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This chapter presents both main arguments of dividend policy theories and their empirical evidence. According to Miller and Modigliani (1961), dividend decisions are not relevant to firm value in a perfect capital market. Nevertheless, there are several market frictions in the real world (e.g., information asymmetry, agency problems, transaction costs, firm maturity, catering incentives and taxes). Therefore, academics use them to develop theories which help them explain corporate dividend decisions. Particularly, signaling theory considers dividend payments as a signal about firms' future prospects since outside investors face information disadvantage. “Bird-in-hand” theory argues that investors prefer dividends to capital gains since the former have lower risk than the latter. Agency theory is developed from the conflict of interest between corporate managers and shareholders. Corporate managers have high incentives to restrict dividend payments. Furthermore, transaction cost theory and pecking order theory posit that firms prefer internal to external funds. This drives firms to hold more cash and pay less dividends. Life cycle theory explains dividend policy by firm maturity. Mature firms have fewer investment opportunities, and thus, they tend to pay more dividends. Catering theory states that dividend decisions are based on investors' demand. Firms pay more dividends since investors prefer dividends and assign higher value to dividend payers. Tax clientele theory argues that firms that have corporate dividend policy rely on the comparative income tax rates for dividends and capital gains. Under the tax discriminations against dividends, firms tend to restrict their dividends in order to increase their stock prices.

Corporate governance research suggests that board structure can impact organizational outcomes such as financial performance and executive remuneration. Agency theory posits that a board composed of independent directors and chaired by an independent chairperson can provide effective control over agency costs, while stewardship theory suggests that effective decision-making is facilitated when the board is chaired by the CEO and majority of directors are from the executive team. Empirical research into the association between board structure and performance in Jordan has provided mixed results, with no consensus supporting either theory. This study takes a different approach to researching the assumed association between board structure and performance by surveying directors’ perspectives on such assumed relationship between financial performance and four of boards’ characteristics (i.e., board independence, CEO duality, board size, and female ratio on board). Findings of this research indicate that Jordanian directors perceive a medium to strong association between financial performance and each of board independence, independent chair of board, and female ratio on board. However, directors of Jordanian boards perceive no association between financial performance and board size.

Introduction: Historically, the corporate governance (CG) framework was designed primarily to safeguard the economic interests of shareholders, as a result of political and legal interventions, developing into an effective instrument for stakeholders and society in general.

Purpose: The core objectives of the study include: identifying journals/publications responsible for publishing CG studies in India, key CG issues covered by CG researchers, the amount of high-impact CG literature across different time periods, sectors/industries covered by CG researchers and different research instruments (quantitative or qualitative) used in CG studies in India.

Design/methodology: The chapter used a sample of 130 corporate governance studies that fulfil the selection criteria, drawn from the repository of over 100 reputed journals that are either recognised by the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) or indexed by SCOPUS. A systematic literature review has been carried out pertaining to CG issues in India, based on various statistical tools, data, industries, research outlets & citations, etc.

Findings: The results show an overwhelming number of studies have assessed the relationship between CG variables and firm performance, which could be measured through a variety of performance metrics such as ROA and ROI. Apart from empirical analysis, many conceptual studies use repetitive basic statistical tools like descriptive statistics or regression analysis. The chapter offers insights into current achievements and future development.

Originality/value: This bibliometric study is a useful guide for policymakers, corporate leaders, research organisations and management faculty to draw insights from work produced by eminent researchers in GC in India.

This chapter analyzes how the industry environment determines corporate dividend decisions. First, common participants in the product market are competitors, suppliers, and customers. These micro-stakeholders create competitive pressures on firms and thus affect their current and future performance. Competitors influence dividend decisions through three mechanisms, namely predation threat, corporate governance, and imitation. Predation threat reduces firms' incentives to pay dividends when facing high rivalry. Competition helps firms improve corporate governance. However, strong corporate governance may increase or decrease dividend payments since dividend policy may be the outcome of strong corporate governance or the substitute for weak corporate governance, respectively. Besides, firms tend to imitate their industry peers in dividend policy. Second, as a financial policy, dividend policy is also affected by participants in the financial market like investors, creditors, and auditors. These financial stakeholders' behaviors are important to stock prices. Due to the agency problem, creditors have high incentives to restrict firm's dividend payments in order to protect their benefits. On the other hand, creditors are effective external monitors who help firms improve their corporate governance. Outside investors affect corporate dividend policy through their valuation. Firms pay more dividends if investors prefer dividends to capital gains. Auditors play the role of a third-party monitor, and thus, they help firms reduce managers' expropriation of shareholders and improve the quality of accounting information. Furthermore, we also investigate dividend policy of regulated industries in both financial sector (banking, insurance, and real estate) and utilities sector (energy, telecommunications, and transportation).

