This study aims to test empirically whether the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS) has a positive effect on Sustainability Reporting (SR) and whether the ACGS and Sustainability Reporting (SR) have a positive effect on Firm Value (FV). The study was conducted in five ASEAN countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Thailand from 2014 - 2017. The research sample was collected from companies with the ACGS data and obtained with the help of 359 company observations. Hypothesis testing was performed using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS). The results of the study do not support all hypotheses. The ACGS has no effect on sustainability reporting. The ACGS has a significant negative effect on firm value, while sustainability reporting has a negative and insignificant effect on firm value. The ACGS and sustainability reporting are not good news for investors. This research’s limitation is that companies rarely disclose the final value of the ACGS in their annual reports, so this research uses content analysis. The weakness of content analysis is the researchers’ subjectivity so that the point of view between researchers is different. Besides, sustainability reporting for several ASEAN countries is voluntary, so not all companies can be sampled, which ultimately affects interpretation.

This study examines the relationship between the attributes of board structure and the likelihood of financial distress for the non-financial sector of an emerging market characterized by concentrated ownership and family-controlled business. The present study utilized panel logistic regression to estimate the relationship between board structure attributes and the likelihood of financial distress. We used Altman Z-Score as a proxy for firm financial distress, as this tool measures the financial distress inversely. The study finds a significant relationship between board size and the likelihood of financial distress. The results show that a one-unit increase in board size would decrease the probability of financial distress by 3.4%. Further, we observe that a greater level of board independence is associated with a lower likelihood of financial distress. A one-unit increase in board independence would decrease the probability of financial distress by 20.4%. We also find a significant positive impact of leverage on the likelihood of financial distress. The present study contributes to the body of literature on board structure attributes and likelihood of financial distress in emerging markets, like Pakistan. Furthermore, the findings would be beneficial for corporate policymakers and investors in formulating corporate financial strategy and predicting business failure.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the level of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) in commercial banks listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange. This paper also observed the effects of ICD and corporate governance mechanism on market value. This study uses content analysis techniques to measure ICD. The paper provides a novel approach to measure the ICD quality in developing countries using a fournumerical coding system. Secondary data were obtained from the financial statements and annual reports of the banks for the period 2011- 2014. The data from 31 banks were analyzed using ordinary least square regression. The study reports that the quality of intellectual capital disclosure in Indonesian commercial banks increase steadily. Narrative disclosure dominates the report of intellectual capital in Indonesian banks. The results indicate that the size of audit committee, frequency of audit committee meeting, and intellectual capital disclosure affect positively the market value. Overall, the results indicate intellectual capital disclosure is associated with the market capitalization; these findings indicate that the ICD is a consideration in a stock investment decision. While regulations in Indonesia regarding intellectual capital reporting are not conclusive yet, the information needs of stakeholders have encouraged companies to expand voluntary disclosure.

Although the corporate governance plays a crucial role in protecting shareholder wealth, the effect of corporate governance on cost of debt is unclear. On one hand, the corporate governance reduces asymmetric information between corporate and external investor including debtholder leading to a decreasing in cost of debt financing. On the other hand, bondholders require higher rate of return for an improvement corporate governance. Hence, this study aims to investigate the relationship between the mechanism to improve corporate governance namely board effectiveness and the cost of debt in an emerging market. As we aim to explore the relationship between cost of debt and board effectiveness, we select corporation in Thailand as our sample because the businesses in Thailand are major debt-financing. Hence, our sample include listed firm in Stock Exchange of Thailand between 2007 and 2016. Our main findings support the sub-optimal investment hypothesis in that improved board effectiveness is associated with higher cost of borrowing. In addition, we find that the number of board member—board size, the number of board meeting, and the percentage of non-executive on audit committee play are positively associated with the cost of debt financing. Furthermore, we perform two-stage-least square (2SLS) to ensure that our results are far from endogeneity issue.

The research objective examines the effect of corporate governance on capital structure and its effect on liquidity policy and corporate performance. It tests the effect of capital structure and liquidity policy on corporate governance. It also examines the effect of liquidity policy on capital structure and the effect of capital structure on liquidity policy. The study population is all manufacturing companies that went public on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in the period 2010-2019. The research population is 182 manufacturing companies. The Judgment Sampling was used and 109 companies meet the research criteria. The study used panel data for ten years so that the amount of data observed was 1090 observations. The analysis tool uses Warp Partial Least Square (WarpPLS). The results showed that corporate governance had a significant positive effect on capital structure, but corporate governance had a significant adverse effect on liquidity policy, and corporate governance had a significant positive effect on corporate performance. Furthermore, capital structure has a significant negative effect on corporate performance, but liquidity policy has no significant effect on corporate performance. Capital structure and liquidity policy are proven to be reciprocally significant positive correlations for manufacturing companies in Indonesia.

