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Racially traumatic events – such as police violence and brutality toward Blacks – affect individuals in and outside of work. Black employees may “call in Black” to avoid interacting with coworkers in organizations that lack resources and perceived identity and psychological safety. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper integrates event system theory (EST), resourcing, and psychological safety frameworks to understand how external, racially traumatic events impact Black employees and organizations. As racially traumatic events are linked to experienced racial identity threat, the authors discuss the importance of both the availability and creation of resources to help employees to maintain effective workplace functioning, despite such difficult circumstances.

Organizational and social-identity resourcing may cultivate social, material, and cognitive resources for black employees to cope with threats to their racial identity after racially traumatic events occur. The integration of organizational and social-identity resourcing may foster identity and psychologically safe workplaces where black employees may feel valued and reduce feelings of racial identity threats.

Implications for both employees’ social-identity resourcing practice and organizational resource readiness and response options are discussed.

The authors present a novel perspective for managing diversity and inclusion through EST. Further, the authors identify the interaction of individual agency and organizational resources to support Black employees.

The purpose of this essay is to highlight the urgent need for antiracism resource generation in organizations today.

This essay weaves together popular press articles, academic writings and the authors' lived experiences to summarize, clarify and extend the work needed inside of organizations and academia to dismantle systemic racism.

We define antiracist resources as personal and material assets that counteract systemic racism through informing and equipping antiracist actions, and identify three resources—adopting a long-term view for learning the history of racism, embracing discomfort to acknowledge racist mistakes and systematically assess how organizational structures maintain white supremacy—for organizations to address systemic racism.

While there is a critical need for more antiracism research, there are standards and guidelines that should be followed to conduct that research responsibly with antiracism enacted in research design, methodology decisions and publication practices.

The authors call for organizations to directly counter-racism via antiracism resources and offer examples for how these resources can inform and equip companies to create equitable workplaces.

This essay offers: (a) an updated, timely perspective on effective responses to systemic racism (e.g. police brutality and COVID-19), (b) a detailed discussion of antiracism resources and (c) specific implications for antiracism work in organizational research.

This paper aims to examine the role of the audit committee function as an internal assurance provider in the emerging integrated reporting (IR) practice. In particular, the authors examine the role of the overall effectiveness, as well as specific aspects, of the audit committee function in IR practice.

The authors examine the integrated reports of 246 firm-year observations of large South African companies over a three-year period (2011-2013), following the introduction of an “apply or explain” IR requirement and an embedded “combined assurance” model in South Africa. Drawing from conflicting theoretical perspectives of economics-based (e.g. agency theory) and socio-political theories (e.g. legitimacy theory), the authors develop competing hypotheses to predict the role of the overall, as well as specific aspects, of the audit committee function in IR practice.

Consistent with the predictions of economics-related theories, the authors find that the overall effectiveness of the audit committee function has a strong positive association with the extent and quality of IR practice. In particular, audit committee authority and meetings are shown to have a significant positive impact on IR practice. However, as implied by socio-political theories, the authors do not find a significant association between key aspects of the audit committee function such as audit committee independence and financial expertise and IR practice.

This study informs local and international regulatory authorities, as well as the business community, about the potential significance of internal assurance mechanisms such as the audit committee function in the emerging IR practice. Given the practical challenges associated with independent external assurance provisions, the findings of this study suggest that internal assurance mechanisms – such as the audit committee function – can be genuine and cost-effective alternative assurance mechanisms in enhancing the credibility and reliability of non-financial reporting practices, particularly the emerging IR practice. The results also inform academic researchers to take cognisance from the expanding roles and responsibilities of audit committees and conduct in-depth investigation on “how” the audit committee function is handling the increasing responsibilities.

The study provides initial empirical account towards the role of the audit committee function in the emerging IR practice. The study is novel because it shows the significance of internal assurance mechanisms in wider organisational reporting practice.

This study aims to examine the role of audit committee attributes in non-financial information releases, with a focus on intellectual capital (IC) disclosures, following significant policy changes, mandating the audit committee function in Malaysia. The study argues that, given the changing informational needs of stakeholders and the ongoing discussion on integrated reporting, the role of the audit committee should extend to ensuring the overall quality of corporate reporting.

The study draws evidence from a sample of leading Malaysian companies based on their market capitalisation over a three-year period (2008-2010), a period subsequent to the recent policy changes. The extent and quality of IC information, as a surrogate of non-financial information, was measured and regressed against several audit committee attributes, such as audit committee size, independence, financial expertise and meetings, controlling the overall governance and firm-specific variables.

The findings show a strong positive role of the audit committee function in the overall amount of IC information as well as all three subcomponents of IC information (internal, external and human capital). The results are robust to controls for the overall governance and firm-specific attributes as well as different measures of IC information.

The results suggest that the role of the audit committee function extends to non-financial information communication such as IC. Policymakers in Malaysia should, therefore, build on the recent regulatory changes and encourage audit committees to ensure that the overall quality of corporate reporting processes include social, environmental, intellectual as well as financial capital of a firm.

