue corporate governance (CG) and disclosure reforms officially and mutually with national-level governance. Thus, these results show the monitoring and legitimacy benefits of governance, resulting in less risk-taking. Finally, the findings offer investors the opportunity to build specific expectations about risk-taking behaviour in terms of R&D intensity in OECD countries.

This study extends and contributes to the extant CG literature, by offering new evidence on the effect of board structure on risk-taking. The findings will help policymakers in different countries in estimating the sufficiency of the available CG reforms to prevent management mishandle and disgrace.

Country of origin (COO) is well established as an extrinsic product cue that influences buyer behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context. However, non-product-specific attitudes to a COO, including the notion of animosity, have received rather less attention. This paper aims to investigate COO as a multi-dimensional construct and animosity as a normative dimension of buyers’ attitudes and intentions.

The work is based on data collected from industrial buyers in Egypt and Canada to enable a comparative perspective between developing and developed countries. Structural equation modeling was used to test the study’s hypotheses.

Country of manufacture was an antecedent of perceived quality and a determinant of brand evaluation in both countries. Price was an antecedent of perceived risk and value in Egypt, while its impact on perceived risk was less pronounced in Canada. Perceived value was the strongest determinant of willingness to buy, while animosity played a significant role in this respect in Canada but not in Egypt.

Country of brand was not included as a dimension to be investigated; industry type was not controlled and may confound the results; and generalization of the results is limited given the cross-sectional approach.

The study’s contribution lies in four main elements, viewed individually and in combination: investigating a large number of COO constructs that have not been studied within a single research context in B2B before; including the animosity construct in a B2B setting; contrasting “benefit received” and “sacrifice given” constructs that help to shape industrial buyers’ purchase decisions; and carrying out the research in two very different countries to help improve the generalizability of results.

The study aimed to examine the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on the performance of Egyptian firms listed in the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX) between 2014 and 2016.

We relied on agency theory and resource dependence theory to generate testable hypotheses and capture the empirical findings. We regressed various performance measures (Return on Assets; Asset Utilization Ratio, Tobin's Q) regarding governance mechanisms (institutional ownership, managerial ownership, board size, board frequent meetings, the presence of non-executive directors and female directors) while controlling for firm size, leverage, years of listing and market share. The study uses ordinary least square (OLS) and two stages least square (2SLS) regression analysis to address the possible endogenous impact of the firms' ownership structure.

Board gender diversity, the managerial ownership and frequent board meetings positively influence the Egyptian firms' efficiency measured by assets utilization, while the institutional ownership and board size have negative effects. When using Tobin's Q, the managerial ownership shows a negative effect while institutional ownership and board size present positive effects. When using 2SLS regression, findings remained stable whereas non-executive directors showed a significant negative association with assets utilization.

Policy makers are recommended to draft policies related to limiting the number of board members, diluting the government's indirect ownership of firms, empowering women in boardrooms and developing the skills needed for non-executive directors.

To the best of our knowledge, our study is one of very few that address firms' performance after a period of political instability accompanied by a greater role for females in the boardrooms of Egypt.

Paper aims to preparation of new acid disperse dyes based on thiadiazol derivatives and evaluation of their use as antimicrobial colorants in digital transfer-printing ink formulations for printing onto polyester fabric substrates.

New disperse dyes based on 1,3,4 - thiadiazol derivative (dyes 1–3) were prepared and evaluated by different analysis then formulated as colored materials in the ink formulations. The viscosity, dynamic surface tension and particle size distribution of the prepared inks were measured. The printed polyester fabric substrates were tested using a variety of tests, including light fastness, washing, alkali perspiration and Crock fastness, as well as depth of penetration. Density-functional theory (DFT) calculations were carried out at the Becke3-Lee-Yang-parr (B3LYP) level using the 6–311** basis set, and the biological activity of the prepared disperse dyes was investigated.

The obtained results of the physical of the prepared ink revealed that thiadiazol disperse ink is a promising ink formulation for polyester printing and agrees with the quality of the printed polyester fabric. The optimization geometry for molecular structures agreed with the analysis of these compounds. The HOMO/LUMO and energy gap of the studied system were discussed. The molecular docking analysis showed strong interaction with DNA Gyrase and demonstrated to us the high ability of these inks to act as antimicrobial agents.

The prepared inks containing the prepared thiadiazol disperse dye were high-performance and suitable for this type of printing technique, according to the results. The prepared inks resist the growth of microorganisms and thus increase the ink's storage stability.

The prepared disperse dyes based on 1,3,4 - thiadiazol derivative (dyes 1–3) can be a promising colorant in different applications, like some types of paint formulations and as a colorant in printing of different fabric substrates.