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This study analyses interlocking directorates from the perspective of an emerging market, Mexico, where formal institutions are weak, and family firms with high ownership concentration dominate. It responds to recent calls in the literature on interlocks, which urge the differentiation between family and non-family businesses and to complete more research on emerging economies.

A database was constructed for 89 non-financial companies (52 family-owned) listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV) from 2001 to 2014. This period includes normal times and an episode of financial crisis (2009–2010). To test the hypotheses, a dynamic panel model (in two stages) is used, applying GMM.

In normal times, the advantages of Board Chairman (COB) interlocks for the performance of publicly traded Mexican family firms are obtained regardless of the weak formal institutional environment. By contrast, during financial crisis, interlocking family COBs are more likely to jointly expropriate minority shareholders with actions that further their family objectives, which mitigates the positive effect of interlocks on performance. These findings contrast with the insignificant effects of COB interlocks found for non-family corporates.

A new framework is proposed which, through agency theory, finds points of concordance among resource dependence and class hegemony theories, to understand the effect of interlocking directorates on the performance of family firms operating in Mexico. The results of the empirical exercise for family companies listed on BMV during normal and financial crisis periods suggest its applicability.

This study aims to investigate how phishers apply persuasion principles and construct deceptive URLs in mobile instant messaging (MIM) phishing.

In total, 67 examples of real-world MIM phishing attacks were collected from various online sources. Each example was coded using established guidelines from the literature to identify the persuasion principles, and the URL construction techniques employed.

The principles of social proof, liking and authority were the most widely used in MIM phishing, followed by scarcity and reciprocity. Most phishing examples use three persuasion principles, often a combination of authority, liking and social proof. In contrast to email phishing but similar to vishing, the social proof principle was the most commonly used in MIM phishing. Phishers implement the social proof principle in different ways, most commonly by claiming that other users have already acted (e.g. crafting messages that indicate the sender has already benefited from the scam). In contrast to email, retail and fintech companies are the most commonly targeted in MIM phishing. Furthermore, phishers created deceptive URLs using multiple URL obfuscation techniques, often using spoofed domains, to make the URL complex by adding random characters and using homoglyphs.

The insights from this study provide a theoretical foundation for future research on the psychological aspects of phishing in MIM apps. The study provides recommendations that software developers should consider when developing automated anti-phishing solutions for MIM apps and proposes a set of MIM phishing awareness training tips.