Exploring governance-driven sustainability accounting in a developing economy

This paper analyses the relationship between internal and external corporate governance mechanisms and the performance of UK companies within the context of the Cadbury Committee’s Code of Best Practice. The results show, first, that the market for corporate control is an effective governance mechanism that may be regarded as a substitute for the other mechanisms. Second, there is a weak relationship between the internal governance mechanisms and performance. Third, there is also little evidence that with firms in the top and bottom performance deciles have different internal governance characteristics. The results therefore raise questions about the efficacy of imposing prescriptive internal governance mechanisms on companies, particularly given that the market for corporate control has been shown to be an effective means of reducing agency costs.

Manuscript TypeEmpiricalResearch Question/IssueThis paper examines the relation between internal corporate governance and the market for corporate control by analyzing how firms' internal governance mechanisms are related to states' antitakeover statutes (ATS). Specifically, we test two competing hypotheses concerning the effect of ATS on internal governance: the substitution hypothesis and the complementarity hypothesis.Research Findings/InsightsWe provide evidence that is consistent with the complementarity hypothesis that exposure to a possible takeover increases rather than decreases the need for better internal governance mechanisms. Specifically, firms that are exposed to takeover threats (i.e., firms in states without ATS or firms that opt out of states' ATS) have stronger internal governance mechanisms (i.e., adopt a greater number of governance standards) than do firms that are not exposed to takeover threats (i.e., firms in states with ATS). In a similar vein, firms adopt more internal governance standards when states abolish existing ATS.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsAlthough prior research suggests that exposure to takeover threats reduces managerial entrenchment through its disciplinary effect, our study provides evidence that exposure to a possible takeover could exacerbate the managerial myopia problem and that firms mitigate this problem through internal governance mechanisms. The results of the present study suggest that certain governance mechanisms (e.g., state‐level ATS) are more effective in addressing the agency problem in the presence of other complementary governance mechanisms (e.g., firm‐level governance standards), contributing to the growing literature that calls attention to the importance of viewing various governance mechanisms from a bundle perspective. In addition, our study contributes to the literature with a new identification strategy. Our identification strategy makes use of the fact that firms would not be subject to the same shock from the abolition of ATS if they had already opted out, which enables us to analyze the relation between ATS and internal governance mechanisms more accurately. This identification strategy may benefit future studies that consider state‐level changes in ATS to be exogenous shocks.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsOur study provides empirical evidence concerning the complex ramifications of states' antitakeover statutes for corporate governance that policymakers and market regulators should consider in their decision‐making. The complementarity, particularly between state‐level laws and firm‐level board functions, may deserve better attention from policymakers, regulators, and corporate managers.

This paper explores the link between subsidiary performance feedback and internal governance mechanisms in multiunit firms. A central premise of performance-feedback models is that performance below aspirations is associated with increased risk tolerance and thereby with a higher likelihood of taking excessive risks in resource allocation decisions. Building on this observation, we contend that the headquarters of multiunit firms take this association into account in the design of internal (i.e., headquarters-subsidiary) governance mechanisms. Accordingly, a subsidiary’s performance-aspiration gap (below aspirations) is positively associated with the headquarters’ oversight of its resource allocation decisions and negatively associated with the provision of incentive schemes that promote risk taking. Regression results, using data on subsidiaries in France between 1998 and 2004, support our hypotheses and show that subsidiaries performing below historical and social aspirations are less likely to be given discretion in investment decisions and incentivized by cash bonuses. In the supplementary analyses, we also provide suggestive evidence that subsidiary performance problems in multiunit firms trigger structural adaptation in the internal governance mechanisms in pursuit of regaining fit.

Ownership concentration as a mechanism for mitigating agency problem is one of the core tenets of corporate governance. In this study, we examine the contextual nature of its effect on corporate environmental irresponsibility (CEI). We argue that that the effect of ownership concentration on CEI is contingent on other internal and external governance mechanisms in place. Using a sample of 16,286 observations for 3,275 firms across 43 countries during 2008 to 2017 with dynamic panel regressions, we find robust evidence to support our predictions. We find that the effect of ownership concentration varies by the quality of regulatory institutions. We also find evidence to support the complementarity between external and internal governance mechanisms and the configurational approach by examining how the simultaneous presence of external and internal corporate governance mechanisms can alter the relationship between ownership concentration and CEI. Our study has important managerial and public policy implications for policymakers looking to use governance as a mechanism to promote sustainability.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the impact of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms on the probability of engaging in tax aggressiveness.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a sample of 52 firms listed on the Tunis stock exchange observed over the 2003–2016 period (The authors had to stop sampling in 2016 because the measurement of tax aggressiveness requires 4 years after the year of study. Therefore, the data on the measurement of tax aggressiveness were collected until 2020). This paper uses the logistic regression technique.FindingsThe results of the first logistic regression show that ownership structure and the supervision role of the tax authorities are determining factors that explain tax aggressiveness; while, the attributes of the board of directors does not seem to explain the probability of engaging in aggressive tax strategies. To further probe this question, the authors carried out additional analyses that examine the moderating effect of controlling shareholders on the relationship between the attributes of the board and tax aggressiveness. The results of our additional regressions indicate that the effect of these attributes improves in cases of non-presence of a controlling shareholder. This implies that the role that the board of directors can play in controlling management is possibly conditioned by the presence or no of control block holders.Research limitations/implicationsThe major limitation of this study is that it concentrates only on Tunisian listed companies because they are the only companies the financial statements of which are publicly available in Tunisia. Although the sample is relatively small due to the problem of data availability, it appears to be satisfactory given the 15-year sampling period (i.e. from 2003 to 2016).Practical implicationsThe results of the study may help Tunisian regulators create requirements for corporate governance (such as the size of the board of directors and audit committee or the concentration of ownership). Moreover, this study not only focuses on the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on tax aggressiveness but also provides shareholders with information on the governance mechanisms to which they should pay more attention in their desire to obtain more efficient tax results.Social implicationsThe findings are also useful for tax policymakers seeking to identify the circumstances that give rise to an increased risk of tax aggressiveness, as tax aggressive behavior and the resulting non-payment of taxes also have societal implications. In fact, taxes also play an important role in financing the provision of public goods, making corporation tax a matter of public concern.Originality/valueThe present study differs from others in the existing literature by designing a more precise measure of tax aggressiveness and examining the interaction between two internal governance mechanisms; the presence of a controlling shareholder and the attributes of the board of directors. This study also examines the impact of the control exercised by the tax authorities on the behavior of firms in terms of tax aggressiveness.

Building upon institutional theory, this study investigates whether and how market enforcement mediates the relationship between external (country-level) and internal (firm-level) corporate governance mechanisms. We focus on two countries with contrasting legal, regulatory and institutional regimes: Canada and France. Market enforcement is proxied by two measures of market efficiency: abnormal returns and price volatility. Our results suggest that external governance mechanisms interact with internal governance mechanisms via market enforcement, which differs greatly between both countries. Hence, the complementarity of internal and external governance mechanisms depends upon the nature and type of enforcement (i.e., emphasis on ex-ante monitoring and compliance vs. ex post sanctions).

