Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically capture the impact of a chief executive officer’s (CEO) personal and organizational characteristics on firm performance in the context of a developing country and to explore whether capital structure mediates the relationship between CEO characteristics and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach In order to test the hypothesized model, CEO duality, tenure and personal characteristics (age, gender and education) were taken as explanatory variables to study their impact on firm performance. Data were collected from 179 Pakistani companies from 2009–2015. The collected data were processed via panel data regression analysis under fixed effect assumptions. Findings Results show that CEO duality has a negative impact on firm performance and that a CEO with a dual role is more inclined toward debt financing. Moreover, a CEO with a longer tenure tends to be opportunistic and prioritize his/her personal interest while making strategic financial decisions, thus creating agency costs for the firm. Furthermore, CEO characteristics like age, gender and education have significant effects on firm financial decisions and firm performance. Finally, the debt and equity ratio partially mediates the link between CEO characteristics and firm performance. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study have limited generalizability due to the specific nature of the sample characteristics. Originality/value To the best of the authors knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of CEO characteristics on capital structure and firm performance. This work is also the first to explore the mediating role of capital structure in the relationship between CEO characteristics and firm performance by using Pakistani data.

Assessing the role of diversity in corporate governance has attracted growing interest. In addition, significant relationships are expected between diversity dimensions and firm performance. This research aims to analyze the relationships between female presence in corporate board-firm financial performance and the extent to which such influence is moderated by family ownership. The study's sample, based on the listed firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), represents the nonfinancial sector from 2008 to 2019 with 2087 firm-year observations. Fixed-effect regression analysis was applied to examine the proposed hypothesis. The study's findings indicate that the presence of women in corporate governance is positively associated with firm financial performance. Simultaneously, the mentioned relationship is less pronounced when family ownership is a moderator. The empirical findings of the study support the argument that the presence of women in corporate boards is positively associated with financial performance and supports the reforms made by codes of corporate governance (CCG) that make the presence of female directors' mandatory on the corporate boards. Additionally, the study findings partially confirm that a higher proportion of women on the board increases firm performance. This study offers insights for policymakers to implement legislation for a diverse gender placement in the board of directors and exploit the potential benefits of the gender-balanced board, which generally improves firm performance.

In this study, we examine an empirical relationship between stock market volatility with the exchange rate and gold prices of an emerging market, “Pakistan”, employing daily and monthly data (PSX-100 Index) covering from 2001: Q3 to 2018: Q2. The study explains the average stock returns by applying MGARCH. Further, it investigates that the volatility in the exchange rate (Rs/US $) and gold prices remain equally strong in bearish and bullish conditions of the stock market by using a quantile regression approach (2001–2018). Additionally, the sample period is divided into two split samples that cover (2001–2007) and (2008–2018) respectively, based on global financial crises and applied similar analysis. The overall results show the negative impact of the exchange rate and gold price volatility on the stock market performance daily (monthly), supporting the argument that the stock market considers the exchange rate and gold price fluctuations as an adverse indicator and reacts negatively.

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This study investigates the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure for multi-stakeholders and financial performance of a firm through accounting-based activities for CSR. A dataset of Chinese non-financial firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2012 is taken from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research database. The study compares different financial ratios of CSR disclosure and non-disclosure firms. Moreover, the financial ratios of CSR disclosure firms also compare with the industry averages. The results suggest that the financial of CSR disclosure firms are better than both CSR non-disclosure firms and industry averages. These financial ratios ensure the claim of a firm that they are socially responsible toward multi-stakeholders. Further, the same financial ratios are used as moderator variables between CSR disclosure for multi-stakeholders (independent variable) and firm financial performance (dependent variable). The relationship between CSR disclosure and firm value is moderated by the financial ratios. The moderation effect of financial ratios is rarely used in the literature of CSR disclosure and firm value.

We investigated the effect of Leader Member Exchange (LMX) quality relationship on employee motivation, stress, turnover, satisfaction and Psychological Empowerment with a sample of 1500 employees across four countries. As expected, we found that high quality relationship positively associated with the employee motivation, satisfaction, Psychological Empowerment and lowers the employee stress, turnover. The study also sheds lights on relationship between employee motivation and employee turnover and stress.