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The authors explore the nature of commitment, job satisfaction and job characteristics, and the nature of the interrelationships among these variables concerning expatriate employees in Saudi Arabia. An examination of a sample of 504 expatriate employees reveals that these employees are, by and large, indifferent with respect to their perceptions of commitment, job satisfaction, and job characteristics. In addition, the results provide strong support for (1) the influence of job satisfaction on commitment, (2) the influence of job variety on commitment, and (3) the influence of job autonomy, identity, and feedback on job satisfaction.

Reports on a study which utilized responses from 442 employees working in 23 different Saudi organizations to assess stress levels and their differences with respect to nationality (Saudis, Arabs, Asians and Westerners), age, tenure, type of organization (public, semi‐private, private), and organizational size (small, medium, large). The findings suggest that: the main source of stress for employees working in private organizations is the lack of knowledge about their performance evaluation results, while this is not the case for employees working in public organizations; Saudi employees have the highest levels of stress, with Arabs second, Asians third, while Westerners (Europeans and North Americans) registered the lowest levels of stress; employees who are less than 30 years old experience the highest levels of stress; employees with six‐to‐ten years of experience show the highest levels of stress; and there is a significant inverse relationship between educational level and stress level.

In light of the conflict between scholarly findings supporting corporate social responsibility’s positive impact on corporate financial performance (CFP) versus findings showing negative impact on CFP, the academic literature has reoriented toward determining the contingency conditions that affect the underlying relationships. This paper aims to investigate two potential contingency factors, the chief executive officer’s (CEO) corporate social responsibility (CSR) expertise and board members’ CSR expertise.

This paper uses an unbalanced panel of archival data of 168 firms from the S&P 500 index for the period 2006–2013. The analytic model is estimated using the feasible generalized least squares regression method with heteroscedasticity and panel-specific AR1 autocorrelation.

The findings reinforce the perspective that CSR positively affects the firm’s financial performance. The authors find that firms realize optimal results from their CSR investments when both the board and the CEO have greater CSR expertise. In other words, both, CEO CSR expertise and board CSR expertise positively impact the CSR–CFP relationship.

The findings of this study advance the literature in three important areas, namely, the social responsibility–financial responsibility relationship, the governance literature and upper echelons theory. First, the theoretical arguments and the empirical evidence highlight that CSR–CFP relationship is at least partly contingent upon the CEO’s and board members’ CSR expertise. Second, this study introduces two important variables: the CEO and board’s CSR experience as proxies for their CSR expertise. Future researchers may consider decomposing the various components of CSR to study the differential impact of each component on financial performance.

First, this study finds that while the CEO CSR expertise may be of value for the firm, such value can only be realized under a capable and effective board that has adequate knowledge in the field of CSR. Second, this study shows that the best-case scenario for firms occurs when both its board members and CEO have had greater prior CSR involvement that contributed to their knowledge inventory and skills. Greater knowledge and skills enhance the quality of the decisions that comprise the firm’s CSR strategy.

While it seems intuitive that prior CSR knowledge and expertise should lead to more and better CSR initiatives, there are few if any studies that empirically examine the effects of this premise on a firm’s financial performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study appears to be the first that directly tests the relationship between executives’ CSR experience and firm performance.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between ownership structure (ownership concentration and ownership composition) and firm performance in Kuwaiti non-financial firms. To this end, it examines the relationship between firm performance and ownership concentration to determine whether the impact of this relationship is conditional on the nature of the large shareholders.

First, the relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance was tested using ordinary least squares regressions on 618 observations (103 listed firms) from 2005 to 2010; next, the ownership compositions were classified as institutional, government and individuals (families) and their impact on firm performance examined.

The overall concentration ownership by large shareholders showed no impact on firm performance. However, when the type of shareholders was introduced, only the government and individuals (families) ownership categories influenced firm performance. Therefore, certain types of shareholders are better at monitoring, and not all concentration by large shareholders is beneficial to Kuwaiti firms.

This study examined only one important aspect of the corporate governance mechanisms, namely, ownership concentration. Thus, further study may include other mechanisms such as board variables, role of debt and shareholders rights in examining the firm performance. This study is limited to the Kuwaiti environment, and thus, next step can be very useful in case of comparing ownership concentration in the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia) or across different Arab countries.

