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This study aims to examine the reputation effect by assessing whether fraudulent financial reporting is associated with high board turnover and significant loss of directorship held by directors affiliated with fraud firms. Although the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) and major stock exchanges enhance board independence and formalize committee requirements, the new rules also create a high demand for qualified directors in the director labor market. Thus, this study further examines the change in the reputation effect of directors at fraud firms after SOX.

This paper intends to answer two research questions: Do directors suffer significant loss of reputation when firms are caught in fraudulent financial reporting schemes? Is the loss of reputation of directors at fraud firms affected by the regulation of SOX? To examine the reputation effect, this paper investigates the differences in director turnover and loss of directorships between fraud and non-fraud firms. To examine the regulation effect, this paper investigates the differences in director turnover and loss of directorships of directors at fraud firms by comparing non-fraud firms’ director turnover and directorship loss between the pre-SOX and post-SOX periods.

Consistent with the reputation effect, this paper found that director turnover at fraud firms is significantly higher than that at non-fraud firms. It also found that the loss of directorships of directors at fraud firms is not significantly higher, which is consistent with findings of some prior research. The paper also investigates whether this reputation effect has changed after SOX but found no significant difference in the reputation effect at fraud firms. In conjunction with prior research that finds an increased demand for qualified directors in the labor market after SOX, the results imply that this shortage of qualified directors does not help fraud firms discipline directors after SOX.

The findings are limited by the sample selection of only the initial litigation of US firms which are charged of fraudulent financial reporting. The findings suggest that SOX creates an increased demand for qualified directors, and consequently results in a shortage of qualified directors in the post-SOX labor market. The shortage of qualified directors slows the director turnover and weakens firms’ ability to replace culpable directors. Future research is needed on how governance practices might contribute to the lack of turnover among board members and how to promote ongoing overhauls of boards.

The decision process for removing a director is complicated and lacks transparency. Shareholders often do not know the real reason for a director’s departure from the board. To increase the accountability of individual directors and information transparency, new rules are needed for the disclosure of evaluations of individual directors’ governance effectiveness.

Survey of previous studies (Helland, 2006; Srinivasan, 2005; Fich and Shivdasani, 2007) indicates mixed evidence on reputation effect and no evidence so far on the SOX regulation effect. This study fills the gap by extending the findings of prior research to investigate the reputation effect along with the regulation effect of SOX at fraud firms. Different from findings of some previous studies (Helland, 2006; Fich and Shivdasani, 2007), this paper provides evidence consistent with the reputation effect. It also provides new evidence on the unintended consequences of SOX on director turnover.

Existing histories of the free kindergarten movement in South Australia scantily acknowledge the key role of Lucy Spence Morice in helping to found the Kindergarten Union (KUSA) in 1905 and subsequently guiding the organisation through financially troubled times, internal conflict with respect to the independence of the Training College (Adelaide KTC) from Education Department control, changes of directorship, and in accordance with its original mission. This article seeks to restore Lucy Spence Morice to a place in South Australian annals alongside that of her distinguished aunt Catherine Helen Spence: teacher, journalist, author, Unitarian Church preacher, philanthropist, political and social reformer, self‐styled ‘new woman’ of the late nineteenth century, and to niece Lucy a dear friend, mentor and inspirational role model. In the light of fresh evidence contained in the papers of Mrs Marjorie Caw (an early KTC graduate), and informed by the work of Caine, Lewis, Ryan, and Goodman and Harrop most especially, it re‐assesses Mrs Morice’s contribution to kindergarten reform from a feminist revisionist historical perspective. I utilise biographical methods and network analysis in order to point up the genesis of Lucy’s zeal for the cause of kindergarten education; also to argue that her informal but expansive social ties, plus her links to professional women and other activists in the fields of child health, welfare and education were central to her work for the Kindergarten Union.

Why does a group general practice need a formal management structure? During my 14 years in general practice, it has become increasingly recognised that GP's do need skills in managing what is, after all, a business. This has led to an increased emphasis on this aspect of general practice in vocational training and to a variety of courses and seminars for GP's in aspects of it, particularly financial ones. There seems, though, to have been very little discussion on the actual structure of management within general practice and, with the increasing complexity of GP practice, it seems to me that a clear management structure is necessary both to utilise skills already possessed and to develop further skills within a practice for the future.

The way in which a firm’s actions are perceived by others is driven by the individual values and ethics of directors (Ntim and Soobaroyen, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of “problem” directors on the environmental performance of firms. The authors argue that if a board member has a tainted reputation, then environmental performance will be higher as the problem director seeks to rebuild his/her reputation.

The authors use a sample of the top 500 US companies for 2010 and 2011 and an ordinary least square (OLS) model to capture the impact of “problem” directors on environmental performance. The authors use an independent measure of environmental performance which includes three categories: environmental impact, environmental management (green policies) and environmental reputation (which is affected by disclosure).

The findings of this paper show that the average environmental impact score is 53.32 per cent, the environmental management green policy score is 35.39 per cent and environmental reputation is 49.86 per cent. A firm which is operated by a problem director has a higher score for environmental management and environmental reputation than non-problem director-affiliated firms. Firms which are managed by a problem director(s) have lower scores for environmental impact than non-problem director-affiliated firms in the USA, indicating a higher level of emissions, water use, waste disposal, etc.

The authors posit that problem directors promote environmental performance as a means to enhance their reputation and divert attention from allegations of previous poor professional behaviour. Regulators and investors should interpret the environmental performance of a firm with caution when a problem director is on the board.

Prior research on the relationship between environmental performance and corporate governance has been based on board composition and characteristics. However, board decision-making reflects the professional experience and personal values of the directors. These factors have not been addressed in the literature to-date and, hence, form this paper’s contribution.

