Corporate budget governance through the operating managers engagement: Does locus of control matter?

The current study aims to investigate the relationship between budgetary participation and job satisfaction, moderated by the personality variable, locus of control. The data is gathered via a questionnaire administered to 75 managers from Tunisian hotels. To test the hypothesis of this study, moderated regression analysis was performed. Our results in a developing country setting confirm the contingent aspect of budgetary participation and show that the locus of control moderates the budgetary participation effects on job satisfaction. Budgetary participation was found to have a positive effect on internal managers while having a negative effect on external managers. The results suggest that it is necessary for Tunisian hotels to focus on the broader context in which budgetary participation is used. This latter has two aspects: structural and behavioral. The success of budget participation certainly depends on the organizational setting in which it is used but also on the psychological willingness of actors involved to develop and succeed in such budgetary practice.

An activist investor’s successful corporate governance and strategic management impacts: An updated L Brands case study

The key research aim of this paper is to analyze whether an activist investor’s recommendations for financial, corporate governance, and strategic management performances were successful or not. This paper updates the initial case study of the activist investor, Barington Capital Group, in analyzing the performance of a public company, L Brands, which had lost $20 billion in market capitalization in the last three years prior to the public letter from Barington to the L Brands CEO in March 2019. This updated case study analyzes whether Barington’s initial recommendations worked as operational guidelines for improving L Brands’ financial, corporate governance, and strategic management performances. From its financial analysis, Barington recommended either an initial public offering of the superior performing Bath & Body Works brand or a spinoff of the weak performing Victoria’s Secret brand. From its corporate governance and strategic management analysis, Barington recommended that L Brands improve the composition of its board of directors whose deficiencies in director independence, industry experience, and diversity hindered its ability to effectively oversee and advise strategic management. It is important to note that this paper was prepared exclusively with public information.

Current state of corporate governance practices in Colombia

In this paper, we review the current state of corporate governance in Colombia. First, we discuss the evolution of the legal framework of corporate governance including the main changes in the code of best corporate governance practices that took place since the global financial crisis of 2008. After this, we discuss key corporate governance issues such as the ownership structure of listed corporations and the market for corporate control, we analyze the practices of corporate boards of Colombian listed companies and their remuneration systems and the role of pension funds and hedge funds as shareholder activists. We also review the evidence regarding corporate governance and firm performance. Finally, we discuss the current state of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and an assessment of corporate governance specifics by industry. We conclude that there are opportunities for future research in several of these fields of study, especially regarding boards of director practices, director remuneration, and corporate social responsibility.

Editorial: Corporate board structure, strategy and performance in uncertain times

Corporate managers make choices that seek to improve the performance of their organisation. These decisions involve interpreting and framing the environment, developing and implementing programmes and services, and creating processes and structures to monitor and control resources for optimal impact (Brown & Iverson, 2004). Board performs a critical function to monitor environmental trends that might affect organisational performance. The strategy adopted by the corporate board will have a considerable impact on their performance. The literature also suggests that the composition of the board will be contingent upon the characteristics of the firm’s external environment, the demands of its strategy and the salient contextual factors and the past financial performance of the company (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). These issues are addressed in the collection of high-quality papers in this issue of Corporate Board: Role, Duties and Composition.

Diversity in boardrooms and firm performance: The role of tenure and educational level of board members

Diversity on corporate boards has been studied from different perspectives in recent decades. The present study aims at investigating the impact on firm performance of two demographic diversity traits in boardrooms: tenure and educational diversity. The extant literature does not provide aligned findings on this topic, thus further research is still needed. The authors hypothesize that both tenure and educational diversity of board members have a positive effect on firm performance. To measure firm performance two dependent variables are used, applying two models for each hypothesis investigated Tobin’s Q and return on assets. The study is conducted using sample data of 187 listed firms within the European area, covering a 9-year period, from 2010 to 2018. Diversity dimensions are measured through indexes constructed on the basis of the mix among the directors in terms of educational level and tenure. The outcomes highlight a significant and positive relationship between tenure diversity on corporate boards and firm performance. In terms of the impact of educational diversity, no evidence indicating a positive effect on firm performance is found. The research carried out is unique because it considers two personal attributes of diversity calculating diversity indexes and measuring their impact on the firm’s performance. The econometric approach used has not been extensively applied in previous research. In fact, the majority of previous empirical studies have measured diversity through percentages or dummy variables, depending on the type of diversity aspect being analyzed, and then used it as the independent variable.

