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This paper aims to concentrate on the prevailing agency theory along with its complementary theory of stewardship as foundations for the authors' research. Recent economic turmoil within the USA has resulted in stakeholders demanding change within governance policies of corporations. One such adjustment has been the separation of the CEO and Chairman positions within organizations. The authors' study seeks to uncover the extent to which duality CEO relationships exist in large corporations within the USA. In light of the push towards splitting the dual roles, the authors further investigated new CEOs recently appointed into the CEO position.

Companies selected for this study were the top 500 revenue‐producing companies in the USA as published by Fortune magazine in 2008. For comparison purposes, the authors' database included newly appointed CEOs coming on board with the original 2008 companies that had remained on the listing for both years as published by Fortune in 2010. The authors' 2008 database included 500 companies and their 2010 database included 86 companies. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) was the product classification used in order to establish the principal industry sector for companies under analysis.

The authors' 2008 analysis reveals that 303 CEOs hold a combination title of CEO and Chairman. The most frequent title combination is CEO and Chairman, with 156 executives holding this combined title. The authors' 2010 analysis reveals that 33 new CEOs hold a combination title of CEO and Chairman. The most frequent title combination is CEO and President with 43 executives holding the title. The authors' analysis of retired CEOs reveals that 15 retired CEOs continue serving in the capacity of Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Using the top 500 companies in the USA, based upon sales revenue, did limit the study to large corporations within the USA.

The agency theory does provide an explanation of the duality movement witnessed in corporations. The practice of splitting duality roles of CEO and Chairman within public corporations appears to be becoming a reality within the USA, whether on a voluntary or a mandatory basis in order to enhance corporate independence and transparency.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the individual and interaction effects of chief executive officers (CEO)-chairman leadership structure (CEO duality) and CEO-serviced early years (the first three years in office) on real earnings management (REM) through sales activities of listed firms in the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET).

The longitudinal data on CEO and chairman names of 3,825 firm-year observations were manually gleaned from the SET market analysis and reporting tool and the annual reports from 2001 to 2015. Multiple regressions were utilized to analyze the effects.

The findings show a positive relationship between CEO duality and sales-driven REM. However, the CEO-serviced early years have no association with sales-driven REM. The CEO duality/serviced early year interaction effect is positively correlated to sales manipulation. In addition, firms with the CEO duality engage in upward or downward sales-driven REM, while firms with newly appointed CEO adopt only the upward sales-driven REM. In firms which their newly appointed CEO concurrently serves as chairman, either upward or downward sales-driven REM strategy is introduced.

The findings provide some grounds for capital market and regulators to exercise caution when it comes to firms with the newly appointed CEO and/or the CEO duality, given a high tendency to manipulate sales revenues.

This study is the first to investigate the relationship between the CEO duality/serviced early years on sales-driven REM. The findings are expected to complement existing publications on REM.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between the combined roles of chief executive officer (CEO)-chairman titles (CEO duality) and investment efficiency, defined as a lower deviation from expected investment for targeted S-curve firms used to propel an innovation-driven economy. This study also aims to investigate the moderating effect of financial reporting quality on this association.

This paper focuses on the ten targeted S-curve industries – under the definition of the Thailand 4.0 model – listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) from 2000 to 2019. Data related to CEO/chairman titles and investment supports were manually collected from the annual reports, the SET market analysis and reporting tool database and the company websites. Financial data used to estimate investment behaviors and discretionary accruals were extracted from 1999. The study analyzes unbalanced panel data using fixed-effects regressions. Additional tests embrace replacing the sample with nontargeted firms, partitioning into granted and nongranted firms, adding CEOs’ demographic moderators, using alternative variable measures and analyzing for lagged independent variables.

The main findings show that CEO duality reduces overinvestment but worsens underinvestment in targeted firms. Financial reporting quality (FRQ) appears to strengthen CEO duality in mitigating extreme spending but has no impact on the association between CEO duality and underinvestment. Additional results, for example, conclude that CEO duality has no association with both over- and underinvesting at nontargeted firms, but its effect becomes positively significant on overinvestment when financial reporting quality is high. The negative association between CEO duality and overinvestment is found only in government-granted and targeted firms. FRQ encourages CEO duality in lowering overinvestment among targeted firms without grants. CEOs’ female and serviced early years appear to elevate those main findings.

These findings assist innovative corporations in choosing a proper leadership structure to cope with investment inefficiency. The research gives the government and regulatory bodies an insight into the qualifications of the leadership structure and financial information that helps them put forward effective policies.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is among the first to establish the association between CEO duality and investment efficiency for innovation-driven firms in a transforming economy. The study fills the gap in the literature on management, accounting and finance by unveiling the interplay between dual leadership and financial reporting in affecting the efficiency of investments.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of board attributes on Sukuk rating in firms listed in Bursa Malaysia (Malaysian Stock Exchange) during the period of 2008 to 2013.

This study uses ordinal logit regression model to examine the influence of board attributes (CEO-chairman duality, board size and board independence) on the dependent variable (RATING).

The findings of this paper generally support the agency theory and stakeholder theory. Results show that after controlling for firm characteristics, the Sukuk rating is positively associated with CEO-chairman duality, board size and board independence; and negatively correlated with leverage while positively related to profitability and size. The findings of this study also provide evidence that having two positions in an organization as CEO and chairman could have added higher responsibility towards making corporate decisions and provide better Sukuk rating performance. In addition, findings show that the larger the board size, the better Sukuk rating. Also, higher board independence enjoys higher rating.

This study was limited to the investigation of the relationship between board attributes (CEO duality, board size and board independence) on Sukuk ratings using aggregate data from 2008 to 2013 among Malaysian Sukuk issuers.

The findings of this paper describe the impact of board attributes on Sukuk rating in Malaysian Sukuk market which in turn gives the useful insights to many of the actors in the markets such as issuers, investors and policymakers which can be relied upon in making strategic decisions to issue and invest in Islamic bonds in Malaysian market. In addition, the findings could prove to be useful also for regulators because they are responsible for the acceptable level of corporate governance standards.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by focusing heavily on enhancing Sukuk ratings by reducing conflict between managers and Sukuk holders in Malaysia. Additionally, this study benefits from the agency theory and stakeholder theory to provide evidence on the effect of board attributes on Sukuk rating.

We document the emergence of the Lead Independent Director (LID) board role in a sample of U.S. firms from 1999–2015. We find that firms that adopt an LID board role are larger and have more independent boards, higher institutional investor holdings, and an NYSE listing. Firms with greater anticipated benefits from monitoring also adopt an LID role, e.g., firms with dual CEO-Chairman, with more takeover defense mechanisms, and with higher cash holdings. Using an event study methodology, we find that investors respond positively to the adoption of an LID board role. Lastly, using instrumental variables to address endogeneity in the LID board role, we find that firms with an LID are more likely to terminate poorly performing CEOs. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that the LID board role enhances firm value and improves the quality of corporate governance.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between board independence and internal control quality (ICQ) in Egypt and investigate whether CEO duality moderates such an association.

A survey among external auditors is used to assess ICQ among Egyptian listed firms over the period of 2007-2010.

Findings show that board independence does not have a significant positive effect on ICQ. However, when testing for the moderating effect of CEO duality on such a relationship, the authors document that the association becomes positive and significant under combined board leadership structure, whereas it is negative under separated leadership structure.

The authors’ results demonstrate that CEO duality plays a governance role in weak legal environment like Egypt by strengthening board independence role in increasing ICQ.

This paper aims to undertake a study of national configurational demographics in order to determine the spread of understanding of the chairman's role, performance and contribution.

Qualitative methodology, exploratory in nature through in‐depth interviews and workshop discussion involving 103 UK, US and Australian participants, was undertaken.

The role of chairman is considered as having a distinct effect on board dynamics, role and contribution and the monitoring and support of management. Nine demographic factors are identified as affecting the manner in which the role of chairman is exercised in the UK, USA and Australia.

The findings of this qualitative exploratory study need to be integrated into a quantitative empirical survey in order to ascertain the validity of the results to date.

The two key conclusions highlight the requirement for governance due diligence, examining the financial and competitive strength of the organisation as well as uncovering contextual sensitivities.

Insufficient attention has been given to the role of chairman. The study offers additional insight on how demographic factors influence the shaping and determination of the role of chairman. This paper should be of interest to practitioners, consultants, line managers, board members, chairmen, management academics and business studies students.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the ownership structure and board governance on dividend policy in emerging markets. The authors test whether the effects of corporate governance on dividend policy change during crisis periods.

The authors use a panel regression approach on a sample of 362 non-financial listed firms from East Asian and Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

The results provide evidence that dividend payout decision increases with institutional ownership and board activity. The authors find that in emerging countries, dividend policy of firms with CEO duality and without CEO duality does not depend on the same set of factors. It is shown that the ownership concentration and board independency affect significantly the dividend policy of firms with COE duality. Finally, the results show that during the recent financial crisis, dividend decision is inversely related to CEO duality, board size and the frequency of board meetings.

Other variables of corporate governance and ownership structure can be studied more in depth. The results can be directly compared to an alternative sample of developed countries.

This study is of particular interest for managers and shareholders when adjusting their strategies of dividend payout during financial crisis.

The authors employ a specific approach to investigate the impact of CEO duality on dividend policy in East Asian countries. An important aspect of the results is that that for firms with CEO who is also the chairperson, the dividend decision is negatively related to ownership concentration and board independence. This research contributes to the understanding of dividend policy by testing whether the impact of corporate governance on dividend policy changes during crisis periods in emerging countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to directly address this issue from this perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the empirical association between the tone of earnings announcements and a company’s membership in a sin industry.

This study constructs a model of the determinants of earnings announcement tone to examine the impact of sin industry membership on earnings announcement tone. An interaction term between CEO power (CEO–chairman duality) and sin industry membership is used to test whether CEO power moderates the strength of the association. The earnings announcements tone is measured using the spread in the proportion of positive and negative words. The category of sin industry includes not only industries such as tobacco, gambling and alcohol, but also industries associated with emerging environmental, social, and ethical issues (i.e. firearms, oil and cement).

The analysis of a sample of US firms from the 1994 to 2013 period shows that the tone of earnings announcement is less optimistic for companies in sin industries, but this association is weaker for companies that are led by powerful CEOs. The results remain robust to alternative definitions of sin industry membership and CEO power (CEO tenure) and to alternative model specifications.

The findings suggest that although sin companies cannot change the nature of their business, the management of such companies, in general, uses a less aggressive tone in their earnings announcements. These results further investors’ understanding of sin companies’ reporting behavior.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) personal characteristics on the performance of Indian commercial banks. Additionally, it also analyses the nonlinear relationship of CEO age and CEO tenure on the bank performance.

A balanced panel data approach has been used in this study. Particularly, the fixed effect estimation technique is used to examine the relationship between CEO characteristics and bank performance during the period 2009–2010 to 2016–2017.

The authors find that professional qualification of CEOs in finance stream enhances performance. Additionally, the impact of CEO duality is found to be positive and significant on performance. Male CEOs are beneficial for bank performance. Well experienced CEOs contribute to higher performance. The results are robust across the various proxies of bank performance, and sub-samples based on ownership, size of the bank and board size.

This study provides insights to policy regulators and policymakers who are entrusted with the appointment of the CEOs in the banks in the light of the ongoing regulatory reforms.

This study can be considered as one of the early studies, which examines the association between CEO characteristics and bank performance from an emerging economy perspective. It also extends the existing study by considering both public and private banks operating in India.