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This study aims to examine the link between boards and audit committees and firm performance in Kuwaiti listed firms in the context of recent and extensive corporate governance regulatory reform.

Panel data regression analysis with fixed effects and clustered standard errors of firm performance for 61–97 listed industrial and services firms in Kuwait over a seven-year period. The dependent variables are the returns on assets and equity, the debt-to-equity ratio and leverage and Tobin’s Q and the independent variables comprise board of directors and audit committee characteristics, including size, the number of meetings and the numbers of independent and outside board and expert committee members. Firm size, subsidiary status and cash flow serve as control variables.

Mixed results with respect to the characteristics of the board of directors. Board size and independent and outsider board members positively relate only to Tobin’s Q and insiders only to debt to equity. For audit committee characteristics, committee size, independence and expertise positively relate to the return on equity and committee size and expertise only to Tobin’s Q. Of the five performance measures considered, board and audit committee characteristics together best determine Tobin’s Q.

Data from a single country limits generalisability and control variables necessarily limited in a developing market context. Need for qualitative insights into corporate governance reform as a complement to conventional quantitative analysis. In combining accounting and market information, Tobin’s Q appears best able to recognise the performance benefits of good corporate governance in terms of internal organisational change.

The recent corporate governance code and guidelines reforms exert a mixed impact on firm performance, with audit committees, not boards, of most influence. But recent reforms implied most change to boards of directors. One suggestion is that non-market reform may have been unneeded given existing market pressure on listed firms and firms anticipating regulatory change.

Kuwait’s corporate governance reforms codified corporate governance practices already in place among many of its firms in pursuit of organisational legitimacy, and while invoking substantial change to audit committees, involved minor change to firm performance, at least in the short term. Some firms may also have delisted in expectation of stronger corporate governance requirements. Regardless, these direct and indirect processes both improved the overall quality of listed firm corporate governance and performance in Kuwait.

Seminal analysis of corporate governance reforms in Kuwait, which have rapidly progressed from no corporate governance code and guidelines to an initially voluntary and then compulsory regime. Only known analysis to incorporate both board of directors and audit committee characteristics. Reveals studies of the corporate governance–firm performance relationship may face difficulty in model specification, and empirical significance, given the complexity of corporate governance codes and guidelines, leads in changing firm behaviour and self-selection of firms into and out of regulated markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether audit committee characteristics, in particular audit committee size, audit committee activity and audit committee gender diversity, are associated with financial performance in Egyptian banks. The second purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating role of board gender diversity on the relationship between audit committee characteristics and financial performance.

A multiple regression analysis is used to estimate the moderating role of board gender diversity on the relationship between audit committee characteristics and financial performance of a sample of Egyptian banks during the period between 2018 and 2022.

The results indicate that audit committee size has a negative and insignificant effect impact on return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), respectively. The results also indicate that the audit committee gender diversity has a significant positive impact on ROA and ROE, respectively. Regarding audit committee activity, the number of board meetings has a negative and insignificant effect on ROA and ROE, respectively. Regarding gender diversity as a moderating variable, in general there is a positive effect of gender diversity on the relationship between audit committee characteristics and financial performance.

The study was limited to 20 banks in one country, but it sets the tone for future empirical research on this subject matter. The study also relied on one moderating variable, which is board gender diversity. This study provides an avenue for future research in the area of corporate governance and financial performance in other emerging countries, especially other African countries.

This study provides useful insights for managers and policymakers to better understand which audit committee characteristics can best encourage a company to improve financial performance. Furthermore, regulators should ensure that banks strictly adhere to corporate governance principles to build a strong banking industry capable of achieving economic development.

Banks will benefit equally from valuable qualities across demographic groupings in society by having females on the audit committee and appropriate audit committee meetings. Additionally, if audit committee members are correctly selected, banks with more females in audit committee and suitable audit committee meetings can successfully contribute to strengthening financial performance and social welfare of diverse segments of society. A culture of good banking governance must emerge to improve bank financial stability and, as a result, greater stability and economic growth.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is, perhaps, the first to examine the moderating role of board gender diversity on the relationship between audit committee characteristics and financial performance in Egyptian banks. This study adds to the literature by investigating such an issue in a developing economy that operates in a different context than those in developed countries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of audit committee characteristics on firm performance. In particular, the authors employ the random-effects variant of the Hunter–Schmidt meta-analyze procedure to analyze the effects of key audit committee attributes, namely audit committee independence, audit committee expertise, audit committee size, audit committee meeting along with big four impact on firm performance. The authors hope to gain a better understanding of the function of audit committees in enhancing firm performance and to uncover potential discrepancies in prior findings due to varying economic levels or performance metrics.

