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The role played by corporate governance mechanisms on corporate deleveraging policies has not been clarified. Empirical evidence is confined to developed economies, even with conflicting and inconclusive results. This paper aims to examine the role of corporate governance mechanisms, such as ownership structure, board composition and CEO dominance, in explaining corporate deleveraging policies.

Using a sample of listed Pakistani firms between 2010 and 2022, this study resorts to binary response models to examine the effects of governance mechanisms on firms’ decision to go debt-free.

A greater ownership concentration, institutional ownership and family ownership increase the propensity for zero leverage. Board gender diversity decreases the propensity for deleveraging policies, which seems to indicate that the presence of females reinforces the monitoring function of the board. Finally, lower managerial ownership or CEO dominance decreases the propensity toward zero leverage (interest convergence hypothesis), but higher managerial ownership or CEO dominance increases the propensity toward zero leverage (managerial entrenchment hypothesis).

Risk-averse managers who prefer to control a firm using little or no debt will find it easier to implement these financing policies in firms with greater ownership concentration and where institutional holders have a substantial stake. For shareholders, this study suggests that investing in firms with females on board reduces the risk of corporate deleveraging policies being adopted for entrenched reasons.

The presence of females on board seems to decrease the propensity of managers to adopt opportunistic actions and may also contribute to enhancing human welfare and society in developing countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study considering the effect of board diversity on zero leverage. Another singularity is that this study exhibits a nonlinear relationship between managerial ownership and corporate deleveraging policy.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This study is an attempt to verify the mostly anecdotal or case‐based assertions regarding the imperviousness of Japanese management to the threats of large institutional stockholders. Using data drawn from 118 corporations in five industry sectors, and applying an econometric technique, we propose to verify the differences, if any, in the relationship of a set of eight firmlevel strategic attributes and corporate efficiency across two distinct institutional ownership settings: high versus low. The test results reveal a structural homogeneity across both settings, suggesting that Japanese managers are independent of pressures from institutional owners across high and low levels of ownership. The study’s academic and managerial implications are also given.

The imposition of the Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Act and the NYSE/NASDAQ regulations boosted the proportion of independent directors serving on corporate boards. For certain firms, increasing the number of independent directors may impose costs that exceed the benefits. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of increased independence following SOX, relative to the pre-SOX board independence benchmark, on managerial authority and entrenchment within the firm.

Data are collected from COMPUSTAT, ExecuComp, and RiskMetrics. Data are divided into two periods, pre-SOX (1996-2001) and post-SOX (2002-2006). The focus is on the sub-group of firms who were not complying with the board independence requirement prior to SOX and became compliant afterwards. Various regressions are employed to assess the implications of increased independence following SOX on managerial authority and entrenchment.

The appreciation in board independence post-SOX significantly inflates both managerial compensation and the likelihood of CEO duality. Also, there is a positive association between board independence and managerial entrenchment during both the pre- and post-SOX periods. Imposed board composition requirements diminished board monitoring efficiency and boosted the CEO dominance and control over the firm.

This research adds to the extant literature investigating the implications of SOX on internal monitoring and governance. The results are based on an off-equilibrium phenomenon in which companies were obliged to alter their endogenously determined board structure. Thus, regulations to improve governance could backfire as the CEO might abuse them to extract private benefits.

The view that Japanese management is not such a harmonised solidarity as would initially appear is discussed. Three groups within Japanese management are identified: the power elite, belongers and survivors. The percentage each group represents and group characteristics are given. The role of the power elite is discussed in greater detail with particular reference to the taxation system and the structure of wealth which operates within Japan.

This paper aims to offer an empirical application of the concept of learning organization (LO) 2.0.

Based on fieldwork study, a case of Ricoh Ena Forest Project is presented to illustrate the contextualized and multi-stakeholder perspective of LO 2.0 in running an environmental sustainability project.

The case demonstrated the value of incorporating multiple stakeholders to develop a multi-party learning entity for sustainability pursuit. The findings also highlighted the importance of forfeiting managerial dominance and the creation of a shared commitment in implementing the concept of LO 2.0.

The study adds empirical evidence to the literature on how LO 2.0 can be implemented and provides guidance on tackling some of the potential challenges.

The history of academic inquiry into leadership as a discipline has yielded the unintended consequence of compounding confusion and perpetuating the myth of leadership as mystical. This paper takes that acknowledgement and inquires into the past and future of leadership theory development from a systemic perspective to define the concept, propose an initial framework in which literature and inquiry may be framed, and offer a curriculum for leader(ship) training and development. Three aspects are proposed – requisite, fantasy, and requisite fantasy. This paper suggests the latter is the most appropriate and defines leadership as a binding strange attractor to social patterns. Upon this definition, this paper proposes an initial framework of six elements and six relationships for assimilating and re-organizing the literature, prescriptions, and speculations surrounding the discipline. Lastly, this framework serves to propose a curriculum for advancing the practice of leadership through training, development, and education.

Ethics of governance deficiencies including weak management of the principal-agent problem by the board of directors and conflict over the strategic intent of the organisation between groups of employees such as the board of directors, top management team, and the middle-line managers working in small teams are age old problems for stock exchange listed companies. These matters continue to cause shareholders of listed companies much concern, creating tense annual general meetings and robust community debate on how to reign in blatant moments of managerial hegemony (or dominance) with agents exploiting principals, at times at great financial cost to long suffering shareholders. The role of the chairperson and the board applying agency theory is to manage these conflicts on behalf of the shareholders; however, in many instances, company directors have failed in their duties and investors have been aggrieved – the result, war in organisations. The challenge for organisations is to avoid this source of tension and war caused by emergence of managerial hegemony over the organisation and to promote sound executive stewardship and effective social exchange among the board, executive team, and middle-line managers. These challenges are discussed and solutions are developed. The importance of strategic intent as a unifying rhetorical message as a key component of an ethics of governance regime that keeps the peace and prevents war in the organisation is explained.

The purpose of this paper is to inquire whether gender plays a role in the supervisory preference of female workers, and to establish a starting‐point in the identification of any bias that is discovered.

A field experiment of 226 adults of both genders was used to test the hypotheses. It combined a video vignette with a survey that employed a dispositional index followed by attitudinal measures.

Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, and regression analyses were used to highlight the biases that were discovered. Females believed that other women are good managers, but the female workers did not actually want to work for them. The results may have some basis in females' perceptions of female managers as being high in dominance. The female manager was also seen as being emotional. More specifically, the female manager was seen as being more nervous and more aggressive than a male manager. It was also discovered that female preference for male supervisors increased with greater numbers of years in the workforce.

This is an exploratory study. Workers surveyed were enrolled in a large metropolitan US university. Subsequent studies need to include a broader sample, particularly including workers from earlier generations. Extensive additional research is essential.

The findings lend credence to strong but seldom discussed anecdotal undercurrents of women's unwillingness to work for other women. Although female managers have been studied to a limited degree, there has been no empirical research on the female subordinate relationship. The study makes an entry into this important question of whether women have a prejudice against working for other women. The practitioner/policymaker implications are substantial.