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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the presence, expertise, independence, size and meetings of the audit committee (AC) have an effect on corporate insolvency.

The authors use 1,835 firm-year observations for 98 insolvent and 269 solvent UK-listed non-financial firms from 1994 to 2011.

The authors find that corporate insolvency is negatively related to the meetings and independence of the AC but not to AC’s presence and size. The authors also observe that financial expertise on the AC is not related to corporate insolvency. These associations are robust to different specifications, while after controlling for board composition, board size, the number of board meetings, CEO duality, financial and firm characteristics.

The study’s approach has two main limitations: neglect of small and medium private unquoted firms and more regulated corporate governance environment.

The findings lend support to the continual use of the agency theory as an explanation in understanding the role of the analytical lens through which to study the efficacy of the AC in reducing the likelihood of insolvency.

The findings support continued efforts to strengthen boards’ ACs in the wake of high profile insolvencies. The findings will assist regulators and firm management to design appropriate ACs (e.g. independence) and processes (e.g. number of meetings).

The authors provide empirical evidence on the impact of the AC on firm insolvency in the UK context, an important but neglected area in research.

This study aims to analyse trust and distrust as specific board processes between the board chair and chief executive officer (CEO) aimed at reducing corporate governance (CG) risk partially mitigated by regnant CG mechanisms. This study incorporates the nascent literature that posits trust and distrust as two separate constructs that co-exist simultaneously to recasts them in the CG domain.

This paper analysed data from 20 in-depth interviews conducted with board representatives at four financial services firms in The Netherlands, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

This paper found that the foundational bases of the chair–CEO relationship determine how trust and distrust are apportioned between them, which impacts board dynamics. This paper also confirmed that the constructs of trust and distrust are separate thus do not sit at opposite ends of a single continuum. Finally, this paper found that high levels of task-based distrust (as opposed to mistrust) are necessary during periods of organisational distress and more effective if there are also high levels of relational trust between the parties.

This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust and distrust in CEO–chair dyadic relationships in multiple companies across multiple countries. This paper also introduces the concept of tempered trust, which is defined as interpersonal trust tempered by task-based distrust, recasting the traditional characterisation of trust and distrust in the CG domain, thereby making a useful contribution to the literature on board dynamics.

The purpose of this paper is to draw from organizational ecology and institutional theory, the authors suggest that there will be a curvilinear relationship between legal system uncertainty and foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction in Southeast Asia. The authors extend theory by arguing that this is because uncertainty will provide opportunities for FDI that seek this form of operating environment, leveraging legal system uncertainty as a basis for competitive advantage.

The authors test and find support for the hypotheses using FDI data from nine Southeast Asian countries for the years 1995-2005.

In this paper, the authors hypothesize and find that the relationship between legal system uncertainty and FDI attraction is curvilinear in nature, such that FDI attraction decreases with legal system uncertainty down to an inflection point, but then increases beyond this point; and that the relationship between legal system uncertainty and FDI attraction is moderated by government intervention in the host country economy, such that the strength of this relationship is greater when government intervention is high rather than when it is low. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future inquiry are presented.

Conventional wisdom suggests that legal system uncertainty will negatively affect FDI attraction. However, to date, research on the effects of legal system uncertainty on FDI attraction in emerging markets has received very little attention. The aim of this research study is to shed new light on how, under certain conditions, legal system uncertainty will attract FDI in Southeast Asia.

This study aims to examine the role the structure of corporate boards plays in the failure of the firm. Specifically, it examines whether the remuneration committee is related to corporate failure in the UK.

The study uses 1,835 firm-year observations for 98 failed and 269 non-failed UK-listed non-financial firms between the periods of 1994 and 2011. This study used pooled cross-sectional, fixed and random effects LOGIT models to estimate whether corporate failure is related to remuneration committee in the UK.

The findings indicate that corporate failure is negatively related to the independence of the remuneration committee chairman and remuneration committee’s effectiveness but not remuneration committee’s presence, size and meetings. However, a positive and significant relationship was observed between corporate failure and remuneration committee independence.

The findings of the study provide support for the appropriateness of agency theory as analytical lens through which to study the efficacy of remuneration committee, especially the independence of the remuneration committee chairperson, as a board monitoring device, in the context of corporate failure.