This study uses the Hunter–Schmidt method to conduct a meta-analysis of 39 previous studies published between 2012 and 2022 to investigate the relationship between audit committee characteristics and firm performance.

The results indicate that audit committee independence, expertise, size and affiliation with the big four have a significant and positive effect on firm performance, while audit committee meetings have a non-significant effect. Furthermore, findings suggest that companies should carefully consider the contextual factors that may impact the effectiveness of their corporate governance structures, such as economic level, when designing and implementing governance mechanisms.

This study is significant as it is the first to combine and analyze previous research on this topic and highlights the importance of certain audit committee characteristics in enhancing financial reporting quality and corporate governance.

The authors examine the impact of audit quality (AQ) on classification shifting (CS) among non-financial firms operating in the UK and Germany.

This paper used various audit committee variables (size, meetings, gender diversity and financial expertise) to measure AQ and its impact on CS. The authors used a total of 2,110 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2019.

The authors found that the presence of female members on the audit committee and audit committee financial expertise deter the UK and German managers from shifting core expenses and revenue items into special items to inflate core earnings. However, audit committee size is positively related to CS among German firms but has no impact on UK firms. The authors also document evidence that audit committee meetings restrain UK managers from engaging in CS. However, the authors found no impact on CS among German firms. The study results hold even after employing several tests.

Overall, the study findings provide broad support in an international setting for the board to improve its auditing practices and offer essential information to investors to assess how AQ affects the financial reporting process.

Most CS studies used market-oriented economies such as the USA and UK and ignored bank-based economies such as Germany, France and Japan. The authors provide a comparison among bank and market-oriented economies on whether the AQ has a similar impact on CS or not among them.

This paper aims to examine the effects of corporate governance mechanisms (board chairman independence, board independent director meeting attendance, audit committee size and audit committee meetings) on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) and its individual component disclosures of listed firms in Saudi Arabia.

The study used unbalanced panel data obtained from the Bloomberg data set over 11 years, from 2010 to 2020.

The findings indicate that board chairman independence (BCI) and audit committee size (AC size) have a significant negative and positive association with ESG disclosure, respectively. However, the results show that board independent director meeting attendance (BIMA) and audit committee meetings (AC meetings) do not significantly influence ESG disclosure. Regarding the individual dimensions (components), the results show that only BIMA has a significant negative association with environmental disclosure. Besides, only BCI and AC meetings have a significant positive association with social disclosure. Also, only BIMA and AC size have a significant positive and negative relationship with governance disclosure, respectively.

The study used a sample of 29 listed companies in Saudi Arabia. Each firm has at least four years of ESG disclosures. Besides, the paper considered only four corporate governance attributes, comprising two each for the board and audit committee.

The results provide insights to regulators, boards of directors, managers and investors to enhance ESG and its components’ reporting toward the sustainable operations and better performance of Saudi firms.

This study is among the few that provide empirical evidence on how some essential corporate governance attributes that have not been given adequate attention by prior studies (board chairman independence, board independent directors’ meeting attendance, audit committee size and audit committee meetings) influence not only ESG reporting as a whole but also its individual dimensions (components).

In recent times, stakeholders have called on corporate organizations especially those charged with governance to embrace full disclosure on non-financial issues, especially sustainability reporting. Based on this premise, this study aims to examine the influence of corporate board and assurance on sustainability reporting practices (SRP) of selected 80 firms from 8 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

To measure the corporate board, the authors use both board variables and audit committee variables. Also, the authors adapted the sustainability score model as used by previous authors in the field of sustainability disclosure to measure SRPs. The analysis was done using both ordered logistic regression and probit regression models.

The results show that the combination of board corporate and assurance has a positive and significant impact on the sustainability reporting practice of selected firms in sub-Saharan Africa.

The study places emphasis on the need for strong collaboration between the corporate board and external assurance in evaluating and enhancing the quality of sustainability disclosure.

The study bridged the gap in the literature in the area of corporate board, assurance and SRP of corporate firms which has received little attention within sub-Saharan Africa.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between a firm’s use of aggressive tax planning and board of directors (independence and size) and audit committee characteristics (independence and expertise).

This study used archival data from 35 non-financial firms’ French firms listed on the CAC 40 over a period of 5 years (2013–2018).

This study shows that measures of board size are negatively related to tax aggressiveness. A broader board helps reduce tax aggressiveness, as having more members can improve board performance. Indeed, more members can contribute to a better assessment of tax risks and detect risky tax strategies.

The main limitation of this study is the small sample. The authors limited the observations to 2018 because the corporate tax rate in France changed in 2019. Such a time window casts homogeneity on the current study. Examining universal registration documents, it has been noted that companies have only recently become interested in disclosure of tax risk.