This is a quantitative research, underpinned by the philosophy of natural science and deduction approach that examines the impact of the various aspects of corporate governance mechanism on the choice of capital structure of Vietnamese listed firms. We focus on the effect of factors such as the board size, the board independence, and especially different ownership structures, which include the managerial ownership, the state ownership, the concentrated ownership, and the foreign ownership. They are the main scopes of corporate governance and are supposed to be relevant to determine the corporate financing choice. To explain the causal relationship between factors, we construct the regression model and then test it by using different statistical method approaches, including the pooled OLS, the fixed effects model, and the random effects model. Data are collected from 336 firms with shares listed in the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange in Vietnam, totaling 1583 observations. Overall, the results reveal that the board size, state ownership, and concentrated ownership have positive impact on the firm’s capital structure, whereas foreign ownership appears to have negative influence on the capital structure. The research does not find evidence of a the correlation between board independence, managerial ownership and corporate capital struture.

Based on the theoretical underpinnings of the agency theory and liquidity theory, the purpose of this study is to show how managers who want to enhance the performance of Pakistan’s non-financial sector can use liquidity policy in relation to corporate governance. Nowadays, Pakistan is facing a severe liquidity crisis; this study contributes by examining the mediating role of liquidity on the link of corporate governance-performance. We use data from 63 firms from 2010 to 2018, excluding 17 outliers. To analyze the data, we use the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SURE) model and nlcom-Stata test. Our findings support the mediating role of liquidity on the link between corporate governance and performance. In addition, the results show that corporate governance improves performance. Furthermore, the study supports a significant positive association of liquidity and performance. For robustness, we use two performance variables – return on assets (ROA) and Tobin’s q (TQ) – where ROA represents full mediation and TQ indicates partial mediation. This study helps to use liquidity policy to strengthen the inside and outside dimensions of corporate governance mechanisms that improve the performance of firms. Overall, these findings suggest better disclosure, transparency, and solutions to auditing issues that add value to the firms.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of corporate governance index on the cost of equity in companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. This study collects data from 975 observations during the period 2012 to 2018 to test the hypotheses using multiple linear regression model for the panel data. In this research, the independent variable of corporate governance index comprises of 27 specific corporate governance attributes. The results of hypothesis testing showed that corporate governance has a negative and significant effect on the rate of capital cost. In other words, the quality of corporate governance can lower the rate of capital cost. This result suggests that, by using a powerful corporate governance system and by declining the information asymmetry (increasing transparency) and agency conflict, we would be able to enhance the quality of financial reports. It would strengthen the capital market, attract financial suppliers and investors, and absorb the required financial resources of the firm by a lower rate. The findings of the study suggest that companies are able to reduce the cost of equity by establishing strong corporate governance. This conclusion suggests the importance and effectiveness of corporate governance in the cost of equity.

The study examines the impact of corporate governance mechanisms, such as board characteristics on corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD). The data on CSRD items and board characteristics have been collected by content analysis of the annual reports of 30 publicly-listed banks in Bangladesh covering six years, from 2013 to 2018. More specifically, the directors’ report, the chairman’s statement, notes to the financial statement and CSR disclosure reports included in annual reports were used to collect the CSRD data. The empirical analysis applies the ordinary least square and the generalized method of moments. The results of the study have revealed that board size, board independence, female board member, and foreign directors have a significant positive impact on CSRD. By contrast, political directors and audit committee size have a negative impact on CSRD. Interestingly, accounting experts on boards ensure more CSRD as they curb the influence of politicians on the board. Thus, it is better to increase accounting experts and decrease politicians on the board. These findings provide valuable insights into the process of forming a suitable CSR policy by connecting the efforts of the board, government, and regulatory bodies to enhance the performance of banks to CSR as well as to CSRD.

The paper examines the influence of corporate governance (CG) and earning quality (EQ) on corporate value (FV) of Vietnamese enterprises. The study uses GLS regression and linear structure model using data collected from companies listing on the stock market in Vietnam during 2008- 2018, with a total of 2,937 observations. The research results indicate that EQ and CG represented by the Integrated Board of Directors and the Integrated Supervisory Board have a positive effect on FV directly and indirectly. The results show that the Integrated Board of Directors has a positive effect on EQ, whereas the Integrated Supervisory Board has a negative effect on EQ. Based on the research results, we suggest that companies need to strictly comply and implement GC, so to bring down the agency cost and consequently to increase performance. The companies also should establish the Board of Director of a proper size, with financial and accounting specialty, and including women board members. The government also needs to improve the management mechanism asking for firms to prepare and publish financial statements with reliable company information, which could be provided to users. These recommendations are a useful basis to help businesses improve FV via changes in the corporate governance factors in each enterprise.

