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The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effect of board multiple directorships and chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on firm performance among nonfinancial firms listed on the Palestine Security Exchange (PSE) during the period from 2009 to 2016.

Based on 200 observations, this study utilizes panel data to examine the effect of the predictors on firm performance measured by return on assets. The analysis is repeated using the return on equity and two regression methods to evaluate the robustness of the main analysis (pooled regression, and backward stepwise regression analysis).

The results show that the “busyness” of a CEO reduces their effectiveness and is associated with losses in the companies where they are in charge. On the other hand, the results show that CEO tenure, CEO experience and CEO political connections have a positive effect on corporate performance.

This study is timely given that the practice of multiple directorships is widely common among firms in developing countries. Prior research in Palestine has not investigated the role of multiple directorships and the CEO characteristics on corporate outcomes. This study provides a picture of the potential benefits to firms, policymakers and professional bodies from considering CEO variables. The findings of such an examination can help them to set up suitable policies and enhance the role and the quality of the CEO in firms.

Corporate directors have almost exclusively been white males. Women have been increasingly appointed to corporate boards but their numbers remain small at about five per cent (Gillies, 1992; Lorsch & MacIver, 1989). Several studies have provided a picture of the demographic characteristics of directors. Although the specific details and numbers vary slightly from study to study, results are consistent and strong. Corporate directors form a rather homogeneous group. Of all Fortune 1000 directors, 94% were white males, 67% were over 55 years of age, and 63% were CEOs of other corporations.

The purpose of this study is to examine how informational faultlines on a board affect the management of knowledge owned by directors and the consequences on organizational performance. In this study, informational faultlines are defined as hypothetical lines that divide a group into relatively homogeneous subgroups based on the alignment of several informational attributes among board members.

The study uses unique hand-collected panel data covering 7,247 board members at 106 publicly traded firms to provide strong support for the hypothesized U-shaped relationship. The authors use a fixed effects approach and a system generalized method of moments approach to test the hypothesis.

The study finds that the relationship between informational faultlines on a board and organizational performance is U shaped, with the least optimal organizational performance experienced when boards have moderate informational faultlines. More specifically, informational faultlines within boards are negatively related to organizational performance across the weak-to-moderate range of informational faultlines and positively related to organizational performance across the moderate-to-strong range.

By explaining the mechanisms through which informational faultlines are related to organizational performance, the authors contribute to the literature in a number of ways. By conceptualizing how the management of knowledge plays an important role in the particular setting of corporate boards, the authors add not only to literature on knowledge management but also to the faultline and corporate governance literature.

This study offers a rationale for prior mixed findings by providing an alternative theoretical basis to explain the effect of informational faultlines within boards on organizational performance. To advance the field, the authors build on the concept of knowledge demonstrability to illuminate how informational faultlines affect the management of knowledge within boards, which will translate to organizational performance.

This study aims to examine whether, and which type of, busy audit committee (AC) directors affect the quality and quantity of forward-looking disclosure (FLD).

The authors use content analysis to measure the quality and quantity of FLD. The authors use a sample of Omani financial institutions listed on the Muscat Securities Market for the period 2014–2018.

The authors find that overlapped AC chairs and total overlapped AC directors negatively (positively) affect disclosure quantity (quality). The authors also find that overlapped AC directors with financial expertise and those with multiple directorships positively affect disclosure quantity and quality.

This study offers new insights to policymakers (and managers) as it informs them about the benefits of overlapping AC directorship. It suggests that corporate governance codes should not limit overlapped AC direcotorship.

Holding the number of outside directorships constant, this paper aims to test whether executive directors from superior performing firms are subsequently rewarded with better quality outside directorships.

The quality of new outside directorship appointments is modelled using a two‐step Heckman selection procedure to control for the probability of acquiring a new outside board seat. Outside directorship quality is estimated using an index formed from series of observable firm‐specific characteristics proxying for the following three latent aspects of quality: prestige, reputational risk and monetary rewards. The index aggregates across these three dimensions to produce an overall quality score, with higher scores signifying higher quality directorships.

