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Interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG) controversies is acquiring great relevance in the business and academic communities. Nonetheless, previous studies in the area have devoted little attention to how the market views ESG controversies. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to investigate whether ESG controversies are value-relevant to investors, as reflected in equity values. It also investigates whether top management team (TMT) gender diversity is likely to affect the association between ESG controversies and equity market values in the context of high-tech firms.

This paper uses a sample of high-tech firms listed on the STOXX 600 index during the period 2006–2022. The ESG data for the sample is retrieved from the Refinitiv Eikon database. This paper adopts a fixed-effect panel regression to test the hypotheses.

Based on the Ohlson’s (1995) valuation framework, the authors find evidence that ESG controversies are associated with a lower market valuation, suggesting that shareholders perceive ESG controversies as conveying negative information about future performance. The authors also find evidence that TMT gender diversity negatively moderates the relationship between ESG controversies and equity values, indicating that TMT gender diversity alleviates the detrimental effect of corporate controversies. These results remain consistent when using the return model of Easton and Harris (1991).

This paper throws more light on the economic consequences of ESG controversies in European high-tech firms. This is particularly important due to the increasing importance of ESG criteria in guiding investment choices. This paper also adds to the current literature by providing new evidence that the value-relevance of ESG controversies is affected by TMT gender diversity.

Prior work has shown that the board of directors can alleviate market imperfections that lead to capital investment inefficiency. The authors extend previous work by exploring how board characteristics influence the efficiency of human capital investment, a critical production factor that has remained insufficiently examined. Specifically, this study aims to investigate how board activity, size, the presence of a separate chairman, female directors and board independence affect firm labour investment efficiency in the European context.

The sample contains 4,331 firm-year observations traded on the STOXX® Europe 600 index from 2009 through 2022. This paper applies a lagged ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to test the proposed hypotheses. It also uses a dynamic panel generalised method of moments (GMM) regression to tackle potential endogeneity concerns.

The results show that board gender diversity and the level of independent directors are positively linked to labour investment efficiency, whereas board size and meeting frequency are negatively related to labour investment efficiency. Meanwhile, the presence of a separate chairman on the board does not appear to be significantly associated with labour investment efficiency. In additional subgroup analyses, the authors find that board gender diversity mitigates managers’ inclinations towards both overinvestment and underinvestment in labour. The authors also find that the level of independent directors helps greatly in reducing the underinvestment in labour, while it fails to attenuate the overinvestment in labour. Moreover, the authors find board size to be significantly associated with the tendency to make suboptimal labour decisions, manifesting as both overinvestment and underinvestment in labour. Finally, the results show that board meetings are significantly associated with overinvestment problems, while underinvestment problems seem to be unrelated to meeting frequency.

The empirical results have implications for policymakers and market participants in Europe. Firstly, firms may improve the efficiency of their labour investments by increasing directors’ independence and adding more female voices to corporate boards. Secondly, the evidence shows that some board attributes, such as board activity and size, do not necessarily have a beneficial impact on corporate decisions, particularly labour investment decisions. Finally, market participants are likely to benefit from this paper by understanding the role of board attributes in promoting the efficient allocation of firm resources.

This paper makes two significant contributions. Firstly, it extends the literature on the role of boards of directors in shaping corporate decision-making processes, particularly concerning human capital investment decisions within European firms. By doing so, the authors provide new evidence confirming that certain board attributes, such as board size, director independence and board gender diversity, are important for optimising firms’ resource allocation. Secondly, although numerous studies investigate boards’ role in capital investment decisions, relatively few empirical studies exist on the role of boards in labour investment decisions. This paper, therefore, tries to tackle this void in the literature by investigating firms’ decision-making concerning labour investments.

This paper aims to highlight the relationship between the attributes of external auditor companies and voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures of audited firms using a sample of Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX)-listed companies.

Based on a sample of 410 firm-year observations for the period 2010–2016, this study first computes an eight-item CSR disclosure index, then ran a multivariate regression analysis between CSR disclosure scores and external auditor attributes, along with client firm characteristics and additional control variables. Finally, this paper performs various additional robustness checks.

The results reveal that external auditor attributes have a significant impact on shaping the CSR disclosures of ADX-listed firms. Overall, auditor age, size, industry specialisation and portfolio diversification positively affect the level of customers’ CSR disclosures. By contrast, the magnitude of audit fees and auditor experience in the UAE has no impact on the CSR disclosures of ADX-listed firms. This study controls for client firm size, financial leverage, ownership concentration and the proportion of independent directors on companies’ board of directors. The results remain robust to additional sensitivity checks such as audit company CSR practices, extreme quartiles of CSR disclosures and the panel data estimation method.

