The Networked Storyteller and Her Digital Tale: Film Festivals and Ann Hui’s 'My Way'

In cooperation with China’s Youku online channel, the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society commissioned Ann Hui to make a short film, My Way, to be part of an omnibus production, Beautiful 2012. In order to be considered for this commission, Hui needed to be acknowledged at international film festivals and be a recognized auteur known in the Asian region and beyond. Without Hui’s festival credentials and the reputation of the other directors in the curated production, the collected shorts would have little appeal to other programmers and distributors. Although she has famously resisted the label of “film auteur” in the past, Ann Hui undoubtedly stands as the most celebrated female director based in Hong Kong active before and after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in 1997.Given the length of her career as well as the impressive critical and scholarly attention her work has garnered, Hui serves as an exemplary case study of how film festivals play a vital role in the career of a Hong Kong female fiction film director. In the case of My Way, the festival circuit permits a specific type of production and digital distribution that enables Hui to craft a network narrative, which places the transition of its protagonist from male to female within a broader community connected through a shared gender identity. By analyzing Ann Hui’s presence at the festivals in Venice and Hong Kong, as well as the link between her festival exposure and her Internet success, My Way offers insight into the circuitous paths women filmmakers follow in order to tell their stories on transnational screens.

Microfinance institutions' risk and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the impact of MFI-level governance on microfinance institutions' (MFIs’) risk in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).Design/methodology/approachThe study uses data from a sample of 151 MFIs operating in 21 SSA countries during 2005–2014. The Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) regression model is applied to investigate the relationship between MFI level governance mechanisms and risk.FindingsThe study provides new evidence that board characteristics have differential effects on for-profit (FP) and not-for-profit (NFP) MFI risk. Board independence reduces credit risk of NFP MFIs. Foreign director presence increases MFI failure risk. Furthermore, greater female director representation reduces (increases) FP (NFP) financial risk whereas female CEOs are associated with higher (lower) FP (NFP) financial risk.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to existing literature on microfinance governance and risk, by exploring the impact of governance on MFI risk based on MFIs profit orientation. In addition, the study uses three different risk measures unlike previous microfinance studies.

Female Director and Agency Cost: Does board gender diversity at Indian corporate board reduce agency conflict?

We examined the presence of women directors in top-level management and their effect on principal-principal conflict (PP) and principal-agent conflict (PA) on the firms listed on Indian stock exchange using a panel model approach. For analysis purpose, this study covers the sample of 75 companies belonging to various industries and listed in Bombay Stock Exchange Index, has been studied over thirteen financial years, i.e. from year 2006 to year 2019. This study uses panel data analysis, i.e. fixed effect model and random effect model. The proportion and presence (dichotomous) of women directors on top level management board is taken as the independent variable. Principal-principal conflict measured by assets utilization ratio (AUR), and principal-agent conflict is been measured by dividend payout ratio (DPR), are taken as dependent variable in this study. The prime results of this study using panel data analysis, i.e. fixed effect (FE) and random effects (RE) estimation models point towards no significant impact of the female director (proportion and presence) on the firm’s agency cost (PP and PA).

The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility and Board Gender Diversity on Bankruptcy: Evidence from Korea

This study investigates whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and board gender diversity affect bankruptcy. The core issue focuses on the moderating effect between CSR activities and board gender diversity on bankruptcy. Using 4,654 firmyear observations from a sample of 581 non-financial firms listed on the Korean Stock Exchange over the period 2009–2017, we employ the fixed effect estimation and two-way fixed effect estimation of panel analysis to control endogenous. We find firms engaging more in CSR activities reduce the level of bankruptcy, but board gender diversity does not reduce the level of bankruptcy due to tiny portion of female director in the boardroom. The moderating effect on the relationship between CSR activities and board gender diversity reduce the level of bankruptcy. This result indicates that the influence of female directors on the boards of Korean listed firms is not yet strong but board gender diversity with good CSR activities positively operate to reduce the level of bankruptcy.

Impact of gender diversity in boardroom on risk-return profile of Indian corporates

Purpose The existing literature point that the presence of women directors in a firm reduces its risk. However, the relation between boardroom gender diversity and a firm’s return is widely disputed leading to no concrete answer. Some studies mention that women directors have a positive impact on firm performance, whereas, on the other hand, some findings suggest that women directors reduce financial performance. This paper aims to study the relationship of firm risk and return with boardroom gender diversity and the net impact on firm performance in the Indian context. This study uses not only traditional measures of risk and return but also the third measure of risk-adjusted returns to postulate its findings. Design/methodology/approach Based upon the data of the top 100 of the Bombay Stock Exchange-500 firms for the period FY 2009–2010 to FY 2018–2019, this study applied fixed effect panel regression and random effects Tobit regression to examine the effect of board gender diversity on firm performance. Findings The study concludes that firms with women directors on board have lower risk and lower returns. It also results in a higher risk-adjusted return, creating a positive impact on a firm’s performance. Originality/value The paper contributes to the existing literature on corporate governance by considering return, risk and risk-adjusted returns in single research to have a holistic measure of firm performance. It provides empirical evidence from one of the largest emerging economies, India where the female director and independent female director have been introduced recently.

Valuation Effects of Norway’s Board Gender-Quota Law Revisited

We highlight the complexities in estimating the valuation effects of board gender quotas by critically revisiting studies of Norway’s pioneering board gender-quota law. We use the short-run event study of Ahern and Dittmar [Ahern KR, Dittmar A (2012) The changing of the boards: The impact on firm valuation of mandated female board representation. Quart. J. Econom. 127(1):137–197] to illustrate (1) the difficulties in attributing quota-related news to specific dates, (2) the need to account for contemporaneous cross-correlation of stock returns when judging the statistical significance of event-related abnormal stock returns, and (3) the fundamental difficulty of separating quota-induced valuation effects from the influences of firm characteristics and macroeconomic events such as the financial crisis. We provide new evidence suggesting that the valuation effect of Norway’s quota law was statistically insignificant. Overall, our evidence suggests that, at the time of the Norwegian quota, the supply of qualified female director candidates was high enough to avoid the negative consequences of the quota highlighted previously in the literature. This paper was accepted by Renee Adams, finance.

THE INFLUENCE OF FEMALE DIRECTOR ON THE PROBABILITY OF COMPANIES EXPERIENCING FINANCIAL DISTRESS

This study aims to determine the effect of Female Director on the Probability of a Company Experiencing Financial Distress. Springate model is used to predict the probability of a company experiencing financial distress. This study compares the effect of female director on the probability of a company experiencing financial distress without control variables and using control variables. The control variables in this study are board size, firm size and leverage. The population in this study were manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in the period 2013-2018. The samples in this study were 27 companies. The results of this study indicate that female directors have no significant effect on the probability of a company experiencing financial distress. By using control variables, it is shown that female directors do not significantly influence the probability of a company experiencing financial distress with the control variables such as board size, firm size, and leverage.

Precarious life: cinema, ontology and the digital turn in Julie Taymor’s Shakespeare films

After analysing the debates on the move towards digitalisation in the cinema, this article explores how Julie Taymor’s The Tempest frames digital modalities in negative terms by conflating their power to disembody with the will to de-humanise. Based on the subtle but persistent ways in which Taymor’s Shakespeare films deflect gender precarity onto race, the article argues that The Tempest ultimately encodes Taymor’s own precarity as an industry outsider and female director and becomes an elegy for the analogue production of ‘the human’.