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Directors can become overextended when they serve on multiple boards simultaneously. Previous scholars mostly considered directorships held at listed companies. This study aims to investigate the extent and impact of director overboardedness in an emerging market by using a comprehensive measure.

The analysis covered 1,600 directors who served on the boards of the 100 largest companies listed in South Africa over the period 2011–2016. In addition to directorships held at listed companies, board positions at unlisted companies and other entities such as state-owned enterprises were considered. Board committee memberships at the sample companies were furthermore included. Random effects ANOVA was conducted to test for significant differences in board and committee meeting attendance.

Two-thirds of the considered directors were overboarded when accounting for all their positions. Board committee memberships increased notably over the research period. There was no significant difference in the percentage of board meetings attended between overboarded and non-overboarded directors. However, those directors who held three or more positions simultaneously attended significantly more board committee meetings than their counterparts who held fewer positions. Of the considered committees, the remuneration committee typically had the highest proportion of overboarded directors.

Eligible board candidates are in high demand given the limited talent pool in South Africa. The findings contradict the busyness hypothesis and suggest that director overboardedness should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

This paper aims to provide an exploratory analysis of male and female directors, comparing the case of UK FTSE 350 boards of directors for 2010–2018, with Norwegian boards from 2002 to 2018, to examine patterns of busy female directors. This paper considers the differences between the effects of interest groups’ actions and those of quotas on the emergence of busy female directors.

This paper uses a longitudinal approach, providing an examination of both non-busy directors and busy directors sitting on the boards of UK and Norwegian firms, with a focus on female directors. Drawing on methods from social network analysis, several trends and patterns are mapped for the two corporate systems. The paper tests whether the proportion of busy male directors is significantly different from the proportion of busy female directors in the two institutional settings.

The results show there has been an increase in the proportion of busy female directors, whereas the level of busy male directors is slightly decreasing in the UK from 2010 to 2018. In Norway, following the introduction of gender quotas on corporate boards, there has been an increase in overboarded directors, especially female directors, along with the rise of so-called “golden skirt” directors. However, when compared to the UK case, the proportion of busy male and female directors is higher, suggesting that the emergence of the golden skirts in Norway is not a result of quotas alone.

The topic of busy directors has received increased attention in recent years, yet the gender of these directors is often neglected. This paper provides an overview of the characteristics of busy female directors for large UK and Norwegian firms, presenting avenues for future research.

This study comprehensively reviews the global literature on busy boards and audit committees.

Six eight articles on busy boards and audit committees from prominent accounting journals are reviewed and analyzed under the “reputation” and “busyness” premise.

Most studies advocating the “reputation” hypothesis have the consensus that busy directors have their benefits (knowledge spillovers), particularly regarding sharing their in-depth knowledge, experiences and expertise. This phenomenon is pronounced for younger and IPO firms, which have high advising and financing needs. From the “busyness” perspective, busy directors are too overboard in carrying out their duty effectively and responsibly.

This study identifies future research avenues on busy boards/audit committees and suggests that policymakers and regulators should limit the number of board appointments.

This is the first study to extensively amalgamate research on busy directors and audit committees. It reveals the various proxies used to measure the busyness of board and audit committee members and the consequences of busyness.

Prior studies provide mixed evidence on the association of board busyness and firm productivity. Thus, this paper empirically analyzes how board busyness affects firm productivity.

To measure board busyness, this paper computes the percentage of directors on a board who sit on three or more boards. Furthermore, to calculate firm productivity, the paper employs data envelopment analysis.

Findings demonstrate that the association of board busyness and firm productivity (association) is generally negative and statistically significant but economically insignificant. In this respect, the findings reveal that the association is negative (positive) and both statistically and economically significant for firms having higher monitoring (advising) needs. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that regulatory oversight (1) weakens the general negative association; (2) changes the direction of association from negative to positive, for firms having higher monitoring needs; and (3) does not influence the association, for firms having higher advising needs.

Taken together, the findings indicate that the association of board busyness and firm productivity is conditional to monitoring/advising needs and regulatory oversight. As such, the findings enrich the current debates on the association. Furthermore, the findings offer novel perspectives to enrich the regulatory frameworks of countries which are constraining multiple directorships.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the industry relatedness of directors’ multiple directorships and corporate governance effectiveness. The authors posit that a director gains “beneficial experience” by serving on outside boards of companies in related industries, with a resulting increase in governance effectiveness. Conversely, they predict a decrease in governance effectiveness when directors serve on outside boards of companies in unrelated industries.

Using publicly available data, a Tobit regression model is used to examine the effect of the industry relatedness of board members’ multiple directorships on corporate governance effectiveness.

The results demonstrate a significant positive correlation between the industry relatedness of directors’ multiple directorships and corporate governance effectiveness. It was found that this industry relatedness effect is stronger for directors of small companies than large company directors. The paper also documents a significant negative effect on governance effectiveness for small firms whose directors increase their board service on non-industry-related boards.

Prior research has examined the “Busyness Hypothesis” and the “Experience Hypothesis” as mutually exclusive hypotheses. This paper extends prior research by examining the possibility that the two hypotheses are not competing, but rather that both an experience effect and a busyness effect may be present for directors serving on multiple boards, and that one of the effects will dominate the other, based on certain company-specific characteristics.

This study aims to investigate the correlation between a CEO's business background and the readability of financial statement footnotes in Indonesia.

This study utilizes a sample period spanning from 2010 to 2018 and employs various statistical tests, including Propensity Score Matching (PSM), Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) and the Heckman Model, to demonstrate that it can address issues of causality and endogeneity without introducing bias.

As a result, the findings of this study indicate a statistically significant negative relationship between CEOs with busy schedules and the readability of financial statement footnotes. This suggests that companies led by busy CEOs are more likely to have financial statement footnotes that are easier to read.

These findings hold significance for clarifying research related to the challenges of contextual analysis in financial statement footnotes, which are distributed by companies on a sentence-by-sentence basis.

The practical implications of the findings pertain to actionable steps that management can undertake and also offer regulators opportunities to monitor the potential for standard setting.

Based on the results presented, the authors are optimistic that the findings will pave the way for broader research on the impact of a busy CEO, encompassing not only financial aspects but also non-financial dimensions. The growing popularity of readability is driven by the proliferation of textual reports that pose challenges in analysis and raise numerous inquiries.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether non‐executive directors (NEDs) in Malaysian public listed companies (PLCs) may be facing certain barriers in the performance of their roles.

A qualitative approach, consisting of a series of interviews with board members, was chosen. The sampling frame was made as large as possible and for the purpose of this study, consisted of board members who sit on the main board of Malaysian‐owned PLCs.

The interviews revealed that a majority of the interviewees perceived that the barriers were either non‐existent or at least manageable. There were indications however that NEDs in small firms might face some of the problems suggested. The culture effect may also mediate their effectiveness in performing their roles. When there are barriers present, the most difficult problem faced by the NEDs concern time available to spend with the company.

This research utilized interviews. Generalizations may be an issue when interviews are used as the method of inquiry. Also, the sample is not random, as access to many directors depended on recommendations. In addition, respondents were consciously selected in order to obtain various board positions that include independent and non‐independent directors.

Findings from this research suggest that investors should not be overly concerned with their investments in Malaysian PLCs, as the NEDs are able to strongly discharge their responsibilities in overseeing executives' conduct and protecting investors' interest. The NEDs did not appear to face problems and hostilities from their host companies and it would be an added benefit to everyone concerned if they were able to more properly manage their time.

There is a lack of work on studying barriers to NEDs' effectiveness in developing countries, as previous work and literature reviews have been predominantly based upon the experience of Western economies.

This study aims to examine the impact of interlocking directorships on firm performance in Turkey, with a specific focus on the moderating role of board diversity.

Using a panel dataset comprising the top 100 firms listed on Borsa Istanbul from 2014 to 2018, this study employs regression analysis to investigate the relationship between interlocking directorships, board diversity, and firm performance. It firm-level financial data and directorship information to assess the effects of interlocking directorships on firm performance while also considering the moderating influence of board diversity.

The findings of this study reveal several important insights. First, the results confirm the “busyness hypothesis” as an increase in the number of interlocks per director negatively impacts firm performance, indicating reduced monitoring effectiveness. However, the study also demonstrates that board diversity plays a significant moderating role. Specifically, board diversity positively influences the relationship between interlocking directorships and firm performance, suggesting that a diverse board can mitigate the negative effects of interlocks and enhance overall firm performance.

This study contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, this study extends our understanding of the relationship between interlocking directorships and firm performance, considering contingency factors in the Turkish market. Second, our findings imply that board diversity mitigates the negative impact of busy interlocking directorates and improves firm performance, which provides invaluable directions to firms in setting their boards. Moreover, this research enhances corporate governance practices in Turkey and beyond in other emerging markets with similar corporate governance mechanisms by identifying the importance of board diversity and its moderating influence.

Corporate success depends partially on the quality of knowledge accessible to the executive board. One route of access to such knowledge is the appointment of directors who already hold directorships with prominent other corporate actors. Such director appointments provide interlocks to a corporate knowledge ecosystem (Haunschild and Beckman, 1998). The purpose of this paper is to examine how linkages between companies belonging to different sectors impact firm performance and to examine how linkages created by female directors, as opposed to male directors, shape performance.

This paper investigates the interlocks created between UK FTSE 350 companies from 2010 to 2018. It draws on network analysis to map the roles that male and female directors play in linking firms with varying sector classifications. The paper provides an examination of the impact of these roles on firm performance, through a panel data regression analysis.

This paper finds that there is an increase of inter-industry brokers over the period, and that men are still dominant in both the network and creating inter-industry ties amongst companies. However, the role of women in establishing these ties appears to be changing, and women are more important when it comes to create inter-industry ties among key economic sectors.

This paper provides a novel approach to examine the interplay between gendered inter (and intra) sectoral linkages and firm performance. It provides an original application of the two-mode brokerage analysis framework proposed in Jasny and Lubell (2015).

This paper examines whether increased director workloads are benefiting firms or are causing directors to become too busy, resulting in lower director attendance and weaker firm performance.

This paper conducts empirical analysis of the relationships between meeting frequency, director attendance rates and firm performance using archival data from Australia.

Attendance rates for both outside and inside directors decrease as they are required to attend more meetings. The benefits firms obtain from holding additional meetings are significantly eroded by lower director attendance.

This study brings together the literatures on meeting frequency, director busyness and firm performance to show that increased director workloads are only beneficial to firms if directors do not become too busy to fulfill their obligations to shareholders.