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This study distinctively explores the firm-level and national-level determinants of audit committee effectiveness (ACE) in the Libyan banking sector (LBS).

A mixed-methods approach has been employed to enhance the quality of the collected data and reduce the risk of bias. Five groups of actors in the Libyan banking sector were surveyed, including board members, AC members, executive managers, internal auditors and external auditors, further to interviewing a representative sample of these groups. In total, 218 survey responses were gathered, and 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The study results show that AC authority, financial expertise and diligence are positively and significantly attributed to ACE, although AC independence and resources are not significantly related to ACE. The authors find that the legal and regulatory environment, government intervention, and the accounting and auditing environment are perceived as important and associated with ACE regarding national-level factors. These findings are strongly supported by semi-structured interviews and suggest that both firm-level and national-level factors are essential in understanding ACE in Libya's banking sector.

The study’s evidence reiterates the vital need for more concentrated work to integrate governance, legislative and regulatory reforms to ensure the effectiveness of ACs as a key corporate governance (CG) mechanism in developing economies.

This study extends the literature relating measures of AC inputs and outputs by examining the perception of stakeholders to understand both the firm-level and national-level factors that affect ACE in a single institutional setting. Additionally, this work adds to the limited number of recent studies examining the role of ACs in the banking sector in developing economies.

This paper aims to examine the factors influencing the level of disclosures of sustainability (SR) and integrated report (IR) information in a developing country context, with particular reference to Kenya.

The study uses a panel data set of 419 firm-year observations of listed companies in Kenya covering the period 2010 through 2018. Data are collected from the annual reports and analysed using a generalized estimations equation model.

The results reveal that there is momentum towards newer reporting frameworks in Kenya with substantial IR and SR disclosures in their annual reports. The results also show that level of SR and IR disclosures is influenced by both agency-related factors (board gender diversity, audit committee independence, block ownership and the presence of foreign ownership). Additionally, institutional-related factors (regulatory pressure and promotional efforts of regulatory and professional bodies [reporting excellence awards]) influence the disclosures.

The results highlight that initiatives such as those led by the regulatory and professional bodies in Kenya are effective in motivating companies to enhance disclosures. Thus, regulators and professional bodies might need to continue and even intensify their efforts. These results have implications for further research as they show that SR and IR disclosures are influenced by similar factors.

The study has the potential to contribute to the ongoing initiatives and discussions on the adoption of IR by firms in Africa as spearheaded by the African Integrated Reporting Council.

To the best of the knowledge, the study is, perhaps, the first to examine both SR and IR disclosures at the same study allowing comparison of the extent and drivers of the two disclosures. Moreover, examining the institutional-related factors in a single country has not been done in prior literature, and so this is an innovation.

This paper aims to investigate corporate internet reporting (CIR) by Kenyan and Tanzanian listed companies and whether the level of CIR is related to corporate governance structures.

The authors collect data over a four-year period from companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and the Dar es Salaam Securities Exchange. Panel data models (random effects) are used for the analysis.

The results indicate that the level of CIR in both countries is high, but the highest in Kenya. The authors find that CIR increases with foreign ownership, audit committee independence and financial expertise but decreases with domestic ownership concentration. They also show that the effects of ownership concentration are moderated by country-specific factors. Overall, the results demonstrate that effective governance structures may lead to higher levels CIR in sub-Saharan Africans.

This study extends, as well as contributes to the existing literature by the examining the corporate governance-disclosure nexus relating to CIR in sub-Saharan Africa. These findings have policy implications for African countries looking to attract foreign investment.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are critical in the sustainability agenda, not only as catalysts for promoting sustainability practices but also because their activities have substantial social, economic and environmental impacts. Yet there is limited research that examines their sustainability performance. This paper aims to investigate the factors that are associated with sustainability performance in HEIs. Specifically, drawing from the stakeholder theory and exploiting Ullmann’s (1985) conceptual framework, this study examines the association between sustainability performance and stakeholder power, strategic posture and financial slack resources.

The authors draw the sample from the People & Planet University Green League Table for the period 2011–2019 and use the generalised estimating equations for the modelling approach.

This study finds that stakeholder power, in particular, funding grant income, tuition fee income and student and staff numbers, are positively associated with sustainability performance. In relation to strategic posture, this study finds that sustainability performance is negatively associated with governing body independence and gender diversity, and positively associated with internal structures. Finally, regarding financial slack resources, this study finds that surplus income (staff costs) is positively (negatively) associated with sustainability performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research contributes to several existing literature focusing on the not-for-profit sector by documenting, for the first time, the role of stakeholder power, strategic posture and slack financial resources on sustainability performance.

