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This study aims to provide an overview of the development of corporate governance and ownership structure literature and offers a synopsis of the top contributors, influential articles, journals and potential research prospects on this subject.

This study used bibliometric analysis to review the literature. In all, 1,368 articles published between 1992 and 2022 in Scopus-indexed journals were considered.

This review reveals the top leading authors, institutions, countries and sources in the ownership structure research. Using bibliographic coupling, this study fetches four significant clusters. The theme of the first cluster revolved around cash holding. The second and third groups revealed how distinct characteristics of ownership impact the performance of the firm and disclosure decisions, respectively. The last and fourth cluster deals with risk-taking activities in financial institutions. Furthermore, this study suggests a road map in each cluster for future research.

Ownership structure plays a significant role in corporate governance by affecting manager incentives and determining the extent of monitoring. Previous studies have contributed to this field while focusing on the board of directors. However, no study synthesises the literature on ownership structure within corporate governance, which is the core element of the corporate governance system. Hence, this study gives a comprehensive overview and determines the latest and prominent research in ownership structure within corporate governance through bibliometric analysis.

Ownership structure deals with internal corporate governance mechanism, which plays important role in minimizing conflict of interests between shareholders and management Ownership structure is an important mechanism that influences the value of firm, financing and dividend decisions. This paper aims to examine the impact of the ownership structures, i.e. managerial ownership, institutional ownership on financing and dividend policy.

The authors use panel data of manufacturing firms from both developed and developing countries, and the generalized method of moments (GMM) is applied to analyze the results. The authors collect the data from DataStream for the period of 2010 to 2019.

The authors find that managerial ownership and ownership concentration have significant and positive effects on debt financing, but they have significant and negative effects on dividend policy. Institutional ownership shows a positive impact on financing decisions and dividend policy for sample firms.

This study fills the gap by proving the policy implications for both firms and investors, as managers prefer debt financing, but at the same time try to ignore dividend payment. Therefore, investors may not invest in firms with a higher proportion of managerial ownership and may choose to invest more in institutional ownership, which lowers the agency cost.

This chapter focuses on testing optimal capital structure theory: The role of intervening variable debt to equity ratio (DER) on the influence of the financial performance, Ownership Structure of Independent Board of Commissioners (IBCO), Audit Committee (ACO), and Institutional Ownership on Firm Value. The research design was explanatory research using path analysis. Using purposive sampling, 61 manufacturing companies, observation period from 2014 to 2018 with 286 N samples. The research novelty empirically can prove the role of intervening variable DER on the effect of return on assets (ROA) on firm value and shows the market response to the ROA is fully reflected by DER, indicating the existence of an optimal capital structure. The role of DER on the effect of ROE and IBCO on firm value is a partial mediation with the inverse direction. This phenomenon shows that the mechanism of forming a balance between the responses of investors and creditors relates to debt financing.

This study serves two objectives; first, it examined the impact of ownership structure and board characteristics on firm value; second, the moderating effects of board gender diversity (women appearance on board) and board ethnic diversity (Chinese, Indian, and Foreign ethnicities) have been examined on the relationship between ownership structure, board characteristics, and firm value.

The dynamic model, system generalized method of moments (S-GMM hereafter), is employed to control potential dynamic endogeneity, reverse causality, simultaneity and unobserved heterogeneity persistent in corporate governance-performance relationships during 2006–2017 of 483 Malaysian listed companies.

Findings pertaining to objective one reveal that there is a weak linkage between ownership structure and firm value, whereas board characteristics significantly affect firm performance based on resource dependence theory. While considering the results of objective two, there is mixed evidence of moderating impact of board gender and ethnic diversity on ownership structure, board characteristics and performance nexus.

The findings of the study are practically significant for regulatory bodies, namely, Bursa Malaysia, Securities Commission (SC) Malaysia, and policymakers to develop guidelines for ownership structure variables. Moreover, Malaysian firms need to disperse their concentrated ownership structure for enhanced firm value. In addition, board characteristics significantly affect firm performance in Malaysian listed companies.

The paper contributes to multiple aspects: first, it examined the impact of ownership structure and board characteristics on firm performance. Second, the moderating effect of board gender and board ethnic diversity contributes to research significant and valuable for the researchers and practitioners. Finally, the study employed S-GMM, controlling for dynamic endogeneity considered a main econometric problem for CG-performance relationships.

