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The purpose of this study is to look at the structure of the interactions between the board of directors’ chairman qualities such as chairman independence, tenure, ethnicity, age- and impression management (IM).

The research population consists of non-financial Malaysian companies listed on Bursa Malaysia’s Main Market, using data gathered via annual reports and DataStream. The study relies on the ordinary least square regression to test the direct relationships between the directors’ chairman characteristics and IM. Moreover, robustness and sensitivity tests were used to examine the effectiveness of chairman characteristics with IM. Furthermore, the results rely on the FGLS regression as an additional test. The study found that chairman independence, chairman ethnicity and chairman age have a significant impact on IM.

The results reveal that chairman independence has a negative association with qualitative IM (IMSC1). Moreover, chairman ethnicity has a positively significant relationship with qualitative IM (IMSC1) and quantitative IM (IMSC2). Also, the effectiveness of chairman characteristics has a negative and significant association with IMSC1.

The primary goal of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature and to open up opportunities for more in-depth research on the subject. So far, there has been no research into the impact of the board chairman’s (BC) personality on IM. This study serves as a warning to policymakers, businesses and their stakeholders, as well as researchers, about the importance of BC characteristics, which may impede the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms. The paper provides a framework for investigating these characteristics in the context of IM.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the characteristics of audit committee chairman (ACC) (tenure, age, gender, ethnicity, accounting expertise and directorship) on earnings management (EM) practices.

The Jones model and modified Jones model by Dechow et al. (1995) were used to determine the discretionary accruals (DA) of 288 Malaysian listed firms with lowest positive earnings for the years 2013‒2015.

The results of the ordinary least squares regression indicate that only tenure, gender and ethnicity of the ACC are associated with DA. A further test was conducted by dividing firms into two groups: firms whose boards are chaired by a family member and firms whose boards are chaired by a non-family member. The results reveal that it is possible for firms whose boards are chaired by family members to cause the corporate governance (CG) mechanisms, particularly the audit committee, to lose their effectiveness in overcoming the EM problem. In addition, robustness tests were conducted by using panel data regression, where the results were found to be similar to the original regression results.

This study alerts policymakers, firms and their stakeholders, as well as researchers, regarding the importance of having an independent board chairman, who has no relationship with any directors or major shareholders, as this may hinder the effectiveness of CG mechanisms in curbing EM, especially in emerging countries, such as Malaysia, where it is very difficult to stop members of the family from becoming board directors.

This study aims to examine the impacts of board chairman characteristics on the decision to finance with debts.

Based on historical data from 173 active nonfinancial firms listed on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Stock Exchange Markets during 2012–2019, this research uses ordinary least squares (OLS) and dynamic system-generalized methods of moments to test its hypotheses. The final dataset comprises 1,384 firm-year observations from 10 major nonfinancial industry classifications.

Results indicate a negative impact of board chairman ownership on the decision to finance with retained earnings (RE). Negative effects of the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) from the same family on the decision to finance with RE, whereas positive effects of the chairman and CEO from the same family on the decision to finance with debts are observed. In addition, a negative effect of the chairman from a royal family on the decision to invest with debts is found.

Many board chairmen characteristics, such as age, gender, experience, education level, periodic change and ethnicity, are unaddressed. Financial decisions (FDs) are also limited to two decisions (internal financing with RE and external financing with debts).

Findings of this study provide an improved understanding of the role of chairman characteristics in FDs in GCC. Investors and lenders dealing with companies in GCC markets benefit from the authors' results because of the effects of chairman characteristics on FDs when making investment decisions in company stocks.

The study clarifies how each of the three board chairman characteristics (i.e. chairman ownership, chairman and CEO from the same family and the chairman from the royal family) affects FDs, especially the decisions to finance with debts and RE.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of audit committee independence, board ethnicity and family ownership on earnings management in Malaysia.

The effect of audit committee independence, board ethnicity and family ownership on corporate governance is investigated via 1,206 firm-year observations between the fiscal years of 2004 and 2009 of Bursa Malaysia listed firms. Panel data regression analysis is used to analyze the relationship.

The findings of this study fail to associate the role of audit committee independence as proposed under RMCCG (2007) in curtailing earnings management activities, thus supporting the findings on power distance scores that power granted to the top management may result in less effective independent directors. Nonetheless, in support of the alignment effect theory, family ownership is found to reduce earnings management activities. The findings show that corporate governance is more effective in developing country family firms due to their long history of family reputation and the importance of institutional culture factors.

This study focuses on board ethnicity, family ownership and its influence on earnings management.

This study offers insights into the importance of family institutional structures on corporate governance reforms in Malaysia as Malaysian family firms are mostly traditional firms that have built their reputation and strength in the industry for many generations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of ethnicity on auditor choice for Malaysian listed companies.

This study evaluates the effects of various independent variables on auditor choice behaviour, particularly ethnicity of auditor and ethnicity of management, using a logistic regression analysis approach for 300 companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia (formerly known as Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange‐KLSE) over an 18 year period.

Auditor choice is shown to be significantly influenced by client firm's characteristics, notably changes in management, complexity, and financial risk, lending support to the findings of previous survey studies. Ethnicity was found to be a significant factor influencing auditor choice only for auditor switches between non‐Big 4 and Big 4 firms.

A number of important variables such as corporate governance characteristics, audit fees, client size, and growth that might enhance an understanding of auditor choice behaviour in Malaysia were not incorporated in the regression models, and might be considered in future studies.