This study considers the role of the audit committee in the wider corporate reporting process – drawing attention to its potential role in the espoused integrated business reporting. It also challenges the taken-for-granted assumption that restricts the role of the audit committee function to the traditional financial reporting process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate governance and ownership structure attributes on firm performance following the revised code on corporate governance in Malaysia. The study presents a longitudinal assessment of the compliance and implications of the revised code on firm performance.

Two data sets consisting of before (2006) and after (2008-2010) the revised code are examined. Drawing from the largest companies listed on Bursa Malaysia (BM), the first data set contains 92 observations in the year 2006 while the second data set comprises of 282 observations drawn from the largest companies listed on BM over a three-year period, from 2008-2010. Both accounting (return on assets and return on equity) and market performance (Tobin’s Q) measures were used to measure firm performance. Multiple and panel data regression analyses were adopted to analyze the data.

The study shows that there were still cases of non-compliance to the basic requirements of the code such as the one-third independent non-executive director (INDs) requirement even after the revised code. While the regression models indicate marginal significance of board size and independent directors before the revised code, the results indicate all corporate governance variables have a significant negative relationship with at least one of the measures of corporate performance. Independent chairperson, however, showed a consistent positive impact on firm performance both before and after the revised code. In addition, ownership structure elements were found to have a negative relationship with either accounting or market performance measures, with institutional ownership showing a consistent negative impact on firm performance. Firm size and leverage, as control variables, were significant in determining corporate performance.

One limitation is the use of separate measures of corporate governance attributes, as opposed to a corporate governance index (CGI). As a result, the study constructs a CGI based on the recommendations of the revised code and proposes for future research use.

Some of the largest companies did not even comply with basic requirements such as the “one-third INDs” mandatory requirement. Hence, the regulators may want to reinforce the requirements of the code and also detail examples of good governance practices. The results, which show a consistent positive relationship between the presence of an independent chairperson and firm performance in both data sets, suggest listed companies to consider appointing an independent chairperson in the corporate leadership. The regulatory authorities may also wish to note this phenomenon when drafting any future corporate governance codes.

This study offers new insights of the implications of regulatory changes on the relationship between corporate governance attributes and firm performance from the perspective of a developing country. The development of a CGI for future research is a novel approach of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the trend of intellectual capital disclosures (ICD) over a three‐year period (2008‐2010), when the Malaysian business environment was characterized by a number of major events such as the recent 2008/2009 global financial crisis and corporate governance restructuring.

A checklist was constructed to measure the extent and quality of ICD in Malaysian corporate annual reports. The extent of ICD was measured on a dichotomous basis (0, 1) while the quality of ICD was measured using a four‐point scale (0‐3).

The results showed an increasing trend of the ICD and a significant overall increase by the sample Malaysian companies. The results also revealed that there are significant differences between the categories of the IC disclosures, with external capital related information accounting for the largest portion. However, only human capital disclosures significantly increased over time.

The time series analysis carried out in this study observed that, despite the general ICD increasing trend, item‐specific analysis showed inconsistent results. Hence, the regulators may want to devise reporting guidelines for IC for Malaysian public listed companies.

This paper is one of the few which investigate trends in ICD following significant changes in the business environment in an attempt to determine if those changes have some impact on ICD practices.

This paper longitudinally examines the intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practices of Nigerian banks following the restructuring exercise and the subsequent policy changes in the Banking sector.

Content analysis of annual reports of the banks was carried out over a period of four years (2006‐2009), a period following the consolidation exercise and the subsequent introduction of the mandatory code of corporate governance. A self‐constructed IC disclosure checklist was used to measure the extent of IC information disclosed in the annual reports. A number of statistical techniques were performed to assess the trend of IC disclosures and compare the IC disclosure categories.

The results show that the overall IC disclosures of the Nigerian banks increased moderately over the four year period. Human and internal capital disclosures dominated the banks' IC disclosures, with only internal capital disclosures showing a significant increasing trend over time.

The increasing trend of IC disclosures of the banks suggests that the introduction of the mandatory code of corporate governance had positive implications on IC reporting practices. Hence, the findings of this study give support to previous research that established a strong positive association between IC disclosures and corporate governance development. However, this study only examines the IC disclosures of Nigerian banks following the reformation of the banking sector. Future research should incorporate other countries experiencing similar regulatory changes.

The introduction of the corporate governance code might have positively influenced the IC disclosure practices of the banks. However, the results had shown that the IC disclosures were mainly inconsistent and discursive in nature. Hence, the regulatory authorities, accounting setters and other relevant government agencies may wish to devise a detailed IC reporting framework for the banking sector.

Despite the significance of the banking sector to any economy, the IC disclosure practices of the banks largely remained unexplored. This study provides a much needed longitudinal assessment of the IC disclosures in the case of Nigerian banks following a major consolidation exercise and the introduction of a mandatory code of corporate governance specifically designed for the banks. The study also represents the first empirical investigation of IC reporting practices in Nigeria.