This research aims to offer a better understanding concerning the relationships between Internal Corporate Governance Mechanisms and quality of the external audit process and what are the governance mechanisms that can influence some aspects of the quality of the external audit process. Semi-structured interviews were employed in order to get detail views of the external auditors to explain and clarify how the Internal Corporate Governance Mechanisms can influence the quality of the external audit process as well as offer a better understanding of the relationships between the governance mechanisms and the quality of the external audit process. Adopting this research design (exploratory) was mainly as a response to the recent calls as there is a lack of this kind of study that investigate the relationship between the Internal Corporate Governance Mechanisms can influence the quality of the external audit process. This research focuses on the perception/insight of the Jordanian external auditors regarding the influence of Internal Corporate Governance Mechanisms on quality of the external audit process. Thus, this study uses a sample of 206 Jordanian external auditors for the survey and 13 participants from this sample for the interview. The qualitative study employed the thematic analysis to analyse the interview data. The interview results highlighted that there are different ways and stages that the ICGMs can influence the EAQ, for example, through holding effective regular meeting, ensuring the auditor compliance with the audit requirements “regular monitoring”, discussing the initial and significant audit results “draft of discussion”, taking necessary follow-up actions “feedback” as well as requesting the auditor to conduct additional tests which can in turn enhance the EAQ. The results also suggest that ICGM can assist improving different aspects of EAQ such as the quality of the evidence that are collected by the ICGM and the valuable guidance from the ICGM to the external auditor. The communication between the ICGM and external auditor can be focused on different issues related to the audit process such as auditors’ findings, the effectiveness of internal control, scope limitations and material misstatements which allow improving the effectiveness of audit process. This indicates that, the auditor must be aware of the dynamic deciding of the role of particular mechanisms in improving the external audit process. The results have implications for the practitioners and regulators who are assessing the role of ICGM in improving the reliability of the financial report and auditor’s report. The empirical findings demonstrate that different ICGM can influence different aspects of the EAQ. More importantly, the results reveal that audit practice in Jordan is experiencing some difficulties in terms of the independence of the auditor especially, for the small local firms and providing non-audit service. In addition, there is no professional body for board of director; internal audit and audit committee like Jordanian association of certified public accountant (JACPA) for the external auditor, thus, responsibilities of these mechanisms need to be formally overseen by a higher authority. For the policymakers, this study offers a unique proposition to improve the effectiveness of the ICGM to achieve EAQ. These empirical findings of this study also highlight the importance of improving EAQ as a solution for the agency problems through reducing information asymmetry, improving the disclosure practice, level of confidence and assurance of the financial reporting as well as deterring the opportunistic behaviour from different parties. This research extended the existing empirical evidence that investigated the role of the internal governance mechanisms in the audit process.

PurposeThis study examines the association between internal corporate governance mechanisms (i.e. board of directors and audit committee) and the information value of bank earnings. The authors comparatively assess this association across different bank types, Islamic versus conventional banks. The authors also investigate the mediating effect of Shariah governance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilize a unique and an international sample of 723 bank-year observations representing 100 listed banks from 16 countries during the period 2007–2015. The authors investigate the characteristics of the board of directors and audit committee (i.e. size and independence) and employ three core analyses for earnings informativeness (i.e. earnings persistence, cash flow predictability and reliability of loan loss provisions). Additional analyses address Shariah supervisory boards’ (SSBs’) size, financial expertise and multiple outside directorships. The authors use the random-effect Generalised Least Squares (GLS) estimation technique and provide several robustness checks and sensitivities.FindingsThe authors find that, on average, having large and independent boards (and audit committees) increases the informativeness of reported earnings for banks. Conditional on bank type, our results report strong evidence for differential effects across the two alternative banking systems. In Islamic banks, large and independent board of directors (and audit committees) is positively associated with all measures of information value. There is insignificant evidence for conventional banks. However, SSBs show no significant effect on the reported earnings’ informativeness.Originality/valueThis is the first study, to the best of our knowledge, that empirically and comparatively assesses the information value of reported earnings in association with effective internal governance while recognizing the institutional characteristics of different bank types. The authors offer new insights to policymakers, investors and other stakeholders located within countries operating on a dual banking system. The results could help regulators to improve their rules/guidance related to double-layer governance and financial reporting quality.