This study examines the bi-directional relationship between corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and ownership structure through a dynamic empirical framework in an emerging economy context.

Data over 10 years are used to investigate the response of disclosure to ownership structure variables and vice versa. Dynamic bi-directional relationships are hypothesised and empirically investigated using a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model. The ownership structure variables used are government ownership, block ownership and director ownership, while CSRD is constructed as a score through content analysis.

A bi-directional negative relationship between CSRD and government ownership is found, revealing a preference for the state to invest in companies with opaque disclosure. CSRD is found to respond negatively to block ownership, albeit weakly. Results also show that directors prefer to own shares in the company they manage when there are low levels of CSRD.

The current empirical set-up of using a small emerging economy may not carry to the context of larger emerging economies where the institutional context may differ. Thus, future research could use this dynamic empirical approach to re-examine the questions raised in this paper using data from other emerging economies. The use of a longer time series makes it feasible to explore further analysis what was not possible in this study, such as an impulse response analysis examining the reaction of the variables of interest, CSRD and ownership variables for a specific time horizon to particular changes or shocks associated with one of the endogenous variables in the PVAR.

A major implication is that expecting disclosure practices to improve due to government and director initiatives would be less likely in emerging economies. State and director shareholders prefer to invest in opaque companies because they may purposely choose to keep the minimum disclosure levels. The paper calls for a transparent process and ethical guidelines to guide government investment in firms.

The study investigates the bi-directional relationship between ownership structure and CSRD in contrast to the existing literature's presupposed one-way relationship between these variables by demonstrating that bi-directionality does matter. This paper also contributes to the CSRD literature in the emerging economy context. The bi-directional negative relationship between CSRD and government ownership calls for a transparent selection process of board members as representatives of the state in those companies where the government has an ownership stake. It also calls for a transparent process and ethical guidelines to guide government investment in firms.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effect of initial international joint ventures (IJV) structural conditions on two main equity-based instability facets: change of IJV ownership structure and acquisition of the IJV by one of the IJV partners. Drawing on the transaction cost theory, the authors examine three key initial structural conditions: IJV formation mode, number of partners and IJV’s ownership structure.

The authors apply the “Event history analysis” technique to test the hypotheses using a data set of 140 French-foreign JVs.

The findings show that the mode of an acquisitive IJV and unequal equity positions held by partners increase the likelihood of a change of IJV’s ownership structure and its eventual acquisition by one of the partners. In addition, the findings show that while an increase in the number of IJV partners is directly related to the change of IJV ownership structure, it has a statistically insignificant effect on IJV acquisition.

Drawing on “transaction costs” arguments, this study advances the literature by offering fine-grained results related to the effects of initial structural conditions on aspects of unintended instability in French-foreign JVs.

This study aims to examine the effect of ownership structure on financial performance of commercial banks in Kenya.

The data were collected from audited financial statements of 39 commercial banks in Kenya for the period 2009–2020.

Regression results found evidence of ownership structure explaining commercial banks’ financial performance. The results found a negative association between state ownership and net interest margin, a negative association between management ownership and net interest margin and a negative association between institutional ownership and return on assets.

Based on the findings, commercial bank management should therefore devise ownership structure policies that are geared toward boosting their financial performance both in the short run and the long run. Second, this study recommends a minority shareholding of the state in commercial banks to deter political interference, protect investors’ wealth from erosion and allow the majority shareholders to adopt a strong corporate governance mechanism for higher financial performance. Banks with a high percentage of state ownership should consider partial privatization to improve corporate governance practices. Third, banks should adopt a managerial ownership policy limiting the proportion of equity stock held by executives to limit their powers in strategic decision-making. Fourth, this study proposes a percentage limit on the equity stock of an institutional investor to eliminate bureaucracy in strategic decision-making and protect investors’ wealth.

The study finding is meant to inform regulation and operation policies in the banking sector and contribute to the literature on ownership structure, especially in the banking sector.

This study aims to investigate the impact of equity ownership structure (i.e. CEO ownership, board chair ownership and institutional ownership) on internationalization of firms. The moderating role of international experience of board chairs is also examined.

This study uses Compustat-Capital IQ data from Standard &Poor’s. The sample of this study includes 309 US multinational corporations representing different sectors. The parameters were estimated by using the ordinary least squares regression with the SPSS statistical package.

