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This study comprehensively reviews the global literature on busy boards and audit committees.

Six eight articles on busy boards and audit committees from prominent accounting journals are reviewed and analyzed under the “reputation” and “busyness” premise.

Most studies advocating the “reputation” hypothesis have the consensus that busy directors have their benefits (knowledge spillovers), particularly regarding sharing their in-depth knowledge, experiences and expertise. This phenomenon is pronounced for younger and IPO firms, which have high advising and financing needs. From the “busyness” perspective, busy directors are too overboard in carrying out their duty effectively and responsibly.

This study identifies future research avenues on busy boards/audit committees and suggests that policymakers and regulators should limit the number of board appointments.

This is the first study to extensively amalgamate research on busy directors and audit committees. It reveals the various proxies used to measure the busyness of board and audit committee members and the consequences of busyness.

This paper aims to examine the association between busy directors on corporate boards and accounting conservatism.

The authors use a sample of 500 firms listed on the Australian Security Exchange from 2004 to 2019. The busyness of non-executive directors is proxied by three indicators. For accounting conservatism, the authors use both conditional and unconditional accounting conservatism via asymmetric timeliness of earnings, accrual-based loss recognition, cumulative total accruals and book-to-market ratio. The authors cluster the standard errors at the firm level to compensate for potential residuals’ dependency and heteroscedasticity, in addition to analysing the main models using year and industry fixed effects (Petersen, 2009). Separately, the authors look at the impact of female busy directors on firms’ adoption of conservative accounting methods. Both propensity score matching analyses and Heckman (1979) two-stage approach systematically address endogeneity issues.

The presence of busy directors on boards leads to greater unconditional conservatism and less conditional conservatism. The relationships between busy female directors with both conditional and unconditional conservatism remain consistent with the main findings.

This paper provides useful insights for shareholders, regulators and accounting standards setters to better evaluate busy directors’ effectiveness in monitoring firms’ financial reporting quality. Directors and the companies themselves can refer to the authors’ findings to decide the best structure for their boards and committees, considering their specific monitoring requirements. Given that no mandatory restriction has been legislated, improved policies or new ones will ensure that busy directors can effectively fulfil their duties.

This research contributes to the broader research theme by examining the influence of directors’ quality on financial reporting conservatism. It also contributes to the ongoing debate in the corporate finance literature regarding the experience and busyness hypotheses of directors with multiple directorships. Additionally, this research adds value to gender diversity research by finding evidence that female busy directors follow the same pattern of reporting conservatism as male busy directors.

Because of our limited understanding of the incidence and effect of board busyness globally, the mixed evidence of the effect of board busyness obtained in the USA and the divergence of international patterns of director busyness from that observed in the USA, the author contends that there is a strong need to examine board busyness from a global perspective. The literature, however, does not examine the effect of board busyness on reported earnings quality and certainly does not analyze it internationally. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of multiple board appointments on the quality of a firm’s reported earnings.

The research design for this study is empirical. It uses both univariate and multivariate statistical analysis to examine historical corporate accounting, finance and governance data.

Consistent with the busyness hypothesis of corporate governance, the author finds that firms with a higher proportion of busy independent directors or busy CEOs manage their earnings more extensively. Further, the findings of this study present that firms with a higher proportion of busy independent audit committee members have poorer financial reporting quality. Using a sample of American Depository Receipts (ADRs), this study determines that the ineffectiveness of busy boards regarding earnings management is mitigated by the listing regulations imposed by US exchanges.

The author believes that this study offers new and important evidence regarding the debate whether busy directors provide knowledge, skill and corporate connections, or whether they are overextended and, thus, unable to fully perform their monitoring duties. This study shows that firms with busy directors are associated with poorer financial reporting quality and, consistent with the busyness hypothesis, are less effective as managerial monitors.

This study provides useful guidance regarding board design and the kinds of policies that firms should adopt regarding multiple boarding.

The social implications focus on the public policy implications regarding the importance of effective corporate governance in the reporting of financial wealth, wealth creation and wealth management.

This is the first study that examines the relation between board/committee busyness and corporate earnings management using a comprehensive set of international firms. Second, the author expands the analysis of audit committee into a new dimension: committee quality as captured by the busyness of its independent members. This study also contributes to the ongoing debate in the corporate finance literature regarding the reputation and busyness hypotheses of multiple directorships.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of busy directors on bank risk. Busy directors are directors with multiple directorships and other corporate responsibilities.

First, univariate analysis is performed to see whether there are differences in governance structures of banks with busy boards and those with less‐busy boards of directors. Second, multivariate regression analysis is used with two measures of bank risk as the dependent variable to see whether busy directors impact bank risk, while controlling for other factors that may influence risk.

The paper finds that there are significant differences between banks in terms of governance structure when analyzing banks with busy boards and banks with less‐busy boards. Importantly, the study shows that bank risk is positively related to multiple board appointments of bank directors.

These results provide support for the “busyness hypothesis” as opposed to the “reputation hypothesis” and add to the understanding of whether busy directors hurt or help boards.

Results are important for regulators who seek to maintain a safe and sound banking system. Regulators can gain a better understanding of how much time and effort individual directors can contribute to a bank under examination.

This is the first study in the banking literature on multiple board appointments. It also uses a unique approach to test whether director busyness is a determinant of bank risk.

Using the Indonesian setting where the government formally limits the presence of busy commissioners, the authors investigate whether a board containing busy commissioners could be beneficial or detrimental for firm performance.

