CEO board membership: implications for firm value
ISSN: 0114-0582
Article publication date: 26 July 2018
Issue publication date: 14 August 2018
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relation between CEO board membership and firm performance.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
This study finds that CEO board membership has a positive impact on firm performance, and these benefits are greater for more complex firms.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Originality/value
The paper tests for the impact of CEO board membership using a data set that demonstrates a definitive variation in CEO board membership.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Wei Wang and Chris Yung for helpful comments, as well as participants at the Department of Accountancy and Finance, University of Otago, the 19th New Zealand Finance Colloquium (NZFC, 2015) and the 28th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference (AFBC, 2015). The authors also gratefully acknowledge the considerable financial assistance offered by the Bank of New Zealand Chair of Finance Doctoral Scholarship and the University of Canterbury Doctoral Scholarship to the early stage of the paper. The authors would also like to thank Professor Glenn Boyle for his input to earlier versions of this paper. They are also thankful for funding from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, NZ. All remaining errors and omissions are our own.
Citation
Li, M. and Roberts, H. (2018), "CEO board membership: implications for firm value", Pacific Accounting Review, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 352-370. https://doi.org/10.1108/PAR-05-2017-0037
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited