Establishing a corporate governance strategy that promotes the efficient use of organisational resources is instrumental in the economic growth of a country, as well as the successful management of firms. This book reviews existing literature and identifies board structural features as key variables of an effective corporate governance system, establishing a multi-theoretical model that links Board structural characteristics with firm performance. It then, using a comprehensive empirical study of 265 companies listed on the Karachi Stock exchange, tests this conceptual model. This research serves as a significant milestone, reflecting the socio-economic setting of emerging economies, and highlighting the need for the corporate sector in emerging markets to move away from a 'tick-box' culture. It argues that the sector needs to implement corporate governance as a tool to mitigate business risks; appoint and empower non-executive directors to achieve an effective monitoring of management; and establish their own ethical and governance principles, applicable to the Board of Directors. Based on an extensive data base, collected painstakingly over five years, this book offers new insights and conceptual framework for further research in this area. Given the breadth and width of the research, it is a useful source of future reference for students, researchers and policy makers.

The paper explores the impact of board composition and ownership structure on firm performance of Indian firms from 2009-2013 in presence of certain unique statutory provisions relating to independent directors and limits on ownership concentration. The results show that after controlling for various firm and industry level parameters, both accounting performance and market performance of firms are positively impacted by ownership concentration and board size but not by board independence. We record a two-way relationship and 'non-linearity' between market performance and ownership concentration . Very low and very high concentration negatively impact firm performance, the former being attributable to 'tunneling' , and the latter to 'illiquidity' and 'information asymmetry' associated with sale of holding by insiders to bring down concentration to permissible statutory limits. Larger board size impacting performance positively indicates that plurality of views and representation of various insiders' interest group might enhance performance but Independence has no such role because it may just be a 'myth'

This book discusses the tasks and functions of corporate governance in the light of current challenges and the dynamics that arise from a broader approach to company management and the integration of corporate governance with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. Addressing the corporate governance shortcomings that are believed to have contributed to the recent financial crisis, it explores the interplay between corporate governance and CSR, and includes examples of company practice to show how such changes affect the practices of shareholders, boards of directors and regulators. In particular, the book examines shareholders’ activities, their different investment strategies, specific reporting expectations and the submission of proposals to the annual meeting. Further, for boards of directors it explores the need to revise their tasks with respect to the criteria for executive appointments, their corporate strategy, performance measures and diversity recommendations, while for directors it provides recommendations to reconsider the structure of executive pay and performance incentives. Lastly, for regulators the book investigates the need to introduce new laws addressing, for instance, the need for integrated reporting, limiting the voice of short term oriented shareholders and providing guidelines for executive compensation.

Simultaneous-equations techniques are being used more often in corporate governance research. However, when no formal theoretical model is present, misspecification in one or more of the first or second stage regression is likely, causing empirical results to be seriously biased. This paper investigates the combined effect of ownership structure and board composition on corporate performance, using an instrumental-variables approach that allows for sensitivity analysis. The results indicate that managerial ownership, board composition, and Tobin's Q are jointly determined. More importantly, final results are very sensitive to reasonable changes in both the overall model specification and to the set of instruments.The results strongly suggest that in corporate governance research, sensitivity analysis is essential, results should be interpreted cautiously, and ordinary least squares results should not be casually dismissed.

This book explores diversity in boardrooms to highlight the link between the heterogeneous dimensions of board diversity and their impact on the firms. The book provides a brief definition of corporate governance and focuses on the role and functions of the board of directors. The work contributes to the literature enriching the empirical findings about board diversity. After a deep review of the literature within several theoretical frameworks, such as agency, stakeholder, stewardship, resource dependence, and the institutional theory, the focus moves on the impact on financial performance. The board diversity effects are tested through an empirical analysis conducted on a sample of European listed companies, performing both a single and a joint diversity index analysis. Practitioners and academics will find this book particularly timely and useful as it combines both a review of the literature and robust empirical investigation. It will be an excellent reading for academics and practitioners interested in firm performance, corporate governance and stakeholder theory.

Based on a survey of 29 public companies conducted in 1980-1988.