A series of corporate failures and financial crises have raised attention to organizational governance issues, especially for financial institutions. In the banking system, corporate governance further plays a unique role because of the uniqueness of the banking organizations. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of corporate governance disclosure on bank performance by building a corporate governance disclosure index (CGDI) for 10 Islamic banks operating in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The data used in this study are secondary data taken from annual reports and sourced from the official websites of each banks include Iran Exchange, Stock Market Quotes and Financial News, and Bursa Malaysia. This study uses content analysis of the annual bank report within five years (2014-2018). The results show that Islamic banks comply with 72.4% of the attributes discussed in the CGDI. The most frequently reported and disclosed elements are board structure and audit committee. The regression results provide evidence that Islamic banks with a higher level of corporate governance disclosure reported high operating performance measured by ROA. In contrast to the expectation, the financial performance of ROE and Tobins'q are not significantly related to the disclosure of sharia bank governance.

The research aims to explore the links among corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and earnings management, considering vital roles of each component in Vietnam. There were 500 questionnaires provided to the targeted enterprises, where there were 150 enterprises in Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, 150 enterprises in Hanoi Stock Exchange, and 200 enterprises in the unlisted public company market. Of the distributed questionnaires, only 289 replies offered needed information for analyses. The data derived from these firms was based on their annual or sustainability statements that were retrieved from the websites. This research used a sixyear rolling window to calculate earnings management. To compute that variable, lagged year information was included, so the data from 2011 to 2017 was needed to collect. The empirical results show that corporate governance mechanism is a significant moderation in the positive link between good corporate social responsibility and earnings management. Furthermore, corporate social responsibility and earnings management also play mediating roles in the associations among corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and earnings management. This project recommends that corporate governance mechanism is an essential driver of the managerial behaviors in social responsibility and ethical accounting practices, which are in turn mediators in the joint research model.

The study attempts to examine the effect of the capabilities of banking companies, namely the dynamic and unique capabilities, on the implementation of GCG in Indonesia. The effect of organization capabilities on the implementation of GCG is essential since both of them can demonstrate the quality of the company's ability to compete and innovate. This study will also examine the influence of moderating variables, namely the fit and proper test. The methodology used in this study is the structural equation methods and using primary data with board of directors of commercial bank in Indonesia. The test results suggest the positive direct effect of unique capabilities on GCG. The findings show that the capabilities of the top management, both unique and dynamic capabilities, influence the implementation of GCG. Then, the variable of fit and proper test can also strengthen the relationship between them. Both unique capabilities and fit and proper test have a strong and positive impact on GCG. Meanwhile, dynamic capabilities have a negative impact on GCG even though it’s not significant and contradictive with earlier studies. In the context of the banking industry growth and sustainability, this matter is important to examine. Top management behavior in operating their organization is important to be investigated.

This study examines the impact of corporate governance on capital structure decisions based on a large panel of Chinese listed firms. Using the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to control for unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity, and persistency in capital structure decisions, we document that the ownership structure plays a significant role in determining leverage ratios. More specially, we find that managerial ownership has a positive and significant impact on firms’ leverage, consistent with the incentive alignment hypothesis. We also find that managerial ownership only affects the leverage decisions of private firms in the post-2005 split share reform period. State ownership negatively influence leverage decisions implying that SOEs may face fewer restrictions in equity issuance and may receive favourable treatments when applying for seasoned equity 􀂿nancing, thus use less debt. Furthermore, our results show that while foreign ownership negatively influences leverage decisions, legal person shareholding positively influences firms’ leverage decisions only for state controlled firms. We also find that the board structure variables (board size and the proportion of independent directors) do not influence firms’ capital structure decisions. Our findings suggest that recent ownership reforms have been successful in terms of providing incentive to managers through managerial shareholdings to take risky financial choices.

The study examines whether higher CEO compensation is related to unobserved future firm performance in an emerging market, Pakistan. Further, it extends its scope to analyzing the impact of group affiliation and ownership concentration on the relationship between CEO compensation and future firm performance. The study uses an unbalanced panel data consisting of 1508 firm-year observations from 225 non-financial listed companies in Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) for period 2005 to 2012. The multiple regression models adjusted to heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation in error terms are used. The study finds that, in general, CEO compensation is positively associated with future operating performance. However, higher CEO compensation leads to lower operating performance in firms that have lower ownership concentration and are affiliated with business groups. When firms are not affiliated with any group and have high ownership concentration, the relationship between excessive CEO compensation and future operating performance becomes insignificant. Given that efficient compensation packages may lead to long term value creation to shareholders and reduce agency problems, this study highlights an important moderating role of ownership concentration and group affiliation of the firms in emerging markets.