The paper includes relevant implications for HEI managers and regulators for promoting sustainability.

These results contribute to the literature on the factors influencing sustainability performance.

The purpose of this study is to provide a harmonisation framework for the diverse accounting practices by extractive industries.

The study takes a three-stage approach. The first involves a comprehensive literature review of the historical evolution of accounting regulations by extractive industries. The second involves constructing an accounting practice index for extractive industries. The third involves constructing a harmonisation framework.

The accounting practice index provides empirical evidence of the wide diversity of accounting practices by extractive industries. Analysis of the literature review addresses the several attempts by accounting and regulatory bodies to standardise the diverse practices of accounting by extractive industries and reasons for the lack of successful standardisations. The authors extract lessons from these previous attempts and propose a harmonisation framework.

The proposed harmonisation framework can be used to align together the diverse accounting practices by extractive industries and enhance comparability and consistency of accounting figures and statements produced by these industries. Harmonising the diverse accounting practices is crucial for investment decision-making.

The harmonisation framework is the first of its kind that could enhance the comparability of accounts of extractive industries’ firms and be used to harmonise diverse accounting practices by other industries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the extent and focus of supplementary narrative commentary (SNC) on amounts reported in the primary financial statements and board structure variables.

The study uses the disclosure index methodology to measure the extent of SNC in annual reports of 167 FTSE 250 companies. Ordinary least squares regression analysis is employed to examine the association between the extent and focus of SNC and board structure variables.

The findings show that the extent of SNC on amounts reported in the primary financial statements is about 30 per cent, suggesting that companies provide commentary on a small number of amounts reported in the financial statements. In terms of focus of SNC, companies provide greater SNC on amounts in the income statement relative to the balance sheet. The regression results indicate that the extent of SNC is negatively associated with board size, and positively associated with audit committee (AC) independence and financial expertise. Focus of SNC is negatively related to AC independence and finance expertise.

The research contributes to both the voluntary disclosure and impression management literature streams. The findings provide evidence of the extent and focus of SNC on amounts in the financial statements. They also demonstrate that board structure variables are related to the extent and focus of SNC on amounts in primary financial statements. These findings have implications for policy makers who have responsibilities for ensuring that users of annual reports receive adequate information to make decisions.

A number of studies have examined firms’ intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practices. However, the presentation format of IC disclosure (text, numerical and graphs/pictures) is yet to be examined. In addition, there is little evidence on the impact of capital market pressures on IC disclosure. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between presentation format of IC disclosures and three market factors (market-to-book ratio, share price volatility and multiple listing (ML)).

Using content analysis, the authors examine the level of IC disclosure provided in the annual reports of 100 IC-intensive listed UK firms. A 61-IC-item research instrument is used to measure IC disclosure and regression analysis is employed to examine the relation between disclosure and the market factors, controlling for corporate governance and firm-specific variables.

Text is the most commonly used format for IC disclosure, whilst the use of graphs/pictures is very low. The findings of the relation between market factors and IC disclosure are mixed. Market-to-book ratio is significantly related to disclosure in text and numerical, but not to graphs/pictures. Share price volatility is only associated with graphs/pictures, whilst ML is only related to text.

The authors findings suggest that the impact of capital market pressures on IC disclosure might differ with presentation format. In this context, the study makes a significant contribution to the IC disclosure literature.

The focus of the first two papers in this volume is controls. Egbe, Tsamenyi and Sa’id investigate the operations of formal and informal controls in a multinational subsidiary in Nigeria using a case study approach. This involved semi-structured interviews, observation, document analyses and a focus group discussion. The paper concludes that formal internal controls such as budgets, performance evaluation and rewards and staff recruitment operate alongside informal internal controls including beliefs systems, values and existing norms. In particular the study reports that forms of informal controls such as trust were found to be important in the organisation where superiors in certain instances assigned responsibilities to members of their teams not on the basis of their abilities or skills but because the member could be trusted. Egbe, Tsamenyi and Sa’id conclude that such informal controls could have a controlling effect and influence the formal organisational controls. The findings have significant implications for understanding the design of management controls in LDCs in general, and Africa in particular.