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Motivated by the agency theory, this study aims to empirically examine the nexus between board attributes and a firm’s financing decisions of non-financial listed firms in Palestine and how the previous relationship is moderated and shaped by the level of gender diversity.

Multiple regression analysis on a panel data was used. Further, we applied three different approaches of static panel data “pooled OLS, fixed effect and random effect.” Fixed-effects estimator was selected as the optimal and most appropriate model. In addition, to control for the potential endogeneity problem and to profoundly analyze the study data, the authors perform the one-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. Dynamic panel GMM specification was superior in generating robust findings.

The findings clearly unveil that all explanatory variables in the study model have a significant influence on the firm’s financing decisions. Moreover, the results report that the impact of board size and board independence are more positive under conditions of a high level of gender diversity, whereas the influence of CEO duality on the firm’s leverage level turned from negative to positive. In a nutshell, gender diversity moderates the effect of board structure on a firm’s financing decisions.

This study was restricted to one institutional context (Palestine); therefore, the results reflect the attributes of the Palestinian business environment. In this vein, it is possible to generate different findings in other countries, particularly in developed markets.

The findings of this study can draw responsible parties and policymakers’ attention in developing countries to introduce and contextualize new mechanisms that can lead to better monitoring process and help firms in attracting better resources and establishing an optimal capital structure. For instance, entities should mandate a minimum quota for the proportion of women incorporation in boardrooms.

This study provides empirical evidence on the moderating role of gender diversity on the effect of board structure on firm’s financing decisions, something that was predominantly neglected by the earlier studies and has not yet examined by ancestors. Thereby, to protrude nuanced understanding of this novel and unprecedented idea, this study thoroughly bridges this research gap and contributes practically and theoretically to the existing corporate governance–capital structure literature.

This paper aims to enumerate the factors influencing the process of decision-making, those which are mostly related to personality affected by cultures and sub-cultures dominating the individual’s life, such as possessing internal and external control agents, tolerating or avoiding ambiguities and its comparison with a belief in fatalism or free will and the effect of these beliefs and traits on the personality.

This paper demonstrates that these beliefs would result in the formation of different personal characteristics; for instance, active and passive individuals and those who are keen to discover problems to solve them and change the existing state of affairs to the desired ones. Some individuals can make decisions and some cannot.

The researcher has tried to make a comparative study and address the genuine Islamic culture as manifested in the Quran, Prophet’s Tradition and Shiite way of life. In this relation, the case studies are the Battle of Uhud and the Quranic verses related to the research to demonstrate that a Muslim manager, by dismissing fatalism while trusting in God’s blessing, could be distinguished from others.

This study adds to our knowledge that managers can make sound decisions by relying on their Shiite culture, self-confidence, rational thinking, consulting the wise people and above all trusting in God.

The purpose of this paper is to build a framework that intends to help organizations define, implement and control their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Based on the stakeholder perspective, this paper proposes a sustainability management control system (SMCS) specifically made for the definition and implementation of CSR strategy, by linking the firm’s material topics to its key stakeholders, thus, allowing our model to be dynamic to different business environments.

In this paper, the authors constructed their model based on a review of selective relevant studies about CSR and SMCSs. This paper also went through different practical concepts from leading sustainability guidelines and stakeholder’s engagement manuals, discussing the stakeholder identification and prioritization, to re-center the debate to the strategic importance of the stakeholder perspective in defining and implementing CSR strategy, as well as its importance in how organizations can define proxies to assess the performance of their CSR initiatives.

Adopting the stakeholder theory as a key lens to re-frame, organize and guide the debate over the performance consequences of CSR has the potential to overcome the simplistic and (eventual) misleading conceptions of CSR strategy implementation, thus fostering the move toward more effective and efficient CSR strategies, by developing management control system (MCS) typical for CSR issues.

The full process of the model outlined in this paper aims to provide a comprehensive and forward-looking tool for CSR and sustainability strategy implementation and assessment. Our model could help companies to gain an overview and an understanding of the relative importance of the material topics of their business activities that should be addressed and how they are related to the key stakeholders, thus, eventually leading to more equitable and sustainable social development by giving those who have a right to be heard the opportunity to be considered in the sustainability decision-making and strategy processes, in the aim of making valuable contributions to social, economic and environmental spheres.