The auditor, an important instrument of corporate governance, ensures the transparency and accountability of the firm to the stakeholders. The objective of this paper is to explore the impact of audit characteristics on firm performance. In this study, external audit quality (BIG4), frequencies of audit committee meetings, and audit committee size are used as the proxies of audit characteristics and firm performance is measured through ROA, profit margin and EPS. A total of 503 firm years are considered as sample size from the listed manufacturing firms of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) during the period of 2013 to 2017 to find out the impact of audit characteristics on firm performance. In this study, multivariate regression analysis is conducted using the pooled OLS method. Moreover, time dummy and lag model of multivariate analysis are also analyzed as robust check. The multivariate regression results find that external audit quality (BIG4) and audit committee size are significantly positively associated with firm performance. This study also finds that there is a significant negative relationship between audit committee meeting and firm performance. This study recommends that the regulatory authority and audit committee should review the frequencies of audit committee meeting to make it more effective to ensure better firm performance.

This paper examines how corporate social responsibility is related to the degree of asymmetric information in the Korean financial market. Recent theory argues that there is a negative relationship between a firm’s corporate social responsibility and its information asymmetry. To test this hypothesis, we use the environment, social and governance (ESG) score, published by the Korean Corporate Governance Service, to proxy a firm’s management practices toward socially responsible activities. In the entire sample of the Korean firms, we find contrasting results; the ESG score shows negative relationships with the price impact measure but statistically insignificant relationships with the dispersion of analyst forecasts. However, the ESG score shows negative relationships with both measures when we exclude chaebol affiliates from the sample. These findings are robust when we examine environmental, social and corporate governance scores separately. This set of results argues for the extant theory, expecting a negative relationship between a firm’s engagement in corporate social responsibility and asymmetric information. It further argues for the importance of firm characteristics in determining the influence of socially responsible activities.

Purpose – The purpose of this research study is to make a comparative analysis between corporate governance guidelines 2016 and 2012 and area of further improvement to ensure better governance, accountability and transparency. Research design, data and methodology - This research study is mainly based on the corporate governance guidelines 2016 and 2012 issued by the regulatory authority known as Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC). Results - This study finds that corporate governance guideline 2012 include some new issues such as criteria and qualification of independent director; some additional statements in the directors’ report; mandatory requirement of separation of chairman and CEO; constitution of audit committee; chairman of audit committee; role of audit committee, duties of CEO and CFO on financial statements; and collection of compliance certificate from professional accountant or secretary in compare to corporate governance guidelines 2016. Conclusions – This study suggests that the regulatory authority should include more issues such as tax management and reporting, risk management and reporting; individual and overall performance analysis of the board and independent directors; separate nomination and compensation committee; assessment of true independence of the board and its supporting committees to ensure higher quality of corporate governance and transparency.

Purpose – In this article, a dynamic model like a VAR is an appropriate choice for estimating the possible interrelationship between ownership structure and firm performance as a dynamic process. Research design, data, and methodology – Data of this work are collected from Chinese stock exchange including 350 Chinese-listed firms during the period of 1999-2012. We hypothesize that this interrelationship dynamically exists between ownership structure and firm performance. To examine the correlation, a panel Vector Auto-regression (PVAR) approach generated by GMM method is utilized to test the possible dynamic relation embedded in corporate governance. Another two dynamic analysis solutions such as orthogonalized impulse-response function and variance decomposition are also used simultaneously. Results – Findings of this study indicate the evidence that dynamically endogenous relationship exists between ownership structure and firm performance. Further, there is a dynamical correlation between investment and performance. Impulse response and variance decomposition illustrate that impact of a shock to variables themselves is the main source for their variability. Conclusions – The conclusion in this study is that there is a bidirectional and inter-temporal effect between proportion of ownership and corporate performance for a long run in accordance with impulse response function. Overall, our results suggest that corporate governance in China is more market oriented.

The purpose of this paper is to review the quality of corporate governance from the prior empirical literature. This study finds that most of the researchers developed the self structured corporate governance index and few researchers used the corporate governance index provided by rating agencies. This study also finds that there is no uniform basis to measure the corporate governance quality and observed the variation in terms of overall and individual attributes of corporate governance; sub-indices of corporate governance; scoring system; weighted and un-weighted method; statistical method; time period; financial and non financial companies; code of corporate governance; listing requirement; disclosure practices; legal environment; firms characteristics; and country perspective. This study also observed that overall corporate governance quality is very low in most of the studies and even quality of corporate governance varies in the firms within the same country. This study recommends that the boundary of corporate governance quality should be defined based on the agreed set of rules and regulation, code of governance and practices. This study also suggests that the regulator and policy makers should more emphasize on code of corporate governance and regulatory framework and monitoring to improve the quality of corporate governance.