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The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of independent directors’ diligence in restraining earnings management practices in the Indian context.

It employs a panel data analysis to test the association of earnings management with the diligence of independent directors.

The results suggest that the diligence of independent directors has a significant impact on earnings management. The findings support the agency theory and provide evidence of the role played by the board processes in restricting earnings management.

This study is important for the regulators as it highlights the significance of independent directors’ diligence in producing higher quality financial statements, thereby creating the real economic value of companies. This is the first article that explores the impact of independent directors’ diligence on earnings management practices particularly in the context of an emerging economy, like India in the light of new Companies Act 2013 and revised Clause 49 of the Listing Agreement, 2014 by Securities and Exchange Board of India.

This study investigates the impact of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms with inclusion of compliance and diligence index on corporate performance (CP) of firms in Nigeria and Ghana. It further examines the moderating effect of financial distress on the relationship between CG and CP.

The study used panel data of 102 nonfinancial listed firms of Nigeria and Ghana stock exchange for the period 2012–2016 with total observation of 510. The study first used OLS in estimating the influence of CG mechanisms on CP. Due to multicollinearity in the independent variables, ridge regression was employed.

It was revealed that ownership structure index and board compliance and diligence index, board size, board disclosure, ownership structure, shareholders' right and board compliance and diligence index had positive influence on ROA and ROE. Growth of Tobin's Q depends on board procedure and board compliance and diligence index. Also, financial distress (ZFS) negatively moderates the relationship between board structure index, board disclosure index, board procedure index, shareholders' right and performance (ROA and ROE) but negatively moderates between ownership structure index and Tobin's Q.

This study provides interesting findings to policymakers in full implementation of CG codes as stated by OCED (2015) by West African firms with greater emphasis on compliance and diligence index since it positively influences all CP measures.

The study provides evidence of the importance of the introduction of the new index: compliance and diligence, which looks at disclosure of CSR activities. This has been overlooked by most researchers especially in Africa in assessing quality CG mechanisms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the impact of governance internal mechanisms on audit report lag. The characteristics of governance used in this study are selected by looking at recent literature review.

Governance internal mechanisms were proxied by the audit committee and director's board characteristics. To test the impact of these characteristics, the authors used a sample of 47 Tunisian companies listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange (BVMT) during the period from 2014 to 2019. The generalized method of moments (GMM) method of dynamic panel multivariate analysis was used to analyze this study.

The results showed that most corporate governance attributes have a significant effect on audit report lag. Specifically, the audit committee diligence and the audit committee expertise have significant and positive effect on audit report lag. But the diligence of the board has significant and negative effect on audit report lag. However, this study finds no evidence that the audit committee independence, the size, independence and diligence of director's board are associated with the audit report lag. In addition, the results of this study also show that there is a significant effect of some control variables such us gender and performance.

The findings of this article will help to fill the knowledge gap in relation with this research issue in developing countries especially in Tunisian context, because this investigation exposed more than ever the vital role of auditor on the audit report lag. This research will make investors and stakeholders aware of the importance of governance mechanisms put in place in firms to reduce audit report delays in emerging markets, like Tunisia. Then, this work can help researchers and encourage them to deeply and broadly investigate this issue on other emerging markets.

This study extends the existing literature by examining the relationship between different mechanisms of corporate governance and audit delay in an emerging context and which has been very little explored in this sense namely in the Tunisian context. On the empirical level, the study contributes by using a dynamic panel that has not been mentioned much in previous research. Dynamic panel models include lagged dependent variables. The presence of these variables makes it possible to model a partial adjustment mechanism.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance factors on audit features, namely, audit fees and the selection of Big 4 audit firms within the UK SMEs context.

The author uses different regression models to investigate the impact of corporate governance characteristics on audit features, and employs cross-sectional time series models as well as two-stage least squares technique. In addition, the author has used logit analysis to examine the effect of corporate governance factors on the selection of Big 4 audit firms.

The author provides new evidence that governance mechanisms in SMEs affect different audit features. The results show that corporate governance mechanisms are important in determining audit fees. The author detects a positive impact of board independence, audit meeting and board size on audit fees. The author also reports evidence that governance factors determine the selection of Big 4 audit firms. In particular, the author reports that independent directors and audit diligence positively affect the decision to select Big 4 audit firms.