Through the example of a “regulatory ranking” – an index produced with the aim to regulate the pharmaceutical market by pushing companies in the direction of providing greater access to medicine in developing countries – this chapter focuses on indexing and ranking as infrastructural processes which inscribe global problem spaces as unfolding actionable territories for market intervention. It foregrounds the “Indexal thinking” which structures and informs regulatory rankings – their aspiration to align the interests of different stakeholders and to entice competition among the ranked companies. The authors detail the infrastructural work through which such ambitions are enacted, detailing processes of infrastructural layering/collage and patchwork through which analysts naturalize/denaturalize various contested categories in the ranking’s territory. They reflect on the consequences of such attempts at reconfiguring global topologies for the problems these governance initiatives seek to address.

Utilising the resource dependency theory, this study investigates the impact of board interlocks (CEOs' interlocks, women board interlocks, independent board interlocks and total board interlocks) on carbon emissions performance in India.

This research applies varieties of regression methods comprising robust least squares, generalised method of moments and Heckman's regression on a final sample of 63 of India's top 200 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed companies that voluntarily participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project's (CDP) Climate Change Program and disclose their climate change data for years 2013–2020.

We provide strong evidence for a strong negative association between CEOs' interlocks and women board interlocks on carbon emissions performance. Independent and total board interlocks are not found to significantly affect carbon emissions performance.

Our sample is restricted to the proportion of the top 200 BSE firms that voluntarily submit their carbon emissions data to CDP. Also, the study's focus is India, limiting the generalisation of our findings to other emerging economies.

The study's findings provide valuable insight for regulators and corporate board of directors on the important role of CEOs and women board who interlock with other firms in steering the carbon emissions reduction. Specifically, the corporate board of directors should encourage CEOs to build more networks through outside board memberships. The regulators should revisit the Companies Act, 2013 and the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulation to increase the number of multiple directorships of CEOs and women board of directors.

This study responds to the dearth of literature on the efficacy of board interlocks on carbon emissions performance in emerging economies.

Drawing from social capital theory, this study aims to investigate the manifested critical barriers in deriving and implementing gender diversity policies, paying particular attention to the role multiple directorships play in shaping the directors’ behavior and the dynamic of the board of directors. The study comprehends social capital as a multi-dimensional concept and uses combinations of interconnected internal, external, expressive and instrumental networks.

The study uses a mixed-method approach through which the quantitative approach is supplemented by a qualitative research method to comprehensively examine the development and impact of female directors’ networks in Australia. To do so, a large data set consisting of 2,527 observations of all Australian firms and data emerged from semi-structured interviews with female directors were brought together and analyzed.

The findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between the size of women’s directorate networks and firm performance. The study additionally explicates the key moderating factors influencing the optimal number of multiple directorships. The key power-based and psychological well-being-related benefits of the inter- and intra-organizational interactions and “open” directorate networks for individual directors are further discussed. The findings also elucidate the status quo vis-à-vis labyrinth metaphor and excessive numbers of directorships.

The study should be of interest to those interested in effective gender diversity management. The findings would assist in enabling tangible outcomes for women through advanced processes and systematic investment in and institutionalization of well-structured, equitable opportunities provided via gender-responsive policies dedicated to the education and training of future female directors.

Calling for social dialogues and discussions on non-financial factors, this study adds to the scarce literature on influential factors related to diversity management policies and practices on the board of directors.

Using social identity theory as a framework, the present study empirically tests the idea that women can maintain positions on corporate boards over a number of years through becoming part of the board’s ingroup. A sample of 32 women directors who were part of a study of corporate directors in 1995 participated in the six‐year follow‐up. A series of hypotheses are tested using nonparametric statistical techniques to test differences in women directors’ personal and board characteristics over the two time periods. Implications of the results are drawn for women seeking to maintain or gain board positions and for the applicability of social identity theory to the research area.

This study examines the contemporaneous changes in the reporting regime in Nigeria by investigating the effect of regulatory changes on audit fees as well as the moderating effect of overlapping directorship and financial reporting quality.

This study utilises a longitudinal sample of 409 firm-year observations, from 2008 to 2013, of nonfinancial companies listed on the Nigerian stock exchange. The study uses the general method of moments (GMM) to control for endogeneity concerns.

The results reveal that, without the moderating effect of overlapping directorship and financial reporting quality, the relationship between regulatory changes and audit fees is positive but weak, which suggests that regulatory changes drive cost. Similarly, the interaction of overlapping directorship did not reverse the positive relationship, which suggests the perceived risk associated with overlapping directorship. However, the improvement in financial reporting quality reverses the relationship, as evidenced by the negative and significant coefficient on the interacted terms.

This study provides useful insights about committee membership overlap to regulatory authorities concerning the weakness of the monitoring ability of such committees.

The results of this study contribute to the growing literature on regulatory reform, audit fees and corporate governance. Specifically, the study provides empirical evidence on the effect of committee overlap on audit fees, which, to the best of the researchers' knowledge, has received no empirical attention in the Nigerian context.

This paper examines whether increased director workloads are benefiting firms or are causing directors to become too busy, resulting in lower director attendance and weaker firm performance.

This paper conducts empirical analysis of the relationships between meeting frequency, director attendance rates and firm performance using archival data from Australia.

Attendance rates for both outside and inside directors decrease as they are required to attend more meetings. The benefits firms obtain from holding additional meetings are significantly eroded by lower director attendance.

This study brings together the literatures on meeting frequency, director busyness and firm performance to show that increased director workloads are only beneficial to firms if directors do not become too busy to fulfill their obligations to shareholders.