The authors propose an econometric model focusing on the impact of busy commissioners on the firm's profitability. The authors are also interested in investigating whether the effect is different between small and large firms and between mature and non-mature firms. A sample of 392 Indonesian listed firms from 2014 to 2020 is used in this study.

The authors find a negative association between busyness and performance and this result is robust across different estimations and econometrics strategies. The authors also document that the negative impact of busy directors diminishes particularly in young and small firms. The authors also find that the impact is more pronounced in state-owned firms.

From a firm point of view, the result suggests that the companies should be aware that appointing busy commissioners in the board structure can detriment market-based performance. The listed firms should also understand that busy commissioners are inefficient, especially if these firms are large, mature and state-owned.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study investigating the relation between busy commissioners and performance by considering age, firm size and state-owned firms as a moderator in a sample of Indonesian listed firms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and examine the relationship between busy boards and corporate performance in China.

Based on a sample of non‐financial listed companies in the Chinese stock market from 2007 to 2010, by defining several measures of busy board, the paper investigates the relationship between busy boards and corporate performance in China.

The paper finds many busy boards in Chinese listed companies; compared to companies without multiple directorships, the companies with multiple directorships have better corporate performance; the number of multiple directorships in boards should maintain a certain ratio, or the busy boards will be harmful to the corporate performance.

This is the first paper to analyze and examine the impacts of busy boards on firm performance in China directly. The findings are also useful to regulation of limiting the numbers of independent directors seated on other boards.

This paper aims to provide an exploratory analysis of male and female directors, comparing the case of UK FTSE 350 boards of directors for 2010–2018, with Norwegian boards from 2002 to 2018, to examine patterns of busy female directors. This paper considers the differences between the effects of interest groups’ actions and those of quotas on the emergence of busy female directors.

This paper uses a longitudinal approach, providing an examination of both non-busy directors and busy directors sitting on the boards of UK and Norwegian firms, with a focus on female directors. Drawing on methods from social network analysis, several trends and patterns are mapped for the two corporate systems. The paper tests whether the proportion of busy male directors is significantly different from the proportion of busy female directors in the two institutional settings.

The results show there has been an increase in the proportion of busy female directors, whereas the level of busy male directors is slightly decreasing in the UK from 2010 to 2018. In Norway, following the introduction of gender quotas on corporate boards, there has been an increase in overboarded directors, especially female directors, along with the rise of so-called “golden skirt” directors. However, when compared to the UK case, the proportion of busy male and female directors is higher, suggesting that the emergence of the golden skirts in Norway is not a result of quotas alone.

The topic of busy directors has received increased attention in recent years, yet the gender of these directors is often neglected. This paper provides an overview of the characteristics of busy female directors for large UK and Norwegian firms, presenting avenues for future research.

This study aims to examine the relationship between CEO busyness and financial reporting quality in a country which implements a two-tier board system.

This study includes firms listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange during the 2010–2018 period. This study employs an ordinary least squares regression, the propensity score matching procedure, and a Heckman two-stage regression in testing the hypothesis.

This study finds that firms with busy directors have a higher financial reporting quality, and these results are robust to a battery or sensitivity analysis. The additional analyses also find that a busy CEO is negatively associated with the firm's financial reporting quality with decreasing income.

This paper provides implications for policy-makers in the emerging market on devising policies on CEOs' appointments, especially when involving multiple directorships. Despite the general belief on the detrimental workload effects of busy directors, this study offers evidence supporting the opposite effect.

As many previous studies focused on the effect of director busyness on firm’s performance, this study focusses on the effect of CEO busyness on financial reporting quality. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate this issue in an emerging market.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of board busyness on firm efficiency in the context of directors’ experience, specifically on directors’ experience that moderates the impact of board busyness on firm efficiency. Directors’ experience is examined by exploring both depth (board tenure) and breadth (number of former listed directorship) of experience.

This paper employs data envelopment analysis (DEA) to examine firm efficiency. Then, fixed effect panel regression analysis is applied to test the direct and moderating effect based on a sample of firms in the selected Asia-Pacific countries.

Significant positive evidence for the moderating effect of directors’ experience on the impact of board busyness on firm efficiency is documented.

Findings are essential for managers, country policymakers and potential investors as inputs to improve the current company practices, laws and policies through the notion that directors’ experience does enable the busy board to contribute to improved firm efficiency.

This paper contributes to the debated perspectives on board busyness by providing initial evidence that directors’ experience positively moderates the impact of board busyness on firm efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of the long-debated impact of board busyness within a new framework of firm efficiency in the selected developed and developing Asia–Pacific countries, by assessing the moderation of directors' education towards the relationship between board busyness and firm efficiency. The extant literature on board busyness demonstrates to a lack of clarification of the relationship between board busyness and firm efficiency.

The sample for this paper comprises a panel data of 800 firms in a cross-country context of the selected developed and developing Asia–Pacific countries during the recent period of 2009–2015. This paper performs a non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis to measure firm efficiency and panel regression analysis to examine the moderation of directors' education.

This paper provides support for the busyness hypothesis by documenting that the busy boards are likely to reduce firm efficiency. Moreover, this paper renders support to the upper-echelons theory by demonstrating that the impact of board busyness on firm efficiency is likely to turn positive in the presence of directors' education.

This paper highlights practical implication for managers especially in the Asia–Pacific region who seek to enhance firm efficiency, which is essential for firms in attaining the primary goal of profit maximization.

This paper builds on the extant literature by providing a contemporary research path regarding the moderation of directors' education to explain the long-debated impact of board busyness within a new framework of firm efficiency, based on a recent and significant sample of Asia–Pacific countries.