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Corporate governance and dividend pay-out policy in UK listed SMEs: The effects of corporate board characteristics AbstractPurpose: This paper examines the extent to which corporate board characteristics influence the level of dividend pay-out ratio using a sample of UK small and medium-sized enterprises

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Past evidence generally suggests that the presence of female directors on corporate boards tends to improve earnings quality due to these directors’ superior monitoring abilities. However, it is not clear which characteristics and skills of female directors drive such abilities. In this paper, we focus on the financial background of female directors, an area which remains largely unexplored in existing literature. The results show that the participation of female directors with relevant financial background improves earnings quality more than the participation of female directors without such background. In addition, our findings suggest that only female directors possessing relevant financial background and having fewer outside directorships are able to mitigate earnings management and therefore overcommitting expert female directors with more outside directorships would diminish their monitoring ability. We did not find any evidence suggesting that female directors without relevant financial background are able to mitigate earnings management, irrespective of their outside directorships or tenure. We interpret our findings within a theoretical framework that draws on a number of economic and social theories. The results are generally robust after controlling for potential endogeneity problems.

We examine the interrelationships among board sustainability committees, process-based climate change initiatives, outcome-based carbon performance, and market value through the lens of economic-and social-based theoretical perspectives. Using a panel dataset of 8408 observations from 35 countries between 2002 and 2019, we find that higher levels of actual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are negatively associated with market value. Further, we reveal a positive association between process-based climate change initiatives and market value. We then provide evidence that process-based climate change initiatives are positively related to increased levels of GHG emissions. We also observe that the presence of a board sustainability committee has a positive impact on market value, but does not seem to improve outcome-based carbon performance. Finally, we show that the predicted relationships vary across different country-groups, sector-groups, and periods. Our empirical findings are robust to alternative measures, endogeneities, and sample selection bias. Overall, our evidence supports the symbolic legitimation/greenwashing view, in that firms are likely to employ process-based climate change initiatives under a symbolic approach to create positive impressions among stakeholders and protect their legitimacy.

Purpose: We investigate the association among trustee board diversity (TBD), corporate governance (CG), capital structure (CS) and financial performance (FP) using a sample of UK charities. Specifically, we investigate the effect of TBD on CS, and ascertain whether CG quality moderates the TBD-CS nexus.Additionally, we examine the impact of CS on FP, and ascertain whether the CS-FP nexus is also moderated by TBD and CG quality.Design/methodology/approach: We employ a number of multivariate regression techniques, including ordinary least squares, fixed-effects, lagged-effects and two-stage least squares to rigorously analyse the data and test the hypotheses.Findings: First, we find that trustee board gender diversity has a negative effect on CS, but this relationship holds only up to the point of having three women trustees. We find similar, but relatively weak results for the presence of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic trustees. Second, we find that the TBD-CS nexus depends on the quality of CG with the relationship being stronger in charities with higher frequency of meetings, independent CG committee, and larger trustee and audit firm size. Third, we find that CS structure has a positive effect on FP, but this is moderated by TBD and CG quality. Our evidence is robust to different econometric models that adjust for alternative measures and endogeneities. We interpret our findings within the explanations of a theoretical perspective that captures insights from different CG and CS theories. Originality/value: Existing studies on TBD, CG, CS and FP in charities are rare. Our study distinctively attempts to address this empirical lacuna within the extant literature by providing four new insights with specific focus on UK charities. First, we provide new evidence on the relationship between TBD and CS.Second, we offer new evidence on the moderating effect of CG on the TBD-CS nexus. Third, we provide new evidence on the effect of CS on FP. Finally, we offer new evidence on the moderating effect of TBD and CG on the CS-FP nexus.