Editorial: Advances in corporate governance practices

Corporate governance has gone through three decades of profound changes in terms of new regulations, new practices, and environmental conditions. Many countries drafted guidelines for best corporate governance practices following Cadbury report (Cadbury, 1992). These practices were mainly related to the board of directors (composition and functioning), internal controls, and internal audit. The Enron scandal followed by the collapse of Arthur Andersen, one of the big five audit firms, and the enactment of the “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act” (Sarbanes-Oxley law) in 2002 were other milestones in the evolution of corporate governance. This law brought about significant changes related to public company accounting oversight, auditor independence, financial disclosure, and corporate responsibility. The financial crisis in 2008 started in the United States and has shaken the world economy. This crisis was due to weak corporate governance that led to fraudulent financial reporting and excessive risk-taking. Grove and Victoravich (2012) consider CEO duality, lack of board independence, weak management control systems, short-termism, weak codes of ethics, and opaque disclosures among the main drivers of this crisis. The COVID-19 has consistently shown that firms with better corporate governance and corporate social responsibility practices were the most resilient entities during the first quarter of the pandemic (Ramelli & Wagner, 2020). All these topics are addressed in this collection of high-quality research papers of this year’s first issue of Corporate Board: Role, Duties, and Composition.

Editorial: Strategy development for uncertain times

Corporate strategy is considered a central driver of a firm’s long-term orientation, a key influencer in corporate performance, and nowadays being impacted by an increasing business endeavour where complexity is the new normal. Corporate governance suggests that boards of directors have the duty to govern the firms they are responsible for, and doing so in a sustainable way. Hence, boards are supposed to make relevant decisions on corporate strategy. How is, however, strategy translated into the board agenda? Corporate governance faces a new set of challenges as a great deal of countries are progressively getting out of the pandemic constraints that have slowed economic performance for most businesses. The way strategies will be developed will dictate their fit for purpose. Such strategies will have to cope with increasing sustainability goals; provide a competitive edge against competitors’ technological edges and innovation in general. Such strategies will have to deal with innovative usages of IT and potential business disruptions that may be triggered by digital transformation. All such paradigm changes will demand more effort from boards, and force them to dive into unusual fields, such as learning about complexity and systems thinking. As important as strategy formulation is ethical leadership for strategy deployment and sustainability. Overall, such topics are placed high on boards agendas and are addressed in the current issue of Corporate Board: Role, Duties and Composition.

Strategies for boards of directors to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused escalating levels of business, economic, and societal uncertainty and created extensive disruptions in the global market. The major research question of this study is how boards of directors can manage uncertainty in the post-COVID environment, especially in their duties as gatekeepers for both their own shareholders and all the stakeholders, including employees, customers, creditors, and suppliers. It is critical for boards to develop practices to help their companies manage uncertainty in the COVID and post-COVID times, as shown by the following topics discussed and analyzed in this paper: managing uncertainty with visibility, control, and agility practices; risk strategies for non-executive directors; global risk concerns; disruptive risks and opportunities from emerging technologies; boardroom risk advice; and boardroom risk questions. All these issues and areas of concern are relevant, even critical, to help boards develop sound practices for managing post-COVID uncertainty, to help their companies survive, and to strengthen corporate governance. Future research could use case studies and interviews of company boards to investigate how they have developed risk strategies and procedures to manage uncertainty as lessons learned from the 2020 COVID pandemic, which was a coronavirus “black swan” (a surprise event with major effects).

Corporate Internet disclosures during the coronavirus pandemic

Corporate disclosures constitute the main means of communication between companies and their related parties, with the Internet being one of the most important. Although several studies have been conducted on the extent of disclosures on the Internet and the factors that affect it (Elsayed, Masry, & Elbeltagi, 2010; Botti, Boubaker, Hamrouni, & Solonandrasana, 2014; etc.), research during the crisis of the pandemic is limited. The purpose of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to examine the extent and quality of disclosures that companies provided on corporate websites during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, an effort is made to assess which factors affected the extent of disclosure. These factors focus on firm-specific characteristics (company size, leverage, profitability, auditing firm size) and core corporate governance attributes (board size, ownership concentration and chief executive officer duality). Results indicate that average disclosure was relatively high. Regression analysis shows that the level of disclosure was significantly positively associated with company size, profitability and board size. This indicates that during the pandemic, larger companies, more profitable and with more board members, disclosed more information on their websites. The results of the study may be of interest for clients, financial and credit analysts, investors, supervisory authorities as well as management, in their effort to improve corporate disclosures and the level of social responsibility.

The influence of family board involvement on working capital management

While research on long-term capital structures of family and non-family firms is well established, differences in current assets- and liabilities-management are largely under-researched. The aim of the study is to examine whether the type and degree of family involvement in the firm affect the efficiency of working capital management. Employing a partially hand-collected panel of 278 listed firms from 2000–2013 this paper analyzes the impact of family shareholders as owners, managers, and supervisors on working capital handling in Germany. The results show that primarily the share of family members in the executive board increases the length of the cash conversion cycle (CCC), particularly in smaller and non-service firms. Most notably, family management increases the inventory period (DIO). The higher average equity ratio of family firms suggests that family firms may face reduced financing pressure to address such inefficiencies in current assets and current liabilities management. Furthermore, family-managed firms may be less professional in their working capital management. The findings contribute to the literature by showing that in a country with a less investor-friendly corporate governance system, family influences on working capital management are primarily due to management presence, not plain shareholder influence. The results stress the need for researchers to consider the degree of family management involvement when analyzing the financial aspects of family firms.