The results of this study have important implications for the regulators in Kuwait in their efforts to increase the efficiency of the rapidly developing capital markets and in protecting investors and keeping confidence in the economy. They may mandate a corporate governance code to protect minority shareholders. Investors may use the findings to understand Kuwaiti companies. Such findings may assist them to diversify their investment portfolios.

This paper extends literature review by investigating the role of large shareholders in the context of a developing country that is characterized by high level of ownership concentration and weak legal protection for investors as well as the absence of code that organized the corporate governance practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of audit quality on information asymmetry for a sample of leading listed local banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In addition, the paper examines whether a firm's political connections moderate the association between audit quality and information asymmetry.

The author employs country fixed effects to examine the impact of audit quality on information asymmetry. The paper uses a sample of 49 leading listed local banks across the GCC and 236 bank-year observations, over the period of 2012–2016.

Using trading volume, trade value and stock return volatility as proxies for information asymmetry and audit quality through auditors' opinion and audit size, the paper documents that audit quality plays an important role in improving the quality of financial information reporting by providing greater independent assurance of the credibility of financial reports. The paper also documents that a firm's political connections have no effect on the association between audit quality and information asymmetry, indicating that the beneficial effects of audit quality are no greater for politically connected firms than for similar but politically unconnected firms.

The findings of the study help policymakers, standard-setters and regulators to understand the potential adverse effect of political connections on the role of audit quality on information asymmetry. The study also provides important insights for audit regulators to better identify and understand the benefits of audit quality and to take policy matters that influence audit quality seriously.

The study increases our understanding of the impact of audit quality on the level of information asymmetry in different economic, legal and political institutions, regulatory and litigation incentives and social contexts compared to that of research conducted using data collected from developed and other emerging countries. This will help to widen our knowledge on the role of audit quality on information asymmetry across the globe.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the characteristics of two corporate governance mechanisms, namely, board of directors and audit committee (hereafter AC), on the level of compliance with International Financial Reporting Standard [hereafter International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)] 7 “Financial instruments: Disclosures” (hereafter FID).

Using a self-constructed checklist of 128 items, this research measures the compliance with IFRS 7 of 63 Canadian financial institutions listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange during a period of three years (2014-2016). Fixed effect panel regressions have been used to capture the individual effect present in authors’ data.

Empirical results show that the mean compliance level with IFRS 7 requirements is about 77 per cent and identify various areas of non-compliance. This level of compliance has a positive linkage with the board size and independence. Similarly, the AC independence and financial accounting expertise are shown to positively affect authors’ dependent variable. Nevertheless, CEO/chairman duality, AC size and meeting frequency are not significantly correlated with the level of compliance with IFRS 7.

This study expands prior compliance literature in the Canadian setting by examining the determinants of compliance with IFRS mandatory disclosures. Also, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first studies that have investigated the effect of corporate governance characteristics (hereafter CGC) on compliance with all IFRS 7 requirements in general.

Audit rotation (AR) is a key policy initiative implemented in global jurisdictions to deal with concerns about audit quality. Auditing financial reports involves communicating attested value-relevant company information to investors, and hence audit quality plays a role in the quality of financial reporting information. This paper aims to investigate whether AR affects the degree of information asymmetry (IS) between investors. It further aims to examine whether voluntary AR results in less asymmetric information compared to mandatory AR. Additionally, it examines whether political connections moderate the association between AR and IS.

The authors use data from publicly traded banks across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for the period 2010–2018. The authors include several variables to control for corporate governance and other firm-specific characteristics by using country-year fixed-effects regression model.

The authors find higher IS for banks that periodically rotate auditor, while banks voluntarily choose to rotate auditors obtain high-quality audits, which results in higher trading volume and lower stock return volatility, hence lower IS. The results suggest that when banks voluntarily choose to rotate auditors, investors perceive these banks as more committed to obtaining high-quality audits relative to mandatory AR. Providing higher quality audits enhances the credibility of reported information and thus reduce the level of IS. Moreover, IS following AR is higher for politically connected banks than for similar but politically unconnected banks. Finally, investors perceive voluntary AR as a disciplining tool, which mitigates IS. This mitigating role is not affected by bank political connectedness.