The paper answers the call for research for developing novel theoretical foundations to design MCSs for CSR implementation. Therefore, the paper suggests an innovative model of SMCS for CSR strategy definition, development and implementation and helping organizations to define and develop key sustainability indicators specific to their business environment. The model also presents an opportunity to rethink and advance the understanding of how managers can prioritize competing stakeholders’ claims, which are constrained by the company’s business activities impacts.

The purpose of this study is to explore whether different board diversity attributes (corporate governance aspect) can be used to predict financial distress. This study also aims to identify what type of prediction models are more applicable to capture board diversity along with conventional predictors.

This study used Chinese A-listed companies during 2007–2016. Board diversity dimensions of gender, age, education, expertise and independence are categorized into three broad categories; relation-oriented diversity (age and gender), task-oriented diversity (expertise and education) and structural diversity (independence). The data is divided into test and validation sets. Six statistical and machine learning models that included logistic regression, dynamic hazard, K-nearest neighbor, random forest (RF), bagging and boosting were compared on Type I errors, Type II errors, accuracy and area under the curve.

The results indicate that board diversity attributes can significantly predict the financial distress of firms. Overall, the machine learning models perform better and the best model in terms of Type I error and accuracy is RF.

This study not only highlights symptoms but also causes of financial distress, which are deeply rooted in weak corporate governance. The result of the study can be used in future credit risk assessment by incorporating board diversity attributes. The study has implications for academicians, practitioners and nomination committees.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to comprehensively investigate how different attributes of diversity can predict financial distress in Chinese firms. Further, this study also explores, which financial distress prediction models can show better predictive power.

This study aims to examine the relationship between board capital and firm performance in the Chinese tourism industry.

The study’s sample includes firms from the Chinese hotel, air transportation/travel and catering industries. This study explores the governance environment in tourism industries. This study estimates three dimensions of the board, including education, expertise and directors interlock. These dimensions are further grouped as human capital (i.e. education and expertise), social capital (interlocks) and board capital (sum of social and human capital). Ordinary least square regressions with multiple robustness tests are used to investigate the effect of board capital on firm value in Chinese listed tourism firms during 2005–2018.

This study finds that board capital positively impacts firm performance in its dimensions of human and social capital. This study also highlights the two important ownership contexts, namely, institutional investors and state-ownership, that shape the board capital-firm performance association in the Chinese tourism industry.

The findings suggest that board capital plays a significant role in corporate decisions. The results illustrate that higher board capital improves both governance mechanisms and resource provision roles of the board, resulting in higher firm value. The results further offer implications for managers and shareholders of tourism firms when electing directors as shareholders’ representatives.

The study has two important contributions. First, it extends the prior literature of firm value by considering the board’s human and social dimensions in the tourism sector. Second, contrary to prior research on board, this study takes three facets of board capital, education, expertise and interlocks that improve governance mechanisms and bring new resources in the shape of skills, knowledge and expertise.

In the last few years increasing attention has been paid to employee relations management within the multi‐divisional company. This has come about partly because of the recent growth in the incidence of such organisational structures within Britain and partly because of the growing realisation that employee relations management within multi‐divisional structures differs from other organisational structures; for instance the unitary or functionally organised company.

The purpose of this study shows how overall board diversity influences corporate risk-taking. Board diversity is quantified into task-oriented diversity (tenure and education) and relation-oriented diversity (age and gender). Further, this study tests whether the association of board diversity and corporate risk varies across state-owned firms (SOEs) and non-state-owned firms (NSOEs).

The authors used a sample of Chinese listed firms over the period 1999-2017. The results are estimated using the fixed-effects model. To deal with the endogeneity problem and single model bias, the authors use a dynamic model, i.e. two-step generalized method of moment’s model.

The results show that both task-oriented and relation-oriented diversity reduces corporate risk. Further, the authors document that overall board diversity reduces risk-taking across different types of firms, that is, SOEs and NSOEs. These results are consistent after controlling for endogeneity problems.

The results provide implications for enhancing corporate governance practices by considering overall board diversity as an important factor influencing corporate decisions. The findings suggest that policymakers and shareholders should consider different diversity attributes important for the composition of a board, which can enhance board outcomes.

