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The purpose of this study is to examine the association between carbon emissions and earnings management (EM). This study also considers the effect of female CEOs on the association between carbon emissions and EM.

This study uses the carbon disclosure project (CDP) for carbon emissions data, the Compustat database for financial information and the ExecuComp database for female CEOs. The empirical sample of this study consists of 1,692 firm-year observations in the USA that voluntarily participated in the CDP survey from 2007 to 2015. Regression analysis and robustness tests are conducted for this study and both accrual and real EM are considered.

This study provides evidence that firms with female CEOs who voluntarily disclose their carbon emissions information engage in less real EM. Thus, the presence of female CEOs moderates the association between carbon emissions and EM. This study/paper also finds a positive association between carbon emissions and real EM, although there is an insignificant association between carbon emissions and accruals EM.

The association between carbon emissions and EM has important implications for investors, regulators and policymakers. This study suggests that policymakers should improve the conditions that promote inclusion of females in the top management positions to constrain EM.

This study focuses on the USA, which is one of the major contributors to carbon emissions in the world. The presence of female CEOs moderates the association between carbon emissions and EM and firms with female CEOs show a greater impact on EM.

This study aims to examine the impact of chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) personal characteristics on firms’ risk taking and the moderating role of family ownership on this relationship.

This study used 2,647 firm-year observations of non-financial firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange over the period 2013–2021. To test the hypotheses, the authors used ordinary least squares regression and, to resolve the possible endogeneity problem, the authors used system generalized method of moments technique.

Drawing insights first from upper echelons theory, the authors report that CEOs with business, economics, finance and/or management educational background and female CEOs reduce firms’ risk-taking behaviour. Further, using insights from social and organizational identity theoretical perspectives, the results indicate that due to strong family affiliation and organizational identity, family owners exhibit risk aversion behaviour and moderate this relationship.

This study provides novel evidence of risk averse behaviour of CEOs with business, economics, finance and/or management educational background and female CEOs along with moderating impact of family ownership on this relationship in an emerging economy. Overall, the results extend empirical support for upper echelons and social identity theories in an emerging market context.

This study aims to investigate how the presence of female executives on the board affects a company’s capital structure decisions. The critical mass of female executives on the board was also considered to observe their impact on capital structure.

Samples were taken from nonfinancial sector companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange between 2012 and 2021 (3,707 firm-year observations). Capital structure was measured using four approaches, namely, debt-to-total asset ratio (DAR), debt-to-equity ratio (DER), short-term debt-to-total assets (STD) and long-term debt-to-total assets (LTD). The data were analyzed using panel data regression analysis, including a fixed effects model with clustered standard errors.

The presence of female executives on the board is significantly negatively related to capital structure as measured by DER and STD. The critical mass of women provided no evidence of a relationship with a firm’s capital structure. Robustness checks were performed, and the results were consistent with those in the main analysis.

Female executives can be appointed to management boards when determining a strategy to achieve the capital structure desired by a company.

This study increases the diversity of research in corporate governance by synthesizing various indicators from female executives into a single study to determine their relationships with companies’ capital structures. In addition, this study stands out by incorporating four distinct indicators for assessing capital structure and diverging from the norm observed in many other studies, many of which rely on just two indicators: DAR and DER. Moreover, it strongly emphasizes the unique economic, legal, social and cultural landscapes of developing countries like Indonesia in comparison to their developed counterparts, particularly Western nations.

This study aims to examine how woman corporate leadership indicators and environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in listed banks on Ghana Stock Exchange are related.

Data was obtained from the audited annual reports of the banks for the period 2006–2020. Empirical result estimation was achieved using Panel Corrected Standard Errors.

The result revealed that female chief executive officer (CEO), female board chairperson and board gender diversity are associated with higher disclosure of ESG issues in listed banks in Ghana in overall terms. However, in terms of individual disclosures, female board chairperson positively impacts social disclosure, whereas both female CEO and female board chairperson affect governance disclosure positively.

In this era of business where there is much emphasis on green business and investment by various stakeholders for purposes of ensuring business legitimacy, the result implies that banks must consider females to occupy the positions of CEO and board chairperson since that can help to improve ESG performance of banks.

In this era of business where there is much emphasis on green business, socially responsible investment and impact investment by various stakeholders, the result implies that banks must consider improving the representation of women in leadership since that can help to improve ESG performance of banks and hence ability to attract more investors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to provide empirical evidence from a developing country perspective in Sub-Saharan Africa that gender of bank leadership has implications for ESG disclosure.

This paper aims to explore the relation between chief executive officer (CEO) tenure and the propensity to adopt the global reporting initiative (GRI) for corporate social responsibility reporting in Chinese firms.

This study used Chinese A-listed firms as sample during 2010–2020. Considering the binary nature of dependent variable, logistic regression model is applied. For robustness, lagged value of independent and control variables, additional control variables and two stage least square regression are used.

This paper finds that CEO tenure is negatively related to the adoption of GRI reporting standards. Furthermore, this paper finds that this association is less pronounced when CEOs are female and when CEOs have foreign experience. Furthermore, this paper finds that this association is not significant when CEOs are female and when CEOs have foreign experience. This paper also finds that the relationship between CEO tenure and GRI adoption is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises in China. The findings in this paper are robust after controlling for endogeneity.

The study results are important for understanding the development and implementation of GRI framework especially in China.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to deeply investigate how CEO tenure can affect adoption of GRI in Chinese firms.