Tests based on a sample of UK executive directors who subsequently acquire at least one new outside board seat show that the quality of newly acquired outside directorships is positively related to past and contemporaneous performance at the executive's own firm. Recent past performance appears to be a more important determinant of the quality of outside directorships than long‐run performance reputations. However, effects are largely confined to executives that either switch between boards or enter the outside directorship market for the first time.

Findings support the view that the market for outside directorships operates (at least in part) as a meritocracy by rewarding executives from superior performing firms with better quality outside board appointments.

Prior work on the market for outside directorships focuses on explaining cross‐sectional variation in the number of outside board seats held. The paper is the first to measure and model directorship quality.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether multiple directorships have an influence on earnings management for Australian publicly listed firms. This paper attempts to determine whether boards with multiple directorships are effective monitors and are able to constrain earnings management activities.

The study adopts resource dependency theory on the relationship between multiple directorships and the extent of earnings management. Data analysis is based on publicly listed firms on Australian Stock Exchange utilising SIRCA database with a final pooled sample of 1,815 firm-year observations from 2008 to 2012.

Using different measures of multiple directorships, it is found that firms having board of directors with multiple directorships exhibit lower levels of earnings management. The results validate the applicability of resource dependency theory on the relationship between multiple directorships and the extent of earnings management suggesting that directors with multiple board seats by sharing experiences, skills, information and other resources limit the extent of earnings management by firms. Evidence also suggests that earnings management behaviour is more pronounced in larger firms compared to smaller firms and as predicted, industry audit specialists restrain earnings management activities.

This study introduces methodological enhancements to the literature as it measures the multiple directorships in a number of different ways. Firms may be encouraged to actively seek board members with diverse backgrounds, international exposure/experience and pertinent skill-sets with multiple board memberships. These benefits will assist firms to determine the optimal board composition that will enable it to function effectively.

Empirical studies on the association between multiple directorships and earnings management in Australia are scarce and this paper provides an update of the effect of multiple directorships on earnings quality in Australia.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between internal corporate governance mechanisms and board performance in monitoring roles.

A survey questionnaire was used to gather data on board performance, while annual reports were employed to gather data on internal corporate governance mechanisms. Data for board performance were based on 112 directors who represent the companies.

Factor analysis extracted two dimensions of monitoring roles: management oversight roles and performance evaluation roles. Non‐independent non‐executive directors and managerial ownership were found to be positively related to both dimensions of monitoring roles, while the multiple directorships of non‐executive directors were negatively related to management oversight roles.

The paper establishes the need for regulators to pay particular attention to multiple directorships, which are commonly practiced in public listed companies. The contribution of non‐independent non‐executive directors rather than independent directors in monitoring roles calls for further research. Regulators need to emphasize the performance evaluation roles of the board of directors (BOD), as much emphasis has been given to management oversight roles.

The study contributes to the literature concerning monitoring roles as it shows that management oversight roles and performance evaluation roles are differentiated. The findings provide an avenue for the contribution of non‐independent non‐executive directors and multiple directorships in monitoring roles.

Boards of directors of large companies all over the world frequently have a certain number of shared directors, which can be motivated by social structures that foster different types of links, including investments and vertical relationships. The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects that board interlocking exerts on innovation, considering the different nature of shared directors that finally determines the type of links dominating the boards.

Panel regression analyses were conducted using data collected from 69 Spanish listed innovative sector companies during the period 2010–2014, which provided an unbalanced panel of 325 data observations.

The results suggested that the typology of interlocks determined their effects on innovation, which had a positive influence when independent and extra-industry directors held multiple directorships, whereas it was negative in the case of intra-industry and women interlocking directors.

This study provided evidence for the diverse effects of interlocking directorates and contributed to the open debate on the best board composition for improving business innovation, considering the common feature of shared directorships.