This paper investigates the under-researched relationship between audit features and corporate governance using UK SMEs. In so doing, the author aims to provide new insights into this relationship within the SMEs context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between corporate governance attributes in the form of board and ownership characteristics and the remediation of internal control material weaknesses (ICMW) reported under Section 404 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002.

The paper employs multivariate logistic regression models for a sample of 528 firms having ICMW as per their auditors' attestation reports during the fiscal periods of 2004, 2005 and 2006 to investigate the empirical relationships between board and ownership characteristics, and remediation of control weaknesses in subsequent fiscal years.

The board diligence, CEO‐independent board, and managerial, institutional and dominant shareholdings are all positively and significantly associated with the ICMW remediation of the sample firms in the presence of other firm‐specific variables in the analysis. The results also suggest that, in general, the ownership characteristics play a greater role in the firms' remediation action than the board‐related factors except board diligence. The separate sub‐sample tests demonstrate that board diligence and several stock ownership characteristics are positively and significantly associated with a firm's action to remediate both the systematic and non‐systematic internal control weaknesses though the results are more robust for non‐systematic control weaknesses.

A useful extension is to conduct a detailed analysis of the effect of audit committee characteristics in conjunction with board and ownership characteristics on firms' remediation action in a setting where ICMW firms take such action at a differential pace that may continue over two or more fiscal periods. Further, the present study examines the empirical associations between variables of interest, and does not, by virtue of its results, establish any cause‐and‐effect relationship between governance attributes and timeliness in ICMW remediation. Finally, this research can be extended to a detailed analysis of the types of systematic and non‐systematic control weaknesses, their probable effect on firms' financial reporting process and the role of corporate governance in timeliness of management's remediation action for different types of internal control problems.

The paper adds to the existing literature on corporate governance and financial reporting quality by documenting the association between a firm's board and ownership characteristics and management's immediate action to remediate internal control problems that ultimately impacts the quality of reported accounting information. The study complements prior studies on ICMW remediation and accrual quality by demonstrating that the effective monitoring by board and large, sophisticated shareholders as well as greater alignment of manager‐shareholder interests ensures more timeliness in remediation of internal control weaknesses and improves financial reporting quality.

This study aims to investigate the role of corporate governance practices in restraining earnings management in Indian commercial banks.

Estimation of earnings management is based on discretionary loan loss provision and discretionary realised security gains and losses using Beatty et al. (2002) model. The effect of corporate governance on earnings management is examined by performing two-way least square dummy variable regression. Data for a period of five years (2016–2020) is collected from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy ProwessIQ database, Reserve Bank of India website, annual report of banks, National Stock Exchange and bank’s website.

Regression results exhibit that number of board committees, size and independence of audit committee and joint audit are significantly effective in curbing earnings management. Other board-related variables (size, independence, meetings and diligence) and audit committee variables (meetings and diligence) are not effective in restraining earnings management in Indian banks.

The findings may prove to be helpful to regulators, board of directors and investors. It shows the weak area of corporate governance in India that is lack of autonomy to independent directors, which needs regulators attention and it also suggests that the number of independent auditors should be adequate for audit purposes. The board of directors must ensure the formulation of an adequate number of committees, which perform their own super specialised functions. This study brings an alarm to investors not to rely on reported earnings alone as they may be manipulated.

This paper substantiates the scant literature on the role of corporate governance practices in restraining earnings management in banks of emerging markets and to the best of the authors’ knowledge impact of joint audits on earnings management is previously unexplored in Indian banks, which are examined in this study.

This study is designed and directed to analyze the effect of board characteristics and audit committee attributes on the firm performance of publicly listed commercial banks of Bangladesh.

Thirty publicly listed commercial banks of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) have been taken as sample for this study. Data have been collected from annual reports between 2011 and 2017 of the assessed banks. Pooled OLS model has been used for running regression model of this study.

Board independence has a negative and significant relationship with ROA and Tobin's Q. However, Board Independence has a positive and significant relationship with Stock Return. On the other hand, Board Diversity has a negative and significant relationship with ROA and ROE, which implies inefficiency of diversified board members in the context of Bangladesh. Family duality has a positive and significant relationship with ROA and a negative and significant relationship with Stock return. Board Meeting has a positive and significant relationship with ROA. Audit Committee Size has a negative and significant relationship with Tobins' Q. Independence of audit committee chairman has a negative and significant relationship with Tobin's Q and Stock Returns. Presence of non-executive directors and number of audit meetings have no significant relationship with any of the predicted variables.