The research exhibits some limitations. First, this paper uses a simple index to measure CSR disclosures based on previous empirical studies, especially those related to emergent markets, which are not free from bias due to the lack of voluntary disclosure transparency for some companies listed on ADX. Second, although this study uses a seven-year observation period, the total number of observations remains limited due to ADX size. Third, other context-specific disclosures should be included such as cultural and governance variables (royal families ownership).

The study highlights the role of external attributes that can affect companies’ CSR disclosure policy, rather than firm-specific factors. The study also reshapes the concept of auditor quality beyond the dichotomy (“Big Four”/non-Big Four) used in the current literature.

The research adds to the current literature on CSR by revealing the impact of external auditor attributes on client firm CSR disclosure policy in an emerging market, the ADX.

This paper aims to explore whether environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance is positively associated with firm investment efficiency (IE) in emerging economies. It also examines whether board cultural diversity can moderate the ESG–IE relationship.

This paper uses a cross-country sample of listed firms located in seven emerging countries over the 2011–2019 period. The authors use a fixed effect panel regression to empirically test the hypotheses. The authors also use a lagged model and a Heckman’s (1979) two-stage procedure to mitigate potential endogeneity issues. In addition, a two-stage least squares regression analysis was done as an additional robustness check.

This study finds that firms with stronger ESG performance have a higher investment efficiency. Interestingly, this study finds that board cultural diversity negatively moderates the impact of ESG performance on IE for firms operating in settings prone to overinvestment. This result suggests that ESG performance plays a less important role in mitigating managers' tendencies to overinvest when corporate boards have more foreign directors. However, the authors do not find such evidence in firms prone to underinvestment. These findings hold after using an alternative measure of IE and controlling for endogeneity concerns.

This paper adds to the existing body of knowledge in three dimensions. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first cross-country study that investigates the linkage between ESG performance and corporate IE in the context of emerging countries. Second, the authors have enriched the prior literature by examining the moderating effect of board cultural diversity on the positive association between ESG performance and corporate IE. Finally, this study has important implications for policymakers and capital suppliers in emerging countries, which strive to facilitate the efficient allocation of scarce resources.

This paper aims to examine the antecedents of the Automated VAT Solution (AVS) and its eventual consequence on value-added tax (VAT) compliance costs among the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as context.

A quantitative research design was deployed through a survey of 576 SMEs in the UAE. The data was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that technological factors (IT complexity and IT competency) and organizational factors (management support and size of SME) significantly influence AVS adoption. However, only consumer pressure was found to be significant among the environmental factors, and AVS adoption was found to have a significant negative effect on the VAT compliance cost.

A lower coefficient of determination for the effect of AVS adoption on VAT compliance cost meant that there may be other accounting-related technologies that improve operational efficiency and process automation and, in the long run, lower the cost of VAT compliance. These technologies should be included in future studies.

The findings imply that the adoption of AVS among SMEs is highly desirable, as it reduces VAT compliance costs. Increased regulatory pressure by the UAE’s policymakers is also desirable to accelerate AVS adoption for enhanced cost reduction and revenue maximization from the perspectives of both the government and SMEs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study could be the first to expand the Technology-Organization-Environmental (TOE) Framework through the integration of determinants of AVS adoption and VAT compliance costs among SMEs in GCC countries.

Anecdotal evidence indicates the internal audit function may be crucial in supporting the implementation of ESG practices and reporting. However, thus far, no study has been empirically conducted to check how and why internal audit function might affect ESG performance. This study aims to address this gap by examining whether the internal audit budget is positively related to the ESG performance of Malaysian listed firms. It also explores whether the sourcing arrangement of the internal audit function can moderate the internal audit budget – ESG nexus.

The secondary data for the paper is extracted from two main sources, namely, the Thomson Reuters Eikon database and firms’ annual reports that were downloaded from the Bursa Malaysia website. The final sample consists of public firms listed on Bursa Malaysia over the period 2010 to 2019. Multivariate tests are used to examine the linkage between the variables.

The results show that the relationship between the annual internal audit budget and ESG performance is contingent on the sourcing arrangement of the internal audit function. Specifically, the results show that the annual internal audit budget has a positive impact on ESG performance for firms with an in-house internal audit function but not for firms outsourcing an internal audit function to external providers. Overall, the results suggest that the annual internal audit budget promotes ESG performance for firms performing their internal audit activities internally.