This study aims to examine how woman leadership (i.e., woman board chairperson, woman chief executive officer (CEO) and board gender diversity) affects audit fee and also ascertained the interactive effect of woman leadership and gender diversity on audit committee on audit fee.

The study applied ordinary least square and fixed-effect estimators on the data of 21 universal banks in Ghana for the period 2010–2021 to estimate the empirical results.

It is revealed that under the leadership of women (woman CEO and board gender diversity), higher external audit quality is ensured as higher audit fee is paid. Interestingly, it was found that with the presence of women on the audit committee, the integrity of internal controls and internal audit procedures are enhanced, which leads to quality financial reporting, calls for lower audit effort, hence lower audit fee.

The result indicates that firms can rely on the leadership of women in ensuring quality external audit and quality financial reporting, which ultimately helps to minimize the information risk to all stakeholders.

The paper contributes to extant literature by establishing that, under the leadership of women in banking entities from a developing country context, external audit quality and financial reporting are achieved.

This study aims to provide insights into gender diversity in Pakistani boardrooms, particularly for the dominant family business type, which is strongly guided by (non-financial) family-related objectives when making business decisions, such as the appointment of board members. Pakistani companies operate within the framework of weak legal institutions and a traditionally highly patriarchal environment. This study examines how corporate decisions regarding the appointment of female board members play out in this socio-political and cultural environment.

Board composition and board characteristics were examined using hand-collected data from 213 listed family firms and non-family firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2017. Univariate analyses, probit regressions and robustness tests were performed.

Pakistani family firms have a significantly higher proportion of women on their boards than do non-family firms. They are also significantly more likely to appoint women to top positions, such as CEO or chairs.

Evidently, women are allowed to enter boards through family affiliations. Gender quotas appear an ineffective instrument for breaking through the “glass ceiling” in this socio-cultural environment. Thus, gender parity must entail the comprehensive promotion of women and the enforcement of legal reforms for structural and cultural change.

The analysis focuses on a Muslim-majority emerging Asian market that has been scarcely researched, thus offering new perspectives and insights into board composition and corporate governance that go beyond the well-studied Western countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between CEOs' inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and the operating leverage of the firms they manage, with the aim to examine whether CEO incentives play a role in corporate risk-taking.

The authors investigate the relation between CEO inside debt holdings (CIDH) (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and the operating leverage (DOL) of the firms they manage. Using a sample of 11,145 US firm-year observations over the period 2006–2017, the authors find a strong negative association between CIDH and DOL. Additional analyses reveal that the relationship between CIDH and DOL is more pronounced in firms with heightened agency issues, powerful CEOs and for CEOs with stronger professional networks. The results are robust to various sensitivity and endogeneity tests.

The authors find strong evidence confirming the expected negative association between CEO inside debt and DOL suggesting that firms with higher inside debt tend to maintain lower levels of operating leverage. These findings continue to hold with the alternative measure for the inside debt and operating leverage, and across a range of tests designed to rule out the possibility that the primary findings are in any way driven by potential endogeneity. In addition, the findings demonstrate that the presence of manager-shareholder agency conflicts can strengthen the inside debt–DOL relationship suggesting the strong role of inside debt in reducing firm risk.

Findings in this paper have implications for design of compensation structures so that corporate boards can establish incentives as a tool for risk management. A limitation of this study is that it is focused on one market, i.e. US listed companies, so the findings may not be applicable on a global scale.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that links firm-level management of operating leverage through design of CEO inside debt incentives (two obvious choices for risk-reduction at the CEOs’ disposal include reducing financial risk through reduction of firm leverage and reducing operating risk through reduction of operating leverage). While use of firm leverage as an instrument of choice has been explored in the past, use of operating leverage to achieve risk reduction when CEO possess high inside holding, has received very little attention.

This paper aims to examine the determinants of the dividend distribution policy in a banking setting.

Using a sample of 48 Islamic banks and 94 conventional banks from 15 Islamic countries over a period spanning from 2012 to 2019, we document the effect of board gender diversity, executive director profile and governance mechanisms on dividend payment decisions. We also analyze the moderating effect of Islamic banks on the relationship between gender diversity and dividend policy.

We find new evidence on the role of women directors in determining dividend distribution policy and confirm the risk aversion hypothesis, hence contributing to the ongoing debate on gender diversity literature. Our results show that the moderating role of Islamic banks is effective only for small banks.

Our findings have practical implications for shareholders, managers and financial analysts as they suggest rationalizing dividend distribution strategies.

Our study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on dividend policy, gender diversity and Islamic banks.

This study aims to investigate the influence of CEO’s only-child status on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It seeks to extend the understanding of upper echelon theory by examining unexplored CEO characteristics and their impact on CSR decisions.

The paper uses manually collected CEO family information and Chinese Stock and Market Accounting Research data as a basis to examine the influence of CEOs’ early-life experiences on their engagement in CSR activities. The study applies attachment security theory from developmental psychology and uses upper echelon theory, particularly focusing on CEOs’ only-child status. A comparative analysis of philanthropic donations between CEOs who are only children and those who have siblings is conducted. The study also examines the moderating effects of corporate slack resources and CEO shareholdings.

Preliminary findings suggest that CEOs who are only children are more likely to engage in CSR compared to their counterparts with siblings. However, the difference in donation amounts between the two groups tends to attenuate with decreased slack resources and increased CEO shareholdings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents the first attempt to investigate being the only child in one’s family and the CSR-related decision of CEOs, which extends the upper echelon theory by introducing the family science theory into the management domain.