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The purpose of this paper was to examine the difference in the effect on external marketing effectiveness of gender similar boards and gender dissimilar boards in the agro-manufacturing industry in Zimbabwe.

Based on a multi-item construct of external marketing effectiveness, data were gathered from 56 agro-manufacturing firms. The significant differences in the effect of marketing activities designed by male, gender-diverse and female boards on the level of external marketing effectiveness of the firms were examined using MANOVA.

The results suggest significant differences on the levels of external marketing effectiveness between all female boards and all male and gender-diverse boards. Female boards indicated high levels of external marketing effectiveness on customer-perceived value, loyalty, satisfaction, brand performance and symbolic meaning. The study concludes that marketing effectiveness will only be achieved by firms that develop relevant marketing strategies for the female consumer market.

The sample for this research was drawn from agro-manufacturing firms in Zimbabwe. Therefore, the applicability of these findings to other countries should be done with caution. In addition, the sample for the research was rather small, with only a few female boards. If conducted with a larger sample, the results could be different. The developed scale to measure external marketing effectiveness may require to be tested by other researchers in different settings to confirm its applicability in measuring the construct in multiple settings.

Prior research shows that corporate board effectiveness has tended to be measured in terms of corporate financial performance. This research measures board effectiveness from the extent to which its gender composition has an effect on the ability of manufacturing firms to serve emerging needs of female consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand dependency issues between the CEO and the board as well as the between the board and CEO through Emerson’s power dependency framework.

A symbolic management approach is integrated with a board-CEO power dependency model to study the dependency issues.

According to the symbolic management perspective, uncertainty increases the likelihood of symbolic actions. A high level of uncertainty in CEO dependency issues suggests a high likelihood that board power over the CEO is manifested on a symbolic level, whereas a low level of uncertainty in board dependency issues suggests otherwise for CEO power over the board. The core of board-dependency issues is information provision.

A focus on improving board control over CEO performance, compensation and strategic proposals is likely to generate symbolic actions without an effective result.

The paper advocates that an effective approach to enhance board power is through reducing board information dependency on the CEO.

There has been increasing interest in Australia regarding corporate boards, their role and the contribution they make to organisations' performance and success. There is however, a gap in our knowledge about what board members do. To better understand boards, we need to know more about the behaviour of those who sit on boards. Many chairmen and all non‐executive directors serve on corporate boards in a part‐time capacity, however, such part‐time service does not negate a role in strategy. The purpose of this paper is to ask how, if at all, do part‐time board members influence strategy in Australian public companies?

This paper first examines the literature on choice, change and control as key aspects of firms' strategic conduct. Second, attention turns to generating empirical data to examine how part‐time board members engage with these processes. Attention is given to the actions of part‐time board members vis‐à‐vis executive directors, both inside and outside the boardroom. Data from interviews with 20 board members are interpreted using the 1999 framework of McNulty and Pettigrew which conceptualises part‐time board members' involvement in strategy as: ”taking strategic decisions”, ”shaping strategic decisions” and ”shaping the content, context and conduct of strategy”.

Each of the three levels of part‐time board member involvement in strategy described by McNulty and Pettigrew engage part‐time board members in processes of choice, change and control in differing ways. Part‐time board members are able to shape both the ideas that form the content of corporations' strategies and the methodologies and processes by which those ideas evolve. In so doing, part‐time board members are capable of exerting control over management and influencing processes of strategic choice and change. Boards of directors have a role in strategy formulation, strategic decision‐making and strategic control.

The board's role is in the driver's seat not as a rubber stamp. A process whereby board members can engage and exert a controlling influence over strategic direction and outcomes of the corporation is of benefit not only to Australian corporations but has global corporate benefit. The paper describes and analyses the contribution to strategy made by board members in five Australian companies

This paper describes and analyzes the contribution to strategy made by board members in five Australian companies.

Although resource dependence theory (RDT) has substantially deepened the understanding of the function and role of boards, no systematic review of this body of work has yet been undertaken. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize prior research on the strategically relevant resources provided by board members to their organization in the light of RDT and indicate avenues for future research.

The review covers 79 research articles from 1978 to 2016 dealing with the resource provision of boards of directors.

Board capital research most often assumes a positive, linear relationship between board capital, resource provision and ultimately firm-level performance outcomes. This tendency tends to exclude from view the possibility of important trade-offs relevant to both theory and practice. Future research will need to incorporate more complex models that take into consideration nonlinear and curvilinear effects. The authors outline opportunities to advance board research by refining the methodological techniques employed.

By recommending investigation of the important trade-offs inherent in board composition, the authors seek to inspire future research that offers practical guidance for improving the effectiveness of corporate boards.

This paper aims to chart the influence of McCarthyism and of FBI surveillance practices on a number of prominent American social scientists, market researchers, opinion pollsters and survey research practitioners during the post-war years. Hitherto disparate sets of historical evidence on how Red Scare tactics influenced social researchers and marketing scientists are brought together and updated with evidence from original archival research.

The paper draws on the existing secondary literature on how social research practitioners and social scientists reacted to the unusually high pressures on academic freedom during the McCarthy era. It supplements this review with evidence obtained from archival research, including declassified FBI files. The focus of this paper is set on prominent individuals, mainly Bernard Berelson, Samuel Stouffer, Hadley Cantril, Robert S. Lynd, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Herta Herzog, Ernest Dichter, but also the Frankfurt School in exile.