The finding of this study suggests that CEO ownership and board chair ownership have a significant, positive impact on the degree of internationalization of firms, whereas institutional ownership has a negative impact. The predicted moderating role of international experience of board chairs has found mixed results.

This study contributes to the literature by taking a holistic approach to examine the impact of equity ownership types (i.e. CEO ownership, board chair ownership and institutional ownership) on firms’ degree of internationalization. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is also the first to investigate the impact of independent board chairs’ equity ownership and international experience on internationalization.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the largest shareholder's voting stake on the firm's capital structure decision.

To empirically analyze the influence of the voting stake on leverage, a large sample of 814 exchange-listed firms is applied. The baseline regression analysis is complemented by several robustness tests and a difference-in-difference regression analysis to mitigate endogeneity concerns.

The authors find a negative relationship between the voting stake of the largest shareholder and leverage, consistent with the notion that large, undiversified shareholders have the incentive to reduce risk. Additionally, results reveal that family control has a positive moderating effect, indicating that the negative relationship is less pronounced for family controlled firms.

The authors contribute to the research by suggesting ownership concentration as another determinant of capital structure. Further, the authors add to the literature by showing how the association between ownership concentration and leverage is moderated by family control and that the identity of the largest shareholder is of great importance.

The paper provides important insights to the current debate on the proposal of the European Commission to reintroduce shares with multiple votes as part of the Listing Act. The authors expect the regulation to exacerbate the concentration of voting rights, which results in lower leverage and thus limits corporate growth.

The authors differentiate from previous studies by focusing the largest shareholders' voting stake, instead of using the ownership stake, to assess the impact of ownership concentration on leverage.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by extending the empirical work on the relationship between corporate governance and capital structure by analyzing the mediating role of cost of capital in the non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

The sample for this study includes non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (formerly Karachi Stock Exchange) for the period of 2004–2016. Based on 1800 firm-year observations, three approaches of panel data analysis are applied for the step-wise analysis of the underlying study. Firstly, Pooled OLS is applied. Secondly, fixed and random effect panel regression followed by the Hausman test to check the unobservable individual heterogeneity of the data. Hausman test indicates that the fixed-effects model is the most appropriate model for the sample panel data.

The study's findings are that board size, board composition, CEO/Chair duality, institutional ownership and managerial ownership have statistically significant direct effect on the firm's financing decisions. However, CEO/Chair duality, institutional ownership and managerial ownership have significant indirect effect on firm's capital structure decisions. The interesting finding of the paper is on the evidence of mediating role of cost of capital in the nexus of corporate governance and capital structure. Moreover, some conventional determinants of capital structure, including the firm's size, asset structure of the firm, profitability, business risk and growth, are found as determinants of capital structure decisions of the firms.

There are a few limitations to our study which could be addressed by upcoming research. We did not include all the four mechanisms of corporate governance including board structure, audit structure, compensation structure and ownership structure. However, we used only five important attributes including board size, board composition and CEO/Chair duality form board structure, managerial ownership and institutional ownership form ownership structure of corporate governance as our explanatory variables to examine their impact on the capital structure choices of the firms. Future studies may fill this research gap by involving some other attributes of corporate governance and analyzing their effectiveness and impact on value relevant capital structure decisions. Further, due to limited time and resources, we only tested the mediating role of cost of capital, hence, future researchers can analyze the mediating and moderating roles of different variables which may influence the relationship between corporate governance and capital structure choices of the firms.

The study has many valuable guidelines and practical implications for the financial managers of the corporations. Our results will facilitate the policymakers in setting their corporate governance policies and practices and making the value relevant capital structure decisions in compliance with the implications of corporate governance mechanism. In addition, our study provides the empirical evidence in accordance with the argument that good governance practices, particularly the voluntary disclosures by the firm may reduce the information asymmetry which, ultimately, reduces the agency cost and the cost of capital for the firm. However, while deciding the financial policy of the corporations, managers can use our findings in order to assess the effectiveness of corporate governance practices employed by the firm in achieving the optimal capital structure at which the weighted average cost of capital is at its minimum level.

This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the mediating role of the cost of capital in the relationship between corporate governance and capital structure decisions of the firms. This paper provides empirical evidence that corporate governance indirectly affects capital structure decisions through the mediating role of cost of capital.