The paper adds to existing literature on corporate governance by establishing the likely causes of corporate failure in the UK.

This paper aims to review the existing literature systematically so as to contribute towards a better understanding of methodological problems of the classical statistical techniques, artificially intelligent expert systems and theoretical approaches to solve the corporate failure syndrome.

This paper presented a systematic review of 83 articles reporting 137 prediction failure models published within 1966-2012 in scholarly reviewed journals in four main disciplines, namely, accounting, finance, banking and economics. The authors performed the systematic literature review with five main sources, namely, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Wiley Interscience, Metalib, Web of Science and Business Source Complete of the Social Sciences. The review modified the approaches used by Aziz and Dar (2006), Ravi and Ravi (2007) and Balcaen and Ooghe (2006).

The results indicate significant body of prior literature on prediction of corporate failure, but a theoretically sound, highly accurate, simple and widely used corporate failure prediction model for stakeholders has yet to be developed.

This paper contributes towards a systematic understanding of the methodological problems associated with the statistical, artificially intelligent expert systems and theoretical approaches to solve the corporate failure prediction problems faced by firms in 11 countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons for the lack of research attention paid to the Middle East (ME) and Africa regions. In particular, this study seeks to identify the reasons for and implications of the paucity of ME- and Africa-based studies in high-quality international journals in the marketing field with a specific focus on the challenges in conducting and publishing research on these regions.

The authors conducted a systematic review of the literature on the ME and Africa regions to identify papers published in 23 high-quality marketing, international business, and advertising journals. This search resulted in 301 articles, among which 125 articles were based on primary or secondary data collected from a local source in those regions. The authors of these 125 articles constitute the Delphi study sample. These academics provided input in an effort to reach a consensus regarding the two proposed models of academic research in both regions.

This paper differs from previous studies, where academic freedom emerged as the most important inhibitor to conducting and publishing research. The most frequently mentioned challenges in conducting research in Africa were access to data, data collection issues, diversity of the region, and lack of research support infrastructure. For the ME, the most often described challenges included validity and reliability of data, language barriers, data collection issues, and availability of a network of researchers. Editors’ and reviewers’ low interest and limited knowledge were ranked high in both regions. South Africa, Israel, and Turkey emerged as outliers, in which research barriers were less challenging than in the rest of the two regions. The authors attribute this difference to the high incidence of US-trained or US-based scholars originating from these countries.

To the best of the knowledge, no marketing studies have discussed the problems of publishing in high-quality international journals of marketing, international business, and advertising for either region. Thus, most of the issues the authors discuss in this paper offer new insightful results while supplementing previous research on the challenges of conducting and publishing research on specific world regions.

The purpose of this article is to develop new insights into the interplay between trust, indigenous institutions and weak/dysfunctional formal institutions using the Nigerian context – a developing country in Western Africa. It advances new understanding on how Nigerian entrepreneurs trust in their indigenous institutions such as family ties, kinship, chieftaincy, religion, cooperatives and trade associations to resolve disputes arising from their exporting activities as opposed to dormant formal institutions in their country.

This exploratory study adopts an interpretive research paradigm, and it utilises a case study strategy. Data collected through observations, archival records and qualitative conversations with 36 exporting Nigerian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is analysed by utilising a combination of within and cross-case analysis techniques. Doing so enabled an in-depth study of the methods their owner-managers use in order to take advantage of the relationships they established through their long-standing cultural institutions in the place of weak formal institutions in their country.

Indigenous institutions have evolved to replace formalised institutions within the business environment in Nigeria. They have developed to become an alternative and trusted arbiter for solving SMEs' export issues because of weak/dysfunctional formal institutions in the Western African country. The owner-managers of exporting SMEs perceive formal institutions as representing a fragmented system that does not benefit their export businesses.

The findings demonstrate that there is need for policymakers to consider the role of informal institutions in the Nigerian context. Such an approach is essential given the economic importance and increasing number of SMEs that trade and export their goods through informal structures in Nigeria.

The study indicates that it is not just the void or absence of institutions that exist in a developing country such as Nigeria, but weak/dysfunctional formal institutions have been replaced by culturally embedded informal institutions. Thus, the study provides a new theoretical avenue depicting the concept of trusting in indigenous institutions.