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This paper aims to investigate auditor choice in those Italian non-listed firms adopting the “traditional” model of corporate governance. In Italy, non-listed firms can choose between two types of auditor: the Board of Statutory Auditors (BSA), that is the statutory auditors, or an “external” auditor. At the same time, a BSA conducts the administrative auditing for all companies with equity exceeding €120,000.

The paper estimates a logistic regression model of firm auditor choice between an external auditor and the BSA, which incorporates variables proxying for both agency conflict and organizational complexity effects.

The results show that of the potential agency factors, only board independence drives auditor choice, whereas organizational complexity and risk factors including firm size, investment in inventories, subsidiary status and complexity drive auditor choice. These results may be explained in the administrative audit role of the BSA, which monitors both day-by-day firm operations and the financial statements preparation “project”. Stakeholders as a result are reassured that, in general, their interests are protected. Finally, it was found that legal form and voluntary International Financial Reporting Standards compliance exert an impact on auditor choice.

The paper provides support for an internal yet independent auditing body such as the Italian BSA as a wider model for corporate governance in European non-listed firms (OECD, 2004 and 2015). The BSA as an administrative and financial auditing body made up solely of independent highly qualified professionals can work within the firm on an operational basis, and in so doing can increase stakeholder protection.

Due to stakeholders’ concerns on the contribution of corporate governance in monitoring insurance companies during financial crisis, this study aims to investigate whether and how various corporate governance practices would have affected firm performance of listed and non-listed insurance firms in the UK during financial crisis.

This study uses a unique manually collected data set from listed and non-listed insurance firms in the UK and applies different regressions models to test the hypotheses and to address the endogeneity problem.

The findings show that board non-duality and the presence of a majority shareholder improve firm performance in insurance companies. Furthermore, the findings for the sub-samples indicate a stronger positive association between board of directors and firm performance in listed insurance companies after the financial crisis, while a positive impact has been found between large shareholders and external audit firms in non-listed insurance companies before and during the crisis.

The results offer important practical implications for the government, management, shareholders and policymakers. For example, regulators and policymakers should benefit from these results to revise the recommendations for corporate governance mechanisms that prove to be effective on firm performance, as well as those mechanisms that have different or unexpected effects among listed or non-listed firms and/or during the turbulent periods. Investors should be aware of those specific corporate governance mechanisms that would have higher effect on performance of UK insurance firms in which they are considering to invest in.

This study contributes to the current literature by exploring the effect of corporate governance on financial performance by comparing between listed and non-listed insurance companies during financial crisis. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use two new insurance-related performance measures, the revenue growth ratio and the adjusted combined ratio, as performance proxies to explore whether these new variables create any insights.

For real estate agency firms to market their services successfully they would need to understand the factors which motivate developers to engage them for their services. Examines the factors which motivate developers to appoint their marketing agents. Four categories of motivational factors could be identified for this study. These are the internal factors, external factors, characteristics of the development and characteristics of the marketing agents. From the groupings, a total of 21 sub‐factors were subsequently derived and tested against a random sample of 58 property developers in Singapore in a survey. These developers were classified further into the following categories which typify their characteristics: controlling interest; listed/non‐listed company; sale/lease decisions; and size of paid‐up capital.

The purpose of this paper is to study audit pricing and the Big4 fee premium in Belgium. While a number of studies have already explored these issues, the Belgian audit market provides an interesting setting to gain an additional insight into the pricing of audit services for many reasons (e.g. audit market concentration in Belgium is much lower than in other countries, the Belgian audit market mainly consists of non‐listed firms, etc.).

Besides the traditional audit fee model, based on seminal work by Simunic, the paper also estimates regression models in which the author allows coefficients to vary across Big4 and non‐Big4 auditors and control for self‐selection (based on a two‐stage procedure).

Using the traditional audit fee model, results suggest that Big4 auditors receive (or are able to charge) a fee premium compared to non‐Big4 auditors. Nevertheless, when the author allows regression coefficients to vary across Big4 and non‐Big4 auditors and control for self‐selection, the aforementioned finding does no longer hold. The results reveal differences in fee structures between Big4 and non‐Big4 auditors and suggest that Big4 auditors consider a richer set of variables when setting their fees.

Since Belgian firms are only required to disclose audit fees as from 2007 onwards, the analyses are based on data for one year only.

An important implication, at least from an academic point of view, is that the results clearly illustrate and corroborate the need to control for self‐selection when modelling audit fees (while this issue has been ignored by recent audit fee studies). The findings also have implications for the (Belgian) auditing profession. For example, the fact that significant differences are observed in audit pricing between the Big4 and non‐Big4 firms may have an impact on the (Belgian) audit services market (e.g. it might influence the competitive nature of the tendering process).

Using a two‐stage procedure, the results corroborate the need to control for self‐selection in modeling audit fees (an issue that has been largely ignored in the audit fee literature). In addition, the results reveal that Big4 and non‐Big4 auditors have different fee structures and that it is therefore important to allow the regression coefficients (and not only the intercept) to vary across both groups. Finally, the findings add to the very scarce evidence on audit pricing for non‐listed firms.

This study aims to validate a direct method to measure relational capital through the estimation of corporate brands. Considering the influence of relational capital management in leading performance and brand development, we consider brand value as a proxy for relational capital. The main research goal is to extend the previous literature on intellectual capital, financial performance and brand management by elaborating and testing an original approach for valuating corporate brands using regression analysis on multiples based on firm-specific accounting data and market information.