Knowing the characteristics of the board and audit committees can give a signal to stakeholders about the potential risk bearing on aggressive tax planning. This study provides evidence that could help the board governance committees integrate the right profiles and to raise awareness among the members of the board of directors and the audit committee to play their role (monitoring function or advisory function) about tax risk management.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence regarding the effect of the board of directors and audit committee characteristics on tax aggressiveness.

This paper aims to explore the extent of corporate social responsibility disclosure (hereafter CSRD) in Jordan and also examine whether ownership structure, board of directors and audit committee characteristics influence CSRD.

The extent of CSRD is measured by constructing a CSRD index for industrial firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2021. Panel regression analysis is used to examine the potential effect of ownership structure, board of directors and audit committee on the level of CSRD.

This study provides empirical evidence that diverse groups of shareholders have different effects on CSR engagement, and board characteristics (board size, board independence and gender diversity) play a vital role in increasing voluntary disclosure, including CSR information. There is no evidence to support that CSRD is influenced by audit committee characteristics.

This study recommends that corporate regulators and policymakers can improve CSRD practices by expanding the scope of existing disclosure requirements related to CSR and developing a structured CSRD index to measure the degree of CSRD practices for comparative purposes. Encourage firms to actively participate in social responsibility programs by granting tax incentives and government facilities to firms with the best CSR reports. Policymakers should introduce initiatives that support female’s representation on board. Finally, firms should restructure their boards by increasing board size and the percentage of independent directors to enhance their effectiveness to support CSRD.

This paper contributes further insights into the literature on CSRD practices and disclosure by analyzing data from developing market contexts.

This study aims to investigate whether gender diversity in audit committees affects the purchase of nonaudit services in China. Results from family and nonfamily firms are compared and the critical mass participation of females are further examined.

The sample comprises 1,834 Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2021, among which 910 are family firms. The Heckman (1979) two-stage model is used to mitigate the potential endogeneity issue in the selection of gender diversity. Propensity score matching is also used to further alleviate the endogeneity problem in relation to family firms.

Results show a significant and negative correlation between the gender diversity in audit committees and nonaudit service fees. This association is more apparent in nonfamily than in family firms. Findings are consistent and robust to endogeneity tests and sensitivity analyses. The analysis of critical mass and symbolic participation shows that three female directors can more significantly restrain nonaudit fees than one to two females on the board.

This study contributes to literature on resource dependence theory, which posits that audit committees help enterprises establish contact with auditors, improve the company legitimacy, assist in communication and provide relevant expertise. This study also relates to agency theory, which holds that differences in the severity of types I and II agency problems between family and nonfamily firms lead to differences in auditor selection and related costs.

Extending from previous research on the relation between the gender diversity in audit committees and nonaudit fees, the present study delves into this connection within the context of China, an emerging economy. As a result, this investigation offers novel insights and expands upon current knowledge. In addition, the correlation between the gender diversity of audit committees and nonaudit fees is explored for family and nonfamily firms.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between audit committee expertise and asymmetric information in the US equity market.

The authors use measures of information asymmetry for 705 US firms (5,260 firm-year observations) over the period from 2007 to 2018, and use the theory of expertise (Ericsson and Smith, 1991) to examine the association between audit committee financial expertise and information asymmetry. The authors use multiple econometric approaches such as firm fixed-effect regression and two-stage ordinary least squares regression to control for possible endogeneity and reverse causality and find that the results remain the same.

The authors find that the existence of an audit committee with financial expertise is negatively and significantly associated with information asymmetry. The authors further provide empirical evidence through which audit committee financial expertise affects the firm’s informational environment. Additional analysis supports the argument that the audit committee’s financial expertise enhances the firm’s informational environment by increasing (decreasing) analyst following (dispersion).

One limitation to consider, like most studies on audit committees, is that the authors do not examine the actual role performed by the audit committee. The authors focus on the characteristics stipulated by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act 2002 and stock exchange rules regarding the financial expertise of audit committee members only.

This study is useful to policy makers, standard setters, investors, activists, managers, lenders and various stakeholders who rely on the financial statements of firms with an expert audit committee on board. The outcome of this study promotes recruiting audit committees with financial expertise due to the assumed benefits of this trait to the US firm.

The results of this study are not event-dependent and therefore have persistent effects, which is important to the evaluation of the usefulness of a regulation. This study promotes recruiting audit committees with financial expertise on boards because of the assumed benefits to the firm and investors.

This study is the first to document that financial expertise of audit committee characteristics is not only negatively related to the magnitude of information asymmetry but also driven by the financial expertise of audit committee members rather than chairs.