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To explore the importance of the board of director nomination process (that is, who nominates a given director for a position on the firm’s board) for the voting outcomes, disciplining of management, and overall monitoring quality of the board of directors.

We exploit a recent regulation passed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requiring disclosure of the board nomination process. In particular, we focus on firms’ use of executive search firms versus allowing internal members (often simply the CEO) to nominate new directors to serve on the board of directors.

We show that companies that use search firms to find board members pay their CEOs significantly higher salaries and significantly higher total compensations. Further, companies with search firm-identified independent directors are significantly less likely to fire their CEOs following negative performance. In addition, companies with search firm-identified independent directors are significantly more likely to engage in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and see abnormally low returns from this M&A activity. We instrument the endogenous choice of using an executive search through the varying geographic distance of companies to executive search firms. Using this instrumental variable framework, we show search firm-identified independent directors’ negative impact on firm performance, consistent with firm behavior and governance consequences we document.

Given the recent law passage, we are the first to directly analyze the nomination process, and show a surprisingly large predictive effect of seemingly arm’s-length nominations. This has clear implications for thinking carefully through how independence is defined in the director nomination process.

This paper is the main section on quantitative data analysis. It explains the concepts at a greater detail to help non-Math/Stat scholars to understand the basics easily. Proper data analysis is critical to any research. If data are not properly analyzed, then it may give results which either cannot be properly interpreted or wrongly interpreted. This section covers univariate, multivariate analysis and then, factor analysis, cluster analysis, conjoint analysis, and multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques.

Focuses on the receptivity of Western Australian government teachers towards a system‐wide educational change, the use of Student Outcome Statements, that help teachers’ classroom planning, student learning and assessment. The dependent variable, teacher receptivity, is measured in four aspects: overall feelings, attitudes, behaviour intentions and behaviour. The group 1 independent variables are non‐monetary cost benefits, alleviation of fears and concerns, significant‐other support, and feelings compared to the previous system. The group 2 independent variables are shared goals, collaboration and teacher learning opportunities. Data relating to all the variables were collected in 1997 from a sample of 126 teachers some of whom had been involved in the official trial of Student Outcome Statements and analysed using correlation and regression techniques. The group 1 and group 2 independent variables accounted for 59 per cent of the variance in overall feelings, 49 per cent in attitudes, 50 per cent in behaviour intentions and 40 per cent in behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of media pressure on external directors in relation to disclosure of information on corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The paper adopts a multilevel approach, integrating the institutional, organisational and individual levels of analysis in a whole model that explains corporate transparency. The paper uses a sample composed of 98 non-financial listed Spanish companies for the period 2004-2010,

The results show heterogeneity between external board members. Proprietary directors, representing shareholders, tend to promote adoption of the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines in order to increase value for shareholders. On the contrary, independent directors are risk adverse in relation to the effect that CSR information disclosure could have on their professional reputations.

The sample could be improved, including companies from different countries and more years for the analysis, since the period studied comprises a particular economic setting (2008-2010), a global financial crisis.

Although these results from the Spanish context, the authors recommend that regulatory bodies incorporate provisions into good governance codes that guarantee the existence of quality and comparable CSR information that favours stakeholders’ decision taking.

The image that society has about a company comes from the opinions created from the mass media. The arguments proposed by agenda-setting theory can be managed by companies as a strategic mechanism to respond to society expectations. At present, two of the most studied aspects are the ethical and sustainable behaviours of organisations. These aspects are related to the characteristics of boards of directors, especially to external directors. Independent directors may disagree with disclosing information about CSR practices because they fear that this information would affect their professional reputations, since they are not specialised in these topics. However, proprietary directors favour the disclosure of this information in an attempt to reduce the cost of capital and risk perceived by investors, especially in more sustainable companies.

The purpose of this paper is to determine what aspects of board independence, in terms of board structure and characteristics of non‐executive directors (NEDs), are associated with effective monitoring of management, as evidenced through lower levels of earnings management.