The findings of this paper provide a strong motivation for authorities in Malaysia to develop new policies and rules aiming at ensuring that internal audit departments are adequately resourced to function effectively, thereby promoting corporate ESG performance. Moreover, the findings may be useful in informing the board of directors and other policymakers that establishing an in-house internal audit department assists in advancing corporate sustainability performance.

The findings of this paper suggest that investors, creditors and other stakeholders should link ESG reporting with the attributes of the internal audit function and outsourcing arrangement when evaluating firm performance. The total annual costs allocated to the internal audit function coupled with the outsourcing arrangement by an external provider should be considered for the overall assessment of the ESG performance and provide additional warranty towards corporate goals’ achievement and sustainability for the society.

This study extends previous studies on the determinants of ESG performance by focusing on two crucial aspects of the internal audit function: the annual budget and the outsourcing arrangement, a hitherto largely unexplored mechanism by the existing literature.

This study aims to investigate the impact of gender diversity in top management teams and boards on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. The authors propose a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee as a moderating variable in this relationship, drawing on resource dependence and legitimacy theories. This study is crucial in understanding the dynamics of gender diversity and its impact on ESG performance in the banking sector.

The study examines a sample of Islamic and conventional banks from 10 Middle Eastern and North African countries during 2008–2022. Initial analysis was conducted using fixed effects panel regression, whereas the robustness test used the generalized method of movement dynamic system.

The findings, which are significant for both conventional and Islamic banks, indicate that female directors are crucial in promoting ESG performance in conventional banks. In contrast, female executives do not appear to contribute significantly. However, for Islamic banks, neither board nor executive gender diversity significantly affects ESG performance. Moreover, the find that the positive moderating role of the CSR committee is significant only for the nexus between board gender diversity and conventional banks’ ESG performance and for the connection between executive gender diversity and Islamic banks’ ESG performance.

Despite the widespread belief that gender diversity in top management teams is pivotal in promoting ESG performance, empirical studies supporting these claims are scarce, particularly in the banking sector. The study, therefore, brings a novel perspective to this discourse. These findings have the potential to significantly assist stakeholders in evaluating how gender diversity in top management teams influences banks’ sustainability practices, thereby empowering them to make more informed and impactful investment decisions.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained great attention among regulators, stock market authorities, and firms' stakeholders for many decades. In this chapter, we first review the main regulations, standards, and laws issued by UAE federal authorities namely the Company Commercial Law of 2015, the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange (ADX) disclosure guidance of 2019, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, and UAE CSR platform. Second, we present a summary of the empirical research on CSR issues in UAE context, namely in the following four fields: (1) CSR determinants both at the micro and macro levels, (2) CSR measures in the three pillars (environmental, social, and governance), (3) the impact of CSR policy and practices on financial performance/market value, (4) and the role of some mediating/moderating variables such as leadership and board gender diversity. Results show greater compliance to CSR standards among different industries and institutions but heterogenous empirical findings in the four explored fields. While there is crucial alignment with both social and environmental standards as evidenced by numerous empirical studies, additional efforts should be deployed to highlight the governance pillar through firms' discretionary reporting. Our survey provides useful directives and outcomes as it portrays both legal aspects coupled with some empirical evidence of CSR issues in the UAE context. Our study helps corporations to comply with local standards on sustainability reporting and highlights the potential economic benefits and advantages for firms adopting CSR strategy. Furthermore, it can be considered as the cornerstone for regulatory bodies in the United Arab Emirates when issuing/enhancing new standards/rules on CSR practices.

The transition in the Nigerian financial environment can be directly linked to digitalization as banks are racing to digital complexity. Historically in Nigeria, the utilization of digital operations by financial institutions is to reduce the burden of long queues in the banking hall and the pressure of carrying cash all the time. The goal of financial technology was to enable bank customers to use digitalized banking services. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to establish an empirical analysis evaluating the effect of service digitalization (internet banking, mobile banking, and automated teller machine) on bank competitiveness. Survey data were collected from 118 banks employees and hypothesized relationships were assessed through SMART-PLS structural equation modeling tool version 3.3.3. The study found a positive and significant impact of internet banking and automated machines on bank competitiveness. The findings also revealed that mobile banking has an insignificant effect on bank competition, although the outcome was positive. Overall, both the regulators and bankers should formulate and integrate their digitalized banking system by focusing on the attributes that are required for effective and safe digital-based banking.