Mediation Effects of Firm Leverage From the Perspective of Malaysian Shariah Compliant Companies – A Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling Approach (PLS-SEM)

Abstract

There is a subsequent work from the previous studies on the relationship between firm-specific attributes and firm leverage. Then, during the last decade, international studies started to extend this field by scrutinizing how the firm leverage influences firm performance. However, much of the discussion from previous studies have not systematically investigated the simultaneously of the cause-effect framework on the impact of firm-specific attributes on firm financial performance through firm leverage which acts as a mediator variable. In short, it is reasonable to examine the mediating effects in which whether firm leverage may mediate or indirectly influence the relationship between firm-specific attributes and firm financial performance, particularly, from the perspective of Malaysian Shariah Compliant companies. The main motivation for this research is to contribute to corporate finance literature and how firms tend to choose their financing structure from the perspective of the capital structure theories. We obtained data of 398 Malaysian Shariah compliant companies from the Bursa Malaysia stock exchange with a total number of samples of 7414 for the sample data period from 2000 to 2018. We find that there are three relationships that categorize as competitive mediation which is the relationships between the asset tangibility (AT), growth opportunities (GRW), firm size (FS) and firm financial performance. While, non-debt tax shield (NDTS) is categorized as a complementary mediation. We use the PLS-SEM approach in SmartPLS software 3.0 M3 to develop a set of mediation model from the perspective of capital structure theory for the Malaysian Shariah compliant companies.