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Motivated by a recent call from DeFond and Zhang (2014) for auditing scholars to use “a richer set of audit firm, auditor office, and individual auditor characteristics to capture competency”, this study aims to extend the related line of research by examining the association between lead engagement partner workload, defined as the number of public listed clients the partner is in charge of, and audit lag. The moderating effects of partner tenure on the partner workload–audit lag relationship have also been examined.

The association between auditor workload and financial reporting timeliness on 651 non-financial firms listed on Bursa Malaysia is tested in this study. Data to compute the partner workload are based on 222 lead engagement partners who signed off the audit reports for all 892 public listed firms in 2013.

The busy auditors are observed to prolong audit lags, and the effect is more acute for non-Big 4 clients, busy season clients and a short partner tenure. The engagement partners with heavy workload can also mitigate the adverse effects of reduced audit report timeliness when they have a longer partner–client tenure.

This study may understate the level of engagement partner workload when partners have private firms in their client portfolios. Notwithstanding that, this study reiterates the growing importance of examining accounting and auditing outcomes at the individual partner level.

The findings that over-burdened engagement partner takes a longer time to complete the audit add to the current debate, where audit regulators and various stakeholders are actively promoting discussions on potential indicators of audit efficiency and quality.

This study provides new evidence on the association between partner workload and audit reporting lag, which has hitherto been unexplored. This study also extends the research carried out by Gul et al. (2017) and Sharma et al. (2017) by providing additional evidence on the relationship between partner tenure and audit delay.

This study aims to assess whether non-financial corporate social responsibility (CSR) information decreases audit risk and audit scope and enables speedier completion of audit reports. The study also investigates whether institutional investors’ ownership (IIO) has an influence on the association between CSR disclosures and audit report lag (ARL).

This study uses a sample of 154 Saudi firms over 2016–2021 (837 observations) and applies ordinary least square regression to examine the study hypotheses.

This study’s results show that ARL is significantly shorter for firms with higher CSR disclosures. Furthermore, the findings show that IIO has no significant impact on the association between CSR disclosures and ARL.

This study offers new insights into how auditors respond to CSR disclosures and whether institutional investor monitoring influences the audit process in an emerging economy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interplay between institutional investors' ownership (IIO), politically connected firms (POC) and sell-side analysts' stock recommendations (ASR).

This study employs ordinary least square (OLS) regression to test the hypotheses. The sample comprises 280 Malaysian public listed companies (PLC) and encompasses the 2008–2013 time frame (a total of 735 observations).

The results show a significant and positive link between IIO and ASR. In addition, a negative association is found between POC and ASR. Moreover, the POC weakens the positive relationship between the IIO and ASR.

One important implication of this study is that political involvement in corporate decisions is a prominent characteristic of the Malaysian market, which can significantly affect the information environment and analysts' reactions.

The findings of this study provide useful empirical guidance to the regulators in evaluating the efficacy of recent regulatory initiatives. Investors may also gain useful insights from this study, specifically in recognising the crucial monitoring role played by institutional investors and how politically patronised firms are viewed unfavourably by equity analysts.

This study is one of the first to examine the joint influence of IIO and POC, on ASR.

The aim of this study is to examine the ownership impact on firm sustainable investments (FSIs). In particular, this research examines the link between institutional investor ownership (IIO), managerial ownership (MOWN) and FSIs in the tourism industry in Malaysia.

This study uses a data set of 346 firm-year observations from 2008 to 2020 and applies feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) regression analysis. The study sample is based on tourism firms listed on Bursa Malaysia (the Malaysian Stock Exchange).

There is a significant positive association between IIO and FSIs. When IIO is classified into foreign (FIIO) and local (LIIO), this significant association is mainly driven by FIIO. In addition, there is a significant, positive association between managerial ownership (MOWN) and firm sustainable investments (FSIs). These findings imply that firm ownership has an influence on FSIs in the tourism industry.

This is the first attempt to consider IIO and MOWN simultaneously in a single model estimation. The findings contribute to emerging capital markets where the involvement of ownership concentration in the governance of publicly listed firms is a common practice.