The authors propose two econometric models, for both listed and non-listed companies, which consider brand valuations made by primary consulting entities (Interbrand, Brand Finance, BrandZ, European Brand Institute) and multiples derived from accounting and market data of firms. Models were tested on a sample of nonfinancial firms for the period from 2006 to 2019, distinguishing between IAS/IFRS-based and US GAAP-based reporting standards.

The empirical results show that the identified set of market and accounting multiples proved to be significant information for estimating the value of brands within the IAS/IFRS framework, while a lower explanatory power was assessed for US GAAP firms. Furthermore, the empirical evidence confirm that the direct, relative approach based on multiples is more accurate for valuating listed firms than non-listed firms. Robustness analysis demonstrates that findings do not change significantly when the reference datasets and the main assumptions of the models are altered.

The statistical significance of the analysis is limited by the non-objective nature of brand value estimates. The use of additional sources for brand valuations might allow for the further assessment of the robustness of the relationships identified.

Due to their efficacy and ease of use, the proposed models represent valid practical tools for managers, investors, analysts and professional evaluators.

This work contributes to the existing literature through the identification of significant, stable relationships between brand values and the main economic, financial and asset characteristics of firms; the identification of those relationships would allow for the extension of the multiples approach also to the evaluation of brands.

This paper examines the issue of ISO 9000 certification and its perceived benefits for Singapore based companies. Using an empirical approach, the paper seeks to ascertain if certification has indeed improved the performance for listed and non‐listed companies. The results from a survey of 146 firms suggest that while certification leads to better overall financial performance, non‐listed certified firms experience better documentation procedures, higher perceived quality of products or services, and more effective communication among employees than listed certified firms. Some problems encountered in certification include the failures to establish adequate monitoring programs, to follow set procedures and to carry out appropriate management reviews of the new system as well as unclear authorisation.

This study examines the influence of access to finance and social capital on the improvement of the corporate performance of non-listed firms of Southeast Asian countries. Furthermore, this paper also explores the mediating role of firms' access to finance between the association of social capital and the improvement of corporate performance.

This study utilizes the Bank Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey from 2015 to 2017. Specifically, the survey was administered by the World Bank. Data were analyzed using structural modeling in Smart-PLS.

The findings show that firms' access to finance and social capital significantly influences the improvement of corporate performance. Additionally, the study’s analysis further reports the mediating role of firms' access to finance between the association of social capital and the improvement of corporate performance.

This study has implications for governments, regulators and policymakers for enhancing access to finance and social capital, and improving corporate performance.

This paper establishes the importance of firms' access to finance and social capital for improving firms' overall performance in the broader context of Southeast Asia.

This study aims to examine how crude palm oil (CPO) price impacts corporate default risk (CDR) of agricultural firms in Indonesia’s palm oil industry.

By applying a dynamic panel regression on listed CPO-based firms, the authors find that CPO price fluctuations are insignificant in explaining CDR.

The main determinants of CDR are internal factors, namely, excess stock market returns and return on assets. External factors do not play any role in influencing the CDR in the case of Indonesia. The results highlight the importance of completing risk analysis at the macro level with firm-specific factors.

The contributions aside, an important limitation of this study is that there is a small sample of listed firms. Most of these firms have the ability to mitigate risks. Therefore, further studies are needed to identify the default predictions for non-listed firms.

In the context of macro prudential policy in Indonesia, the findings imply that financial stability surveillance needs to be carried out in two areas: macroeconomic indicators and firm-specific indicators. Given the lack of listed CPO firms in Indonesia, the object of surveillance should focus on not only listed firms but also non-listed firms with large bank loans.

This study highlights the importance of completing risk analysis at the macro level with firm-specific factors in Indonesia as commodity exporting country.

This paper aims to examine empirically the relationships among industry environment, diversification motivations and corporate performance for a sample of Taiwanese automobile enterprises.

A 55‐item survey questionnaire was developed to obtain the responses from companies in the automobile industry in Taiwan. Independent sample t‐test and χ² tests were employed to confirm the homogeneity between the respondents and non‐respondents by firm's characteristics, including by industry, number of employees, and capital.

The results suggest that industry environment has positive and significant impact on diversification motivations, and has positive but not significant impact on corporate performance. Diversification motivations has positive and significant impact on corporate performance. The results also indicate that firms of higher capital amounts have greater influence on diversification motivations and corporate performance, firms of publicly listed have greater influence on industry environment, diversification motivations and corporate performance and firms of higher degree of diversification have greater influence on diversification motivations only.

Several limitations exist in this study. This study adopts the cross‐sectional research design and examines firms at one point time and because of the constraints of time and data availability, longitudinal research was not viable in this study. Also the amount of variation for some regression models is low.

The paper's results not only provide researchers with a theoretical basis for further research, but also provide top management teams with important data when engaging in diversification.

Examines budget planning; implementation and performance evaluation practices by utilizing a questionnaire survey of 54 medium and large sized companies located in Bahrain. Most of the companies prepare long‐range plans and operating budgets, and they follow a definite budget procedure and implementation methodology. Uses budget variances to measure a manager’s ability, for timely recognition of problems, and to improve the next period’s budget. While both the listed and non‐listed companies have reported many similar budget practices, the main differences were specific purposes served by budgets, degree of budget participation, periodicity of variance reporting, and purposes and authority to evaluate budget variance reports. In certain cases, firm size influences budgeting practices. Contributes toward filling a gap in the literature on the use of budgets as a planning and control tool in developing countries. Most prior studies were mainly confined to advanced countries. The study findings suggest the need for research on attitudes held by the budgetees towards the use of budget variances in the context of advanced management accounting techniques.