The results presented in the paper have important implications for both the auditing profession and regulators in Malaysia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the voluntary financial and environmental disclosures through the internet can be explained by the same determinants as in conventional reporting. Specifically, this paper examines the relationship between the extent of financial and environmental disclosures on the internet and six variables, namely, ethnicity of chief executive officer (CEO), leverage, level of technology, existence of dominant personalities, profitability, and firm size.

Six hypotheses were tested using data collected from 201 Malaysian listed companies on the Bursa Malaysia's Main and Second Boards for the financial year 2005. A regression model is utilized to analyze the results of this paper and this is in tandem with the previous studies.

The results indicate that level of technology, ethnicity of CEO and firm size are determinants of both internet financial and environmental disclosures. However, the existence of a dominant personality is found to negatively affect the level of financial disclosures but not environmental disclosures. The other variables did not show any significant relationship with either financial or environmental disclosures.

This paper investigates whether internet financial and environmental disclosures can be explained by the same determinants used in other similar studies. The results indicate that only level of technology, ethnicity of CEO and firm size are found to be significant for both internet financial and environmental disclosures.

Board diversity positively impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR); however, there is limited evidence on how board diversity affects the reputation of organizations that are involved in CSR. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect board diversity has on socially responsible firms’ corporate social responsibility reputation (CSRR). The authors specifically examine this relationship because an organization’s corporate reputation may be very different to its CSRR gained through engagement in socially responsible activities.

The authors use the CSR reputation scores for the top 100 most socially responsible global companies provided by the RepTrak Database as a measure of CSRR. Board diversity measures are calculated for gender, ethnicity and education to measure their impact on social reputation. The sample for this study consists of 146 observations for the period 2013–2017.

The authors find a significant and positive relation between having a combination of women and ethnically diverse members on the board and firms’ CSRR. The authors also find a significant positive effect on CSRR when the board is composed of women and educationally diverse members.

Board diversity characteristics continue to impact organizations’ decision-making processes and their involvement in CSR activities as public stakeholders demand greater representation of females and minorities on the board. Because research on board diversity is in its infancy, the authors urge scholars to continue to investigate the impact board diversity has on an organization’s motivation to be socially responsible as well as how it affects their CSRR.

The findings of this study highlight the importance stakeholders place on an organization’s social responsibility reputation and the positive effects of board diversity in managing their CSRR.

The findings provide evidence that the composition of the board can influence a company’s engagement in CSR activities and their CSRR as perceived by its stakeholders.

This study contributes to the CSR literature by introducing the concept of CSRR. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study also extends research in the diversity literature by examining the relationship between board diversity variables and an organization’s CSRR. The findings highlight the importance of having a diverse board composed of ethnically and educationally varied individuals and provide evidence of a link between organizations’ involvement in socially responsible activities and their CSRR.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the association between two ethnic groups: Bumiputera directors and Chinese directors, on the incidence of accounting conservatism.

A panel data analysis of financial statement data was conducted for 300 Malaysian listed firms between 2001 and 2007.

The analysis shows that the ethnic groups influence the adoption of conservatism, but that the evidence is mixed, implying that there could be factors other than ethnicity which explained the directors’ behaviour.

The results provide a useful input to the proponents of harmonisation in financial reporting, in that Malaysian financial reports do not appear to be influenced by the ethnicity of participating groups.

This is the first paper to measure empirically the impact of ethnicity on the incidence of accounting conservatism.

The stagnation in the position of female directorships in the UK’s FTSE 100 companies appears to be very slowly changing. After a review of previous research on women directors, this paper reports the statistics on women directors in the top 100 listed companies. The paper comments on the findings regarding companies with women directors, female directorships and the women holding those directorships. It reviews the backgrounds (demographic profiles including age, education, marital status and children; corporate experience, international experience, etc.) of the top women executive directors. The paper also examines the minority of top companies with women executive directors, to see how their particular characteristics and contingencies (e.g. sector, chairmen, CEO and board demographics) may have influenced the environment as incubators for these successful women. The paper considers the findings through several theoretical lenses for explanations of the results, and conclude by commenting on the progress being made in other European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate board characteristics on the financial performance of Nigerian quoted firms. Board characteristics studied comprise board size, board skill, board nationality, board gender, board ethnicity and CEO duality.

The study employed the random‐effects and fixed‐effects generalised least squares (GLS) regression to test the six hypotheses formulated for the study, while controlling for firm size and firm age.

Using panel data from 122 quoted firms in Nigeria between 1991 and 2008, it was found that board size, CEO duality and gender diversity were negatively linked with firm performance, whereas board nationality, board ethnicity and the number of board members with a PhD qualification were found to impact positively on firm performance. The result of the robustness test using the same board characteristics for 160 small firms showed that board duality was positively linked to firm performance, while a PhD qualification was negatively linked to firm performance.

The study contributes to the understanding of the board‐performance link by examining both the traditional variables such as board size, CEO duality and other organisational attributes such as ethnic diversity, foreign nationality and competence variables represented by women and PhD holders, respectively. The results provide an insight for practitioners and policy makers on the importance of relying on institutional specifics in the prescription of corporate governance codes.

The study adds value to the global corporate governance discourse in two ways: first, the use of Nigeria, which is claimed to have one of the weakest business cultures in the world, and secondly, using a good number of proxies that are country‐specific for corporate boards.