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This paper aims to examine the effect of family control on corporate anticorruption disclosures of UK publicly listed firms and whether female board directors moderate the latter relationship.

This paper uses Poisson regression analysis for a sample of 1,546 FTSE 350 firm-year observations. Weighted least squares and propensity score matching are then used to assess the robustness of the findings.

The results show that family ownership and involvement are negatively associated with anticorruption disclosures. The tests of moderation indicate that female directors decrease the negative effect of family control on anticorruption disclosures.

To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate the impact of family control on anticorruption disclosures while taking into consideration the moderating effect of female directors.

The growing international legal agenda and the fast development of corporate governance rules are now prompting firms to put emphasis on anti-corruption procedures. On the other hand, wide-ranging concerns have been raised by regulators and policymakers regarding the effectiveness of audit committees in promoting ethical behavior and safeguarding auditor independence from the adverse consequences of purchasing non-audit services. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the adoption of anti-corruption measures and perceived auditor independence in the context of audit committees.

After conducting the Breusch–Pagan Lagrange Multiplier test and the Hausman test, the random-effect model is used as the most appropriate estimator. Several endogeneity tests are also used to account for the endogenous nature of the corporate governance variables in the models.

Using a sample of UK FTSE 350 firms, this paper provides evidence that anti-corruption efforts are associated with lower purchases of non-audit services and lower economic bonding between auditors and their clients. Furthermore, the findings of this paper reveal that the adoption of anti-corruption efforts substitutes the role of audit committees in enhancing perceived auditor independence and that audit committees do not play a significant incremental role.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to focus on bolstering perceived auditor independence while enhancing the control and ethical environment from the clients’ side instead of the auditors’ side.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effect of family involvement in ownership, management and directorship on audit fees during the crisis and non-crisis periods.

Following Anderson and Reeb (2003), this paper uses a two-way fixed effect model to examine the impact of family control on audit fees in crisis and non-crisis periods. The fixed effects include dummy variables for each year and each industry code in the sample.

This paper finds that during normal economic periods, family firms pay lower audit fees relative to non-family firms because of the incentive alignment or monitoring effect. While, during crisis periods, family firms pay higher audit fees because of the shareholder expropriation effect.

The results reported in this paper have both practical and policy implications for the demand and supply of audit services to firms having different ownership structures.

This is the first study of its kind to examine the effect of family ownership and involvement on audit fees during the crisis period.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between audit committee characteristics and firm performance, and whether family ownership and involvement moderate the latter relationship.

Following Anderson and Reeb (2003), this paper estimates a two-way fixed effects model. A sub-sample analysis is used by first examining the impact of audit committee effectiveness on firm performance only in non-family firms and then only in family firms. A fully interacted model was also analyzed in the robustness tests.

This paper finds that the audit committee characteristics of size, expertise and meeting frequency are positively and significantly related to non-family firm performance, while insignificantly related to family firm performance.

The evidence reported in this paper may be of use for regulators and policy makers pondering corporate governance reforms, as well as for investors, managers and minority shareholders concerned with firm performance and valuation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to examine the moderating effect of family control and involvement on the relationship between firm performance and audit committee effectiveness in terms of size, expertise and meeting frequency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how chief executive officers’ (CEOs) narcissism impacts firm performance and how this, in turn, affects a CEO’s positive rhetorical tone.

The narcissism score is measured by using an analytical composite score for each CEO based on eight factors. The paper uses textual analysis on a sample of 848 CEO letters of US firms over the period 2010–2019. WarpPLS software, version 7.0 was used to conduct structural equation modeling through the partial least squares because a non-linear algorithm exists between CEO narcissism, firm performance and positive tone, and the values of path coefficients moved from non-significant to significant.

The results suggest that performance partially mediates the relationship between CEO narcissism and positive tone. This indicates that not all the positivity expressed by narcissistic CEOs is opportunism; some of it is indeed driven by better performance. The reported findings indicate that firm performance explains one-quarter of a CEO’s positive words, whereas some three-quarters of the positivity is driven by a narcissistic CEO (i.e. opportunism). A comparison of letters signed by highly narcissistic and less narcissistic leaders reveals that among those letters signed by highly narcissistic leaders, firm performance plays a significant mediating role between narcissistic tendencies and positive tone. However, among those with less narcissistic score, there is no evidence that performance mediates the tone and narcissism. Interestingly, both highly narcissistic and less narcissistic CEOs use positive words and optimistic expressions even when their firms perform poorly or negatively.

The results help shareholders be aware that CEOs may opportunistically use their personal characteristics and language to manipulate them. Data limitations about women CEOs were one of the reasons behind the small proportion of women CEOs in this study, making it low in generalizability.

A comprehensive review showed that none of previous studies examined the more ambiguous relationship between a CEO’s narcissist tendency, the firm’s performance, and CEO rhetorical tone. As one set of studies focused on Narcissism → Performance, and the other one on Performance → Tone, this current study completes the picture with Narcissism → Performance → Tone.

Since 2005, wide-ranging concerns have been raised about misleading revenue recognition practices, especially during and after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis. There is a lack of research into the relationship between corporate governance (CG) mechanisms and premature revenue recognition (PRR). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper uses a generalised least squares regression analysis of a sample of 854 FTSE 350 firm–year observations. Stubben (2010) discretionary revenue (DR) model is used to measure PRR as it is considered less biased, better specified and more likely to reduce measurement error than accrual models.

The results suggest that the size of audit committees plays an effective role in constraining PRR. Moreover, PRR is more likely to be curbed in the presence of small boards comprising a higher proportion of non-executive directors. Additional tests reveal that the relationship between board size and PRR is non-linear.

The findings address the concerns of corporate firms, capital providers, UK regulators and standard-setters regarding misleading revenue recognition practices and should be considered while setting new governance reform recommendations in response to changing economic conditions.

This is the first study that adopts the DR model of Stubben (2010) to capture PRR and examines its association with CG internal mechanisms. Moreover, the paper considers an important time period – from 2005 to 2013 – in which many significant developments took place.