This study aims to theoretically investigate the effect of activating corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on the association between adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) and tax avoidance (TA). Based on the analyzing of the previous studies, the authors support the results of studies that found a positive effect for activating CG on the adoption of CSR. Also, they found that there is a negative impact of activating CG mechanisms on TA, as CG includes controls and procedures that contribute to limiting opportunistic behaviors of management and ensures making decisions that maximize value for shareholders. To the best of the authors' knowledge, it is the only chapter that examines the effect of activating CG mechanisms on the association between CSR and TA.

This study aims to study the impact of corporate governance (CG) versus ethical investment on the firm performance. It takes into account the firms of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan for the purpose of the study. A composite variable of CG index and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) index is used to test the impact on the firm performance. Separate country wise and overall analysis is obtained. Regression analysis is used to obtain the results. Two measures of performance are used, one is return on assets (ROA) and other is Tobin Q. The findings of the study reveal that there is an impact of corporate governance index (CGI) on firm performance (overall and country wise) whereas ethical investment (EI) has an impact on firm performance when tested overall and no impact when checked for country wise results. The results further show that on country level, increase in CG measures may lead to positive results, but at the macro level, it may lower the performance. On the other hand, at the micro level, ethical finance may not show its impact; however, at the macro level, it has an impact. The study has implications for the investors and policymakers.

This chapter analyzes how the internal environment determines corporate dividend decisions. First, dividend policy is influenced by strategic and financial issues. Corporate strategies are developed by top managers to achieve firms' missions, visions, and long-term goals while business strategies are designed by middle managers to maintain firms' competitive advantages. These strategies affect corporate dividend decisions through corporate performance and business operations. In addition, many financial characteristics are important determinants of dividend policy. Financial characteristics are classified into three groups, namely performance-related issues (e.g., firm profitability, free cash flow, and stock liquidity), leverage-related issues (e.g., debt ratio, asset tangibility, business risk, and firm size), and investment-related issues (e.g., investment opportunities and firm maturity). Firms with high profitability, free cash flow tends to pay more dividends. Stock liquidity may have a positive effect on dividend payments through lowering costs of equity; however, it may also have a negative effect through weakening the signaling motive. Moreover, firms with high debt ratio, low asset tangibility, high business risk, and small size face higher costs of external financing. Therefore, they have low incentives to pay dividends. When firms have more investment opportunities, they are more likely to restrict dividends and save cash for their investment projects and vice versa. Second, internal stakeholders may influence corporate dividend policy since their benefits are closely related to dividend decisions. Shareholders, directors, the chief executive officer, and employees have different characteristics, positions, and hold various proportions of shares. Therefore, they create pressures on dividend decisions to protect their wealth.

This chapter explores the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from an Islamic Shari'ah-compliant perspective. It provides a comprehensive literature review on CSR with an explicit focus on the Islamic perspective of CSR, Islamic models of CSR, CSR practices in conventional and Islamic banks, and the consequences of CSR to Islamic banks. This chapter's main contribution lies in considering the current CSR literature from a Shari'ah perspective. Likewise, it identifies gaps in the current literature and suggests potential areas for future research. This chapter attempts to improve the understanding of how Islamic banks integrate social responsibility into their operations. The insights from this chapter are helpful to practitioners and academic scholars in Islamic finance, accounting, and CSR. This chapter emphasizes the importance of incorporating Islamic values and principles into CSR practices and encourages further research and investigation in this area.

This chapter provides a comprehensive investigation of the literature on sustainability reporting in Islamic banks using a content analysis of 200 English language articles published between 2000 and 2023. The data were collected from the Web of Science (WOS) database and analyzed using Bibliometrix in R software. This chapter addresses the trends of the most influential authors, institutions, countries, and research hotspots. This chapter fills one of the gaps in sustainability reporting literature, setting up a statistical description of the principal features of sustainable Islamic banking research and carrying out an analysis of its knowledge structure via bibliometric analysis. This chapter found that the number of articles on sustainability reporting in Islamic banks has increased over time; however, it is concentrated on a few core sources and authors, mostly related to Islamic finance, accounting, and ethics, as well as sustainability and social responsibility. The analysis of the co-authorship network shows a limited degree of collaboration between researchers from different clusters. The most productive and collaborative countries are Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Pakistan, reflecting their well-developed and regulated Islamic banking industries that follow sustainability guidelines and frameworks. Moreover, the co-word analysis identifies 11 clusters and 43 keywords that represent the main topics and themes in the field, such as corporate governance, performance, disclosure, and risk. This chapter suggests some directions for future research and action on sustainability reporting in Islamic banks. This chapter contributes to the literature on sustainability in Islamic banking and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.