Departing from previous studies, this paper investigates the impact of corporate board diversity on corporate performance and executive pay within the context of Middle East and North African countries. Our sample includes a balanced panel of 600 firm‐year observations, consisting of 100 individual firms drawn from five Middle Eastern countries (Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab of Emirates) over the 2009–2014 period. The findings are three‐fold. First, board diversity, as measured by director gender and nationality, has a positive effect on corporate financial performance. Second, the relationship between board diversity and corporate performance is stronger in better governed firms than their poorly governed counterparts. Finally, board diversity, as measured by director gender, ethnicity, and nationality, enhances the pay‐for‐performance sensitivity but not the actual executive pay. Our results suggest that decisions about board diversity are not merely influenced by moral values; they arise because of the cost–benefit considerations of what diversity can bring to the firm. The findings are robust to controlling for different alternatives of board diversity measures, corporate governance proxies, corporate outcomes, and types of endogeneities.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the number of outside directors on the board of directors and dividend payout are substitutes or complements mechanisms applied by UK firms to control agency conflicts of interest within the firm. Design/methodology/approach -The authors use tobit and logit regression models to examine the extent to which firms with a majority of outside directors on their boards experience significantly lower or higher dividend payout after controlling for insider ownership, profitability, liquidity, asset structure, business risk, firm size, firms' growth rate and borrowing ratio. Findings -Based on a sample of 400 non-financial firms listed at London Stock Exchange for the period from 1991 to 2002, it was found that dividend payout is negatively associated with the number of outside directors on the board of directors. Originality/value -The results suggest that firms pay lower dividends when higher number of outside directors is employed on the board. This evidence is consistent with the substitution hypothesis, which indicated that firms with weak corporate governance need to establish a reputation by paying dividends. In other words, dividends substitute for independent directors on the board. This finding offers novel insights to policy makers interested in agency conflicts of interest within the firm. It also provides evidence on the use of different substitute mechanisms for reducing agency costs.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate dividend policy decisions in developing countries through studying Jordanian non-financial firms. It aims to highlight the issue of dividend policy and the behaviour of dividends in Jordan as an emerging market. Design/methodology/approach -The paper examines the dividend policy situation in Jordan and compares the differences between developed markets and the emerging markets in the dividend policy context. It uses previous studies and it also covers the determinants of dividend policy. Findings -The paper finds that the dividend policy in Jordan, as a developing country, is influenced by factors similar to those relating to developed countries such as: leverage ratio, institutional ownership, profitability, business risk, asset structure, growth rate and firm size. Furthermore, the factors affecting the likelihood of paying dividends are similar to those affecting the dividend policy. Finally, the results show that the Lintner model is valid for Jordanian data, and that Jordanian firms have target payout ratios and that they adjust to their target relatively faster than firms in more developed countries. Practical implications -The practical implication of the study is that investors and managers should consider the factors that affect the dividend policy when they make their profit distribution decision. Originality/value -The paper investigates the factors that affect the dividend policy and also consider the behaviour issue of dividend payments.

We explore the potential drivers of corporate capital-structure decision. We apply both fixed effects panel models and random effects tobit models to examine this issue. Based on a sample of 379 firms across the period from 1991 to 2002, we find that corporate characteristics (firm size, firm risk, firm growth rate, firm profitability and asset tangibility) and corporate governance characteristics (board size and outside directorships) are the main drivers of capital-structure of UK firms. In addition, our results show that changing the definition of capital-structure may result in changing the sign and the significance of these potential drivers. Hence, we argue that another dimension of the capital-structure puzzle can be introduced, which is related to the definition of capital-structure used in prior studies. It is worth noting that our aim is not to provide an optimal set of factors that may affect the decision of capital-structure, but to highlight the effect of the different definitions of capitalstructure that can be used by different studies, which makes comparison between such studies difficult or even erroneous.3

This paper aims to contribute to the extant literature on corporate social responsibility and corporate governance by empirically examining the effect of firm governance and shareholding structure (and their interaction) on corporate social responsibility performance. Our study is conducted within a unique context of improving social responsibility policies, regulations, and management. In particular, we examine how corporate governance practices and both outside (institutional and pension) and inside (managerial) shareholdings impact corporate social responsibility activities. Using one of the largest UK data sets to date, consisting of FTSE 350 nonfinancial listed firms for the period from 2002 to 2016, our results provide evidence that corporate governance has a positive impact on corporate social responsibility. Institutional (indicating strong monitoring role) and managerial (proxy for alignment of interests between insiders and outsiders) shareholdings are negatively associated with corporate social responsibility performance. Our additional analyses provide empirical evidence that compensation structure, as a corporate governance tool, aligns management decisions toward engaging in corporate social responsibility activities and corporate strategic sustainable objectives. Additionally, our results suggest a substitutive relationship of institutional shareholding with corporate governance practices. There is a complementary relationship of managerial shareholding with corporate governance practices in influencing corporate social responsibility. Our evidence is robust after controlling for entrenched managerial shareholding, 2SLS and alternative measures of corporate social responsibility performance. The findings provide empirical support for the UK Corporate Governance Code's emphasis on designing effective remuneration policies and practices.