Although some of the historiography presents American social scientists and practitioners in the marketing research sector as victims of McCarthyism and FBI surveillance, it can also be shown that virtually all individuals in focus here also developed strategies of accommodation, compromise and even opportunism to benefit from the climate of suspicion brought about by the prevailing anti-Communism.

Anyone interested in questions about the morality of marketing, market research and opinion polling as part of the social sciences practiced in vivo will need to pay attention to the way these social-scientific practices became tarnished by the way prominent researchers accommodated and at times even abetted McCarthyism.

Against the view of social scientists as harassed academic minority, evidence is presented in this paper which shows American social scientists who researched market-related phenomena, like media, voters choices and consumer behaviour, in a different light. Most importantly, this paper for the first time presents archival evidence on the scale of Paul F. Lazarsfeld’s surveillance by the FBI.

The paper aims to investigate the impact of political connections and board ethnicity on the value relevance of earnings and book value in Mauritius.

This study is based on a sample of 541 Mauritian-listed firm-year observations for 2001–2016. Financial and board diversity data have been collected using the listed firms’ annual reports and from reports published by the Stock Exchange of Mauritius. Political connection data was derived from the directory of Chief of State and Cabinet members. The research hypotheses were empirically tested using a modified Ohlson (1995) price model.

This study shows that political connections negatively impact the value relevance of earnings and book value. The authors find that firms with Franco-Mauritian directors will constrain political connections’ negative impact. The authors find contrasting results for Indo-Mauritian directors since they form an integral part of the government in Mauritius.

This study contributes to the scarce accounting literature in Mauritius. Firstly, no study has investigated the relationship between the value relevance of accounting information and political connections in Mauritius. Secondly, Mauritius’s capital market is dominated by a non-indigenous ethnic group, Franco-Mauritians, who remain the economic elite. Hence, Mauritius presents an opportunity to bring forth another important aspect in the capital market and corporate governance; diversity on the board of directors. Therefore, the study extends to the political connections and board diversity literature.

A briefing on the phenomenon of economically targeted investments. Where they are used and why they exist. If you are at all involved with public pension funds, this is must reading.

This paper presents an alternative, “Latin” vision of our societies. Here the urgent societal issue is not to celebrate freedom from social constraints, but to re‐establish communal embeddedness. The citizen of 2002 is less interested in the objects of consumption than in the social links and identities that come with them. This Latin view holds that people like to gather together in tribes and that such social, proximate communities are more affective and influential on people’s behaviour than either marketing institutions or other “formal” cultural authorities. There is also an element of resistance and re‐appropriation in the acts of being, gathering and experiencing together. This view of the shared experience of tribes sets it apart from both Northern notions of segmented markets and one‐to‐one relationships. In this Latin view, the effective marketing of 2002 and beyond is not to accept and exploit consumers in their contemporary individualisation, as Northern approaches might. Rather the future of marketing is in offering and supporting a renewed sense of community. Marketing becomes tribal marketing. In a marketing profession challenged by the Internet phenomenon, tribal marketing is by no means just another passing fad but a Trojan horse to induce companies to take on board the re‐emergence of the quest for community.

Audit committees (ACs) have been perceived as an important means of corporate governance, safeguarding the interests of shareholders by monitoring internal control and risk management. This study aims to examine specific structural and operational characteristics of ACs for firms in Hong Kong, where regulators have strived to adhere to international compliance standards.

This study is based on a cross‐sectional examination of disclosures on ACs by 223 listed companies in Hong Kong.

The independence and financial expertise of AC members do not enhance the value of the respective firms, despite maintaining satisfactory compliance. The discrepancy in the value relevance of ACs in prior studies is explained by the possible inadequacy of the resources available to ACs.

The data in this study are entirely from secondary sources of disclosures by listed companies for the year immediately following the implementation of the code of best practices of corporate governance. No in‐depth case studies are supplemented.

A key implication of this study to the regulators is that the proper allocation of resources to an AC should be considered beyond the independence and financial expertise of AC members to ensure the effectiveness of an AC.

This paper is an empirical study about the practices and compliance of ACs among listed companies in a global financial centre.

In view of the current climate change emergency and the growing importance of the climate-related accountability of companies, this paper aims to advance a comprehensive understanding of the determinants of carbon-related chief executive officer (CEO) compensation.

Building on the agency-theoretical perspective on executive compensation and existing work in the fields of management, corporate governance, cultural studies, and behavioral science, this paper derives a multilevel framework of the determinants of carbon-related CEO compensation.

This paper maps the determinants of carbon-related CEO compensation at the societal, organizational, group, and individual levels of analysis. It also provides research propositions on the determinants that can support and challenge the implementation of this instrument of environmental corporate governance.

In the past literature, the determinants of carbon-related CEO compensation have remained largely unexplored. This paper contributes to the academic discussion on environmental corporate governance by showcasing the role of interlinkages among the determinants of carbon-related CEO compensation and the possible countervailing impacts. In view of the complex interdisciplinary nature of climate change impact, this paper encourages businesses practitioners and regulators to intensify their climate change mitigation efforts and delineates the levers at their disposal.