This study has limitations as the definition of AR could be interpreted as binary or too narrow, and hence it may not be appropriate to generalize findings to different contexts. Nonetheless, this study casts light on a new perspective to reconcile the existing mixed evidence on the influence of AR on IS and the moderating role of political connections. A further limitation is that because of data unavailability, the authors were unable to use other proxies (e.g. bid-ask spreads and analyst forecast dispersion) of IS.

The present findings provide insight to regulators, policymakers and standard setters on the potential adverse effect of political connections on the role of AR in mitigating IS. The results underscore the importance of voluntary AR, and suggest that regulators, policymakers and standard setters encourage firms to rotate their auditors periodically.

This study provides evidence in a setting that is unique at the economic, social and regulatory levels. Prior literature is lacking and has been centered on developed countries or focusing on single-country specifications. The data set of this study is unique and allows us to examine the interplay between political influence that arises through ownership and management roles of influential members of state.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the level of internet financial reporting (IFR) of Slovenian companies, including the contents as well as the presentations of online financial information. The second objective was to explore the opinions of users towards newer methods of online financial reporting.

IFR was evaluated on the basis of the IFR index composed of 32 contents-related and 18 presentations-related elements. By means of regression analysis, the authors have established the intensity and direction of impact of six factors on the IFR index: size, profitability, the company's legal form, ownership concentration, age and sector.

During the first research phase, the authors established that 110 (52.64 per cent) of large companies disclose its financial information on its web site. Factors which impact the IFR are as follows: company size, ownership concentration, legal form and sector of operation. Larger companies, companies with a lower ownership concentration, public limited companies and financial sector companies disclose financial information to a greater extent compared to other companies.

This research will enable the comparison of the annual level of IFR in Slovenia and in other countries where such research has already been performed.

Through the disclosure of financial information online, companies will be able to improve the possibility of attracting foreign investors who often rely on the internet as the only source of information.

The authors analyzed the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) facial masculinity and the level of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD).

The authors conducted research for 2011–2019, covering companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange. This study used an ordinary least squares regression, the coarsened exact matching (CEM) and propensity score matching (PSM) procedure in testing the hypothesis.

Based on the results of analysis, it is known that CEO facial masculinity is negatively related to corporate CSR disclosure levels. However, this negative relationship can be mitigated through governance mechanisms: the audit committee.

This paper provides implications in the field of research, especially regarding the biological attributes of CEOs in relation to CSR.

As many previous studies focused on the managerial aspect of the CEO, this study focused on the biological aspect of CEO. To the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to attempt to investigate this issue in an emerging market.

This study aims to examine the influence of some prominent corporate governance (CG) mechanisms such as board size (BS), board independence (BI), role duality (RD), board’s gender diversity (GD), ownership concentration (OC), audit committee independence (ACI), nomination and remuneration committee (NRC) and risk management committee (RMC) on voluntary disclosure (VD), as well as different types of VD after controlling the effect of some firm-specific factors for Indian firms.

The study selects market capitalization-based top 100 non-financial and non-utility firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange as on 31st March 2014. Data are drawn from the Capitaline Plus database over the period of 2014–2018. Appropriate panel data regression model is applied to examine the influence of CG on VD.

The study reveals a significant negative influence of BI on VD while GD and RMC exhibit a significant positive influence on the same. The remaining CG mechanisms such as BS, RD, OC, ACI and NRC appear to have no significant influence on VD. Analysis into the relationship between CG mechanisms and different types of VD reveals that BI, in particular, has a strong negative influence on corporate strategic disclosure (CSD) and forward looking disclosure (FWLD) while GD and RMC both exhibit a significant positive influence on CSD, FWLD, CG disclosure and financial and capital market disclosure. Notably, none of the CG mechanisms under consideration influence human and intellectual capital disclosure.

The study considers annual reports as the only medium of making VD and ignores all other sources such as websites and press releases. Besides, it mainly emphasizes on corporate board structure, board committees and OC while other ownership structure-related variables family ownership, managerial ownership are not covered, which can be analysed in future studies.

The study offers some important theoretical, as well as practical connotations for regulators and practitioners operating in India, as well as other emerging economies having similar institutional settings.

The study is the first of its kind in India that examines the influence of various CG mechanisms on different types of VD and thereby contributes novel findings in the context of an emerging economy.