This paper examines the effectiveness of board independence requirements under the 2003 Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) Principles of Good Corporate Governance and Best Practice Recommendations (POGCG) for a sample of 231 firms listed on the ASX in the financial year 2005. The associations of board composition, share ownership and compensation of NEDs with the level of earnings management are estimated. To explore the characteristics of NEDs that are important for effective monitoring, NEDs are separated into “grey” (affiliated) directors and independent directors and compensation is separated into variable and fixed components.

The results of the paper indicate a positive relation between earnings management and share ownership of NEDs, particularly that of grey directors. There is a negative relation between NED compensation and the level of earnings management, particularly the fixed compensation component for independent directors.

This paper is important to shareholders, academics and policy makers because it shows the type of remuneration and ownership levels for NEDs that are consistent with good corporate governance. NEDs are more effective monitors when independent directors are compensated more as a fixed amount that is not related to the firm's performance. The compensation of grey directors is not associated with the level of earnings management. On the other hand, NEDs are less effective monitors as share ownership by grey directors increases. The share ownership of independent directors is not associated with the level of earnings management. To ensure the independence of the board and enhance its ability and incentives to effectively monitor management, the paper recommends that remuneration of NEDs should be a fixed amount, and the share ownership of NEDs should be limited.

The findings provide guidance as to the meaning of board independence, in terms of the payments and returns that NEDs receive from a company. The results provide support for recommendation 2.1 in the ASX's POGCG that requires the majority of the board to be independent directors. The paper highlights the need for boards to be careful when choosing and rewarding NEDs.

We examine whether the percentage of independent members sitting on the audit committee, in different institutional settings, impacts the market reaction (measured by the abnormal stock returns variance and the abnormal trading volume) to earnings announcements. For our sample composed of more than 7'600 earnings announcements made by European firms from 15 countries between 2006 and 2014, we find that the market reactions to earnings announcements are significantly larger when the audit committee is more independent in countries with weak institutional setting. Our results generally hold after controlling for numerous methodological issues. We conclude that more independent audit committees are substitutes for weak institutions to increase the credibility of earnings announcements. Our results should be of great interest for European regulators who recently introduced new requirements for public firms regarding audit committees’ independence.

This study is an updated and enhanced version of the study named “Building a methodology to assess the e‐government transformation success” presented by İskender and Özkan in the 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2012). The main purpose of this study is to explain the development of the methodology presented in the previous study in detail, but as an add‐on to the previous one, it also applies the developed methodology on the real data collected from Turkish public institutions to show the practical implementation of it and to evaluate the preliminary results.

The methodology explained in this study is designed to collect quantitative data to assess the relationship between the success level of e‐government transformation in Turkish public institutions (dependent variable) and the probable factors (independent variables) which might be effective on this success. The dependent variable is formed by using the framework of IS Success Model created by DeLone and McLean (D&M IS Success Model), while the independent variables are gathered from literature by analyzing 100 studies focusing on probable success factors.

The major output of this study is a common methodology designed to collect and analyze the data of different stakeholder groups in e‐government transformation, but the practical implementation shows that the independent variables gathered from the literature as the probable causes of the success in e‐government transformation are not really the causes of this success, although they are positively correlated to it. In addition to this, trying to evaluate the effect of each single independent variable on the dependent variable separately is not a logical way, as some of these variables are subject to reciprocal suppression with the other ones.

Although the developed methodology is a generic one, the practical implementation of it in this study only uses the data of Turkish public institutions.

Since the methodology is a generic one, it might be used by the other interested researchers to do similar or alternative analyses with the same or different sample groups.

Understanding the relationship between the e‐government transformation success and the probable success factors better might be helpful to develop better policies focusing on the social, legal, technical and economic dimensions of the subject more properly.

Apart from the similar studies in the literature, the methodology developed in this study provides a way for the researchers who want to collect comparable quantitative data not only from external stakeholders (citizens who use e‐government services) but also from internal stakeholders (government officials who provide these services and benefit from them in the internal processes of the public institutions).