Among all variables of the board characteristics, role of independent directors and participation of female directors have conflicting results in this study. This has raised a question about the fair appointment independent directors and their objective view on the board. Female directors' role is not convincing in the context of Bangladesh as most of the commercial banks are family-owned. Policymakers can tighten and supervise the appointment of independent directors to ensure good governance in the banking sector. Moreover, role of audit committee and independence of audit committee chairman have generated conflicting results in terms of market-based performance measure.

Banking sector of Bangladesh experiences huge corruption in the form of excessive NPLs and poor management quality which results in low profit for the firm. This study has explored the problems of management quality and flaws of audit committee which is hampering overall growth of banking industry. Improvement of independent directors' appointment and audit committee formation and reporting will certainly help banking industry of Bangladesh to improve overall performance.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of board characteristics on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in the energy industry of emerging economies.

The authors adopt the Bloomberg ESG rating to measure the extent of ESG disclosure using a sample of 1,260 observations from BRICS emerging economies. Multiple regression techniques were used to estimate the effect of board characteristics on ESG disclosures of a sample Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) listed companies between 2010 and 2019.

The authors find a relatively low (at 37%) level of ESG disclosure among the sampled firms and a relatively high degree of variability. The authors also find that board gender diversity, board composition and board diligence are positively related to the level of ESG disclosure while the study documents no relationship between board size and ESG disclosure.

The study’s findings highlight the importance of corporate board attributes in influencing strategic decisions such as the level of ESG disclosure and the findings may be useful to regulators, policymakers and investors in making informed investment decisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts at examining the impact of board characteristics on ESG disclosure in the energy industry in emerging economies. The paper provides new evidence on the relationship between board characteristics (BC) and ESG disclosure in the energy industry of emerging BRICS countries within a panel multi-country research setting.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the determinants of audit committee activity in UK listed companies after over a decade since the last investigation of this matter and with numerous significant changes in the regulatory and corporate governance framework globally.

Underpinned by agency theory, the study undertakes a multiple regression analysis of listed companies in the UK in order to determine the determinants of the activity of the audit committees in these companies.

The study finds that audit committee activity is an increasing function of boards' independence and diligence. Interestingly, it also finds a significant negative relationship between audit committee activity and ownership structure. A higher number of large shareholders with at least 3 percent of the firm's issued equity share capital are associated with a decrease in a committee's activity. Audit committee expertise, size and the availability of an audit committee charter were not significant determinants of audit committee activity.

The findings from the study suggest the need for more research into the factors that can explain the determinants of the activity of the audit committees in the UK and elsewhere. It also opens up the discussion on the effects of changing global corporate behaviors on corporate governance mechanisms.

This study shows that there is a positive relationship between board independence and the activity of the audit committees. In other words, to improve the performance of the audit committees in UK listed companies, board independence should be increased. There also seems to be substitution between governance mechanisms. The presence of large shareholders slowed the activity of the audit committees, as evidenced in a significant negative relationship.

The study revisits the determinants of the audit committees after over a decade since the initial investigation in the UK. However, the study is undertaken in a very different context with far‐reaching changes in the corporate landscape and regulations.

Responding to the call for research into the behavior of family companies to provide better understanding of corporate governance, this paper aims to examine the impact of boards’ effectiveness on the investment in monitoring costs (i.e. audit fees, internal audit function budget and executive remuneration) and how this relationship is moderated by family control.

A sample of 2,176 firm-year observations of Malaysian listed companies is used. The ordinary least square regression is used to examine the associations. Additional sensitivity tests are performed.

The study finds that there is no relationship between boards’ effectiveness and the demand for monitoring costs for the full sample. However, the findings of sub-samples (family and non-family companies) indicate that a family company with an effective board is less likely to invest more in monitoring, suggesting that the complementary association between the board’s effectiveness and investment in monitoring is a more dominant relationship than the substitution relationship in non-family companies. These findings show that the boards of directors of Malaysian family companies perform a deficient monitoring role, where the presence of family controlling shareholders in management may reduce their independence and efficiency in performing their monitoring role. The findings remain robust after performing additional sensitivity tests.

This paper contributes to the literature on corporate governance in a unique setting (family companies), where conflict of interest is created between controlling insiders and minority shareholders (Type II agency problem). It provides insight for Malaysian policymakers in assessing the issue of expropriation in family companies and enhancing the policy related to its boards.