Most of the prior studies considered only one dimension of diversity, and therefore, have overlooked the overall board diversity. Unlike prior studies, this study considers four board diversity attributes – age, gender, tenure and education, and further tests their association with corporate risk. Further, this study also examines the effect of overall diversity on corporate risk in SOEs and NSOEs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how multiple facets of board diversity influence technical efficiency (TE) and total factor productivity (TFP).

The authors measure board diversity in two dimensions: relation-related dimension (age and gender) and task-related dimension (tenure, education and expertise). The authors use a balanced panel data of 806 nonfinancial Chinese firms over the period 2009–2017. The authors use a two-stage approach for analysis. In the first stage, the authors use a non-parametric frontier approach to calculate the TE and factor productivity scores. In the second stage, the authors regressed these scores on board diversity attributes (relation-related diversity and task-related diversity).

By using tobit regression and two-step system GMM, the authors find that board diversity improves TE and TFP. The authors’ analyses illustrate that a higher diversity on corporate board (in terms of age, gender, tenure, education and expertise) positively influence firm efficiency.

The findings have important implications for policymakers. The findings suggest that regulators should devise policies to encourage board diversity. Because a diverse board can bring knowledge, skills, abilities, expertise and experience of diverse group members, which will ultimately enhance a firm’s efficiency. Especially, in the emerging markets (such as China), there is still a need for standard governance mechanisms; therefore, the authors suggest that policymakers should develop regulations and promote diversity of directors as one of the factors for improving the governance mechanisms, which will ultimately improve firms productivity.

Prior studies mostly considered only one dimension (such as gender) of diversity and, therefore, have overlooked how other dimensions influence firms. The authors consider several dimensions of diversity and quantify them into relation-related (age and gender) and task-related (tenure, education and expertise) attributes and show how they influence firms’ efficiency. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to comprehensively investigate how several facets of diversity influence a firm’s TE and TFP.

Although a substantial body of literature investigates the determinants of audit report lag (ARL), scant empirical evidence exists on the consequences of ARL. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between abnormally long ARL and future stock price crash risk.

This quantitative study employed a large scale (14,445 firm-year observations) of annual financials, audit and ownership information for the Chinese listed companies during 2002–2013 which were retrieved from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research database.

This study finds evidence that abnormally long ARL increases the risk of a future stock price crash. Furthermore, the study finds that this adverse consequence is more pronounced for firms with a poor internal control environment.

Recently literature started to explore the consequences of abnormal ARL such as going concern audit opinion and restatements in the subsequent periods. This paper reveals that abnormal ARL has consequences for investor wealth losses as well. This is relevant in China, where the ongoing economic growth has attracted, and will continue to attract, a growing body of domestic and international investors. Understanding what factors could expose investors to wealth losses is of paramount importance for allocating their scarce capital.

This study extends the scant literature on the consequences of ARL, and provides useful insights for the Chinese regulatory authorities when considering the appropriateness of the current filing deadline for listed firms.

This study aims to provide the intellectual structure of the academic literature on board characteristics and corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and corporate social responsibility performance (CSRP). To do that, the authors analyse the main theories, data sources and methodologies used by researchers, providing information on methodological bias and research gaps. Beyond that, this study offers a novel picture of the most critical drivers of CSRP/CSRD and offer constructive suggestions to guide future research.

A content analysis was performed on 242 articles extracted from the Web of Science database from 1992 to 2019.

Results indicate that board characteristics have a significant and increasing impact on corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. The results also revealed that the board practices play a crucial role in managing CSRP/CSRD-related issues. The study also identifies the effect of the critical board characteristics on CSRP, CSRD quantity and CSRD quality. Furthermore, the study findings provide an overarching picture of the patterns and trends of the systematic nexus between board characteristics and CSRP/CSRD quality and quantity.

The study findings help provide an overarching picture of the systematic nexus patterns and trends between board characteristics and CSRP/CSRD quality and quantity. These results draw potential future avenues to bridge the void in the current board–CSR literature by presenting fruitful and indispensable directions for future research (governance mechanisms, new methodologies, variables, countries, etc.). It also suggests multidimensional and in-depth insights for reforming the board of directors’ guidelines.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, minimal attention has been paid to systematising the literature on board and CSR.