The value of this research was twofold. On the one hand, the study considered a wide typology of interlocking directorates, such as women, affiliated and independent directors, intra- and extra-industry directorships, as well as shared directors from the same country. On the other hand, the effects of these different interlocking directorate typologies were analysed on innovation by considering different innovation indicators.

We investigate the association between intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) and board characteristics in the unique setting of Mauritius, a Small Island Developing State. The uniqueness of the setting stems from the country's corporate governance landscape, where most companies have female directors and a high proportion of directors with multiple directorships, director independence is symbolic and directors come from a close-knit group.

We use 120 firm-year observations from companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius from 2014 to 2017. All data is hand collected from annual reports using content analysis method. Panel multivariate regression is used to test the hypotheses with relevant controls, including intellectual capital performance.

ICD is negatively associated with board independence and positively associated with gender diversity of the board. No association is found between ICD and the size of the board, multiple directorships or the average tenure of the board members.

This is the first study investigating the association of board gender diversity, multiple directorship and tenure of board members with ICD in annual reports. The relationships observed between board characteristics and ICD highlight the context-dependent nature of these relationships. This study also overcomes the correlated omitted variable bias likely to have affected the analyses in previous studies examining the nexus between board characteristics and ICD through its control for intellectual capital performance.

The quest to unravel the mysterious boardroom’s structure that would confer the firm with incremental layers of economic supremacy has emerged as an issue of considerable importance in the corporate governance literature. Despite numerous attempts, corporate governance research has repeatedly failed to establish a clear and unequivocal theoretical linkage between the boardroom type and the corporate performance. Specifically, the optimum boardroom’s structure (i.e. one that would yield maximum economic benefit) remains an elusive dilemma. Undoubtedly, this problematic deserves more scrutiny. This study aims to expose the different layers of dimensional complexities related to boardroom’s research, particularly as it relates to those investigations using the positivist philosophy of research via inferential statistics using hypothetico-deductive reasoning.

The author examines the intrinsic complexities of boardroom’s research using thematic analysis. In the first phase, the author conducts a fine-grained systematic review of published studies in scholarly peer-reviewed journals. In the second phase, the author conduct a phenomenological investigation via semi-structured interviews with 35 seasoned corporate governance scholars with sound knowledge and expertise on boardroom’s research.

The thematic analysis reveals three overarching complexity dimensions encountered in boardroom’s research: an input dimension related to the ontological complexity of corporations. Research on boardroom’s effectiveness entails the manipulation and analysis of a plethora of convoluted and intertwined corporate performance determinants. Such explanatory variables are difficult to capture, untangle and operationalize; a processing dimension related to the methodological complexity of dealing with imperfect and incomplete information. Positivist research often uses large archival databases marred with endogeneity complications; an output dimension epitomizing the epistemological complexity of ascertaining what really constitutes corporate performance. The currently adopted performance metrics (accounting or market indicators) do not adequately depict the essence of boardroom’s effectiveness and corporate success.

Boardroom’s research continues to generate high level of interests in academic circles. Specifically, research on the linkage of boardroom’s structure and corporate performance is both unclear and confusing. This lingering deficiency necessitates the adoption of novel epistemological and methodological approaches to broaden the theoretical perspectives of boardroom’s structural effectiveness.

One key motivation of this study is to entice boardroom’s research to venture in the direction of uncharted territories. Knowledge discovery in this important area would have far-reaching implications on corporate governance best practices, including how to restructure existing boardrooms or how to establish new ones from scratch.

A well-functioning boardroom would justifiably push the firm in the direction of healthier corporate governance. In turn, healthier corporate governance would eventually yield superior corporate performance with positive consequences on key stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, regulators and other members of the profession and the society.

In this paper, the author endeavors to identify and explain the root causes behind the complex nature of boardroom’s research. The author particularly focuses on the factors that blur or distort the causal linkage between boardroom’s type and corporate performance. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first comprehensive investigation that attempts to highlight the inherently complex nature of boardroom’s research. Thus, it fills an important gap in the literature.