This paper examines the relationship between internal and external governance mechanisms employed by UK insurance companies. The different external control mechanisms available to owners in mutual and proprietary companies suggests that different internal governance mechanisms may be employed to monitor managers. Data for the study has been obtained from a detailed questionnaire survey of UK insurance companies. We find a higher proportion of non‐executive directors and a greater likelihood of separating the roles of company chairman and CEO in insurance companies compared to similar studies of UK quoted companies. Even though the proportion of non‐executive directors does not differ significantly between mutual and proprietary insurers, the proportion of non‐executives who are former executives is greater in the case of proprietary companies. This suggests that mutual companies are more likely to employ non‐executives for monitoring while proprietary companies place more importance on retaining the business expertise of former executives. We find that UK insurance companies have utilised remuneration and audit committees since the mid 1980s. We also find that remuneration committees in mutual companies possess a greater proportion of non‐executive directors than remuneration committees in proprietary companies.

PurposeThis study aims to investigate, on the one hand, the impact of the Tunisian Revolution and internal governance mechanisms (especially, the ownership structure and the board of directors structure on the extent of voluntary information disclosure [VID]) and on the other hand, the moderating effect of the Tunisian Revolution on the relationship between the internal corporate governance mechanisms and the VID.Design/methodology/approachA content analysis of 362 annual reports is used for determining the level of VID. This study covers a 10-year period (2007-2016) which is divided into two sub-periods (before and after the Tunisian Revolution). The generalized least squares regression model was used to investigate the effect of the Tunisian Revolution, ownership structure and the board of directors structure on the VID.FindingsThe Tunisian companies disclose less voluntary information after the Tunisian Revolution because of a decrease in the disclosure of information related to results, intangible assets, non-financial information and management’s discussion and analysis. The authors’ findings highlight the importance of the moderating effect of the revolution. After the Tunisian Revolution, a positive relationship was found, on the one hand, between institutional ownership, board size and board independence, and the VID on the other hand. Besides, companies with dual structures and with a high level of foreign ownership are less reluctant to the VID. Moreover, different governance mechanisms are related to different types of information disclosed. These relationships were affected by the Tunisian Revolution.Practical implicationsThis piece of research could be useful for managers, investors and different stakeholders. It can help managers in improving their VID and thus their companies’ transparency, mainly in developing countries and in times of crisis. Moreover, it could be helpful for investors and stakeholders for their decision-making, especially in crisis periods.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by investigating the VID in a developing country and in times of crisis. It widens knowledge by analyzing the types of voluntary information disclosed. It is one of the few pieces of research investigating this issue. Moreover, it is the first research analyzing the consequences on the VID of the revolutions in the Arab countries that have experienced an Arab Spring Revolution.

Research SummaryWe extend the property rights theory to show that stronger ownership control incentivizes owners to push for communalizing private environmental costs unless counterbalancing internal and external governance mechanisms are prevalent. Using a sample of 16,286 observations for 3275 firms across 43 countries between 2008 and 2017, we find robust evidence for a negative effect of ownership concentration on corporate environmental performance (CEP). However, we find that ownership concentration has a diametrically opposite effect in strong and weak governance contexts. In the presence of strong external (regulatory institutions) and internal (high board independence) governance, ownership concentration improves CEP. In contrast, it has the opposite effect in the presence of weak regulatory institutions and low board independence. We contribute to the open system logic of corporate governance for environmental sustainability.Managerial SummaryOur study shows that ownership concentration negatively impacts corporate environmental performance in the form of increased resource usage, emissions, and ESG controversies. This finding implies that there is a tussle over who bears environmental costs (i.e., privatized to the firms or communalized to the larger stakeholder bodies). However, we find that this negative performance outcome can be successfully mitigated by the quality of external (regulatory institutions) and internal governance (high board independence) mechanisms. Our study informs policymakers regarding the governance mechanisms through which the interests of the environment can be sincerely safeguarded in the face of short‐term value‐maximizing pressures from investors. These results also inform other stakeholders on how to nudge delinquent firms toward improving their CEP.

