The research aims to determine the impact of the board characteristics on the firm performance for 348 firms of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) 500 Index listed on the National Stock Exchange of India for the period 2012-2018 using (OLS) Ordinary Least Square (FEM) Fixed Effect Model and more robust (GMM) Generalized Method of Moments regression techniques. GMM regression technique also controls for the endogeneity as well as heteroscedasticity and heterogeneity in panel data. Further, the moderating effects of market capitalization are also observed considering the impact of board characteristics on the firm performance using the interaction effects technique. Lastly, the ideal board size was determined based on the classification of market capitalization including small, mid and large market cap. Board characteristics including board size and percentage of shares held by the promoters have a positive significant impact on the firm performance while the percentage of shares pledged by the promoters has a negative significant impact on the firm performance. The results show that market capitalization moderates the relationship between board characteristics and firm performance. Findings also suggest an ideal board size of 8 for mid-cap firms and a range of 7-18 for large-cap firms which show a similar result to the Kotak Committee Report (2017) recommendations with the ideal board size being a minimum of 6 directors on the board. The results cannot be generalized as only the manufacturing and services (excluding financial) industries are taken into account, but the results can be applied to the abovesaid industry sectors.

In this study, we examine the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a measure of Corporate Governance on firm performance for 348 firms in the NSE 500 Index listed in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India for the period 2012-2019. The results show that the total amount spent on CSR by the firms has a negative impact on the firm performance as there is a significant difference between the total amount incurred to be spent on CSR as per amendments in the Companies Act, 2013 and the total amount actually spent on CSR by the firms. It’s concluded that the number of CSR meetings held had no significant impact on firm performance. Results also show that firm size moderates the relationship between CSR and firm performance.

The hockey-stick sales phenomenon has been less examined in the earlier studies and doesn’t receive much attention due to the cumbersome process involved in the change of sales policies in the companies and the overall restructuring of the supply chain management. The process is costly and mostly the hockey-stick sales phenomenon has an adverse impact on the profitability of companies. However, this was not observed in the case of the companies belonging to the retail industry in India. Our study shows that hockey-stick sales have a positive impact on the profitability of the companies measured by Profit After Tax (PAT) while on the other hand during the COVID-19 period, the hockey-stick sales phenomenon appears to impact negatively the profitability of the companies specifically. The results could not be generalized as the results are industry specific, but the methodology could be applied to a different industrial sector in order to study the relationship between hockey-stick sales and profitability and its impact on the performance of the companies.