This research paper makes a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of governance mechanisms in mitigating the agency problems in the Indian corporate sector during the pre and post-Indian Companies Act 2013 periods, using the panel OLS regression methodology on a sample of 315 companies drawn from the BSE 500 index of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for 10 years spanning from 2008-2018. Based on the review of literature, this paper has utilized proxy Operating Ratio for measuring the agency cost as the dependent variable. It also has identified ten governance mechanisms as independent variables; board size, independent directors, CEO-chairperson separation, audit committee, stakeholders’ relationship committee, nomination and remuneration committee, promotors’ holdings, leverage, bank debt, and firm size. The descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, and multivariate regression analysis have been performed for evaluating the effectiveness of the governance mechanism in mitigating agency problems. The descriptive statistics reveal that agency problems in Indian companies have drastically increased during the post-companies Act 2013 period. The findings also disclose that Indian firms have by and large adopted the provisions of the Indian Companies Act 2013 on internal corporate governance mechanisms. However, the multivariate regression results prove that the internal governance mechanisms are not effective in mitigating agency problems during the post-companies Act 2013 regime.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by analysing the effect of internal governance and monitoring mechanisms on the corporate social performance (CSP) of banks. To carry out our analysis, we propose to regress both a fixed-effects and a random-effects model using an unbalanced panel composed of 118 banks from 19 countries. The overall period of analysis runs from 2002 to 2014, although it has been divided into two different sub-periods before and after the banking system crisis: period 1 (2002–2007) and period 2 (2008–2014), in order to analyse the existence of a structural change with different impacts on the CG-CSR relationship. This research shows that some internal governance and monitoring mechanisms, namely, those related to controlling ownership and the structure of the board of directors, have an important influence on the social performance of banks, although these mechanisms were only relevant during the crisis period (2008–2014).

Against the backdrop of the increasingly salient constraints of resource scarcity and environmental pressures on global economic development, sustainable innovation emerges as an imperative strategic pathway for corporations to secure a competitive edge in the international marketplace. Corporate innovation capability serves as the critical factor for both the advancement of sustainable innovation and the maintenance of the corporate competitive edge. While the extant literature has extensively explored how internal and external governance mechanism forces shape corporate investment decision-making, the critical role of non-CEO executives in the process of corporate innovation investment decision-making remains conspicuously underexplored. This study examines the effect of bottom–up governance mechanisms within executive teams on corporate innovation investment from the perspective of non-CEO executive independence. We used a sample of A-listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2021 for empirical tests. We found a U-shaped relation between non-CEO executive independence and corporate innovation investment, and this finding still held after addressing endogeneity issues and conducting a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis revealed that both non-CEO executives’ decision horizon and firm agency costs positively moderate this U-shaped relationship. This U-shaped effect is pronounced in firms with lower CEO power, lower levels of corporate governance, and non-state-owned firms. Our findings provide an important basis for clarifying the internal governance mechanism of the executive teams while offering new insights for optimizing the allocation of corporate resources and promoting corporate innovation from the perspective of improving corporate governance.

PurposeThis study is motivated by the competing views on whether internal governance mechanisms complement or substitute for external auditing, and how this association is affected by ownership concentration. The complementary view predicts that good internal governance mechanisms are related to high-quality audit. On the other hand, corporate governance mechanisms may be substituted for each other, so more investment in governance mechanisms leads to less investment in external auditing. Therefore, this study aims to examine the association between internal governance mechanisms and the demand for audit quality.Design/methodology/approachData from Malaysian listed companies during the period 2009 to 2012 are used. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression is applied to analyse the data.FindingsCompanies with a higher concentration of ownership are less likely to demand extensive auditing. In addition, the study provides supporting evidence for the complementary association between a company’s governance and audit fees. However, the ownership concentration plays a minor role in the positive association between internal corporate governance and audit quality. Further tests are conducted and support the main findings.Practical implicationsSignificant implications are provided for the audit profession in emerging economies, where concentrated ownership is common, to help policymakers and regulators in determining the power of controlling shareholders on audit quality and firm’s governance. The study’s findings open up avenues for further research.Originality/valueThis is the first work to address the role of ownership concentration in the association between corporate governance and audit quality; it suggests that the ownership structure must be considered in examining the effectiveness of corporate governance. The study also provides a comprehensive combination of internal governance mechanisms.