Purpose This paper aims to examine the impact of gender diversity both at operational and leadership levels on the financial performance of firms in India. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a panel data set of 100 large Indian corporate firms. This study uses the Blau index and Shannon index to compute gender diversity. First, this paper uses system generalized method of moments model to deal with the potential endogeneity issue in the association between gender diversity and firm performance. Second, to unveil heterogeneity in such a relationship, the study applies panel data quantile regression model. Finally, the study adopts a generalized estimating equation model to investigate such relationships for group affiliated and standalone firms. Findings This study finds a significant positive impact of workforce gender diversity and board gender diversity on the financial performance of firms. Further, the results of the quantile regression model indicate that the impact of gender diversity (workforce and board) on firm performance is more pronounced at higher quantiles of the conditional distribution of firm performance. However, the study fails to extricate any significant impact of audit committee gender diversity on firm performance. Finally, the study also finds a significant positive impact of gender diversity at both workforce and board level for a group affiliated, as well as standalone firms. Originality/value The present study makes a novel contribution to the extant literature on the association between gender diversity and financial performance of firms by examining such diversity at both operational and leadership levels in the context of an emerging country such as India that captures the complex realities pertaining to gender issues. Further, the study contributes to the empirical literature regarding the heterogeneous impact of gender diversity on firm performance in the Indian context.

Corporate Governance (CG) in India has undergone major transformation in the recent past with the enactment of Companies Act, 2013 and revision of SEBI's Listing Agreement. Though some studies were undertaken in the Indian context few conventional aspects of CG have been repetitively addressed with conflicting results. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of some prominent CG attributes such as board size, board independence, role duality, board's gender diversity, ownership concentration and audit committee independence on both market as well as accounting based measures of firm performance (FP). To this end the study uses a sample of top 100 non-financial and non-utility firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for the period of 2014-2018 and employs two stage least square with instrumental variables technique of estimation which takes into account potential endogeneity in CG-FP relationship. The findings reveal a significant positive impact of board size, ownership concentration and audit committee independence on market based measure of FP while board independence is found to have a significant negative impact on accounting based measure of FP. Moreover role duality and gender diversity are not associated with FP. The outcome of this study highlights how the relationship between CG and FP works in the unique institutional setting of India and it should be of interest to regulators, practitioners and other market participants.

Purpose This study aims to examine the influence of some prominent corporate governance (CG) mechanisms such as board size (BS), board independence (BI), role duality (RD), board’s gender diversity (GD), ownership concentration (OC), audit committee independence (ACI), nomination and remuneration committee (NRC) and risk management committee (RMC) on voluntary disclosure (VD), as well as different types of VD after controlling the effect of some firm-specific factors for Indian firms. Design/methodology/approach The study selects market capitalization-based top 100 non-financial and non-utility firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange as on 31st March 2014. Data are drawn from the Capitaline Plus database over the period of 2014–2018. Appropriate panel data regression model is applied to examine the influence of CG on VD. Findings The study reveals a significant negative influence of BI on VD while GD and RMC exhibit a significant positive influence on the same. The remaining CG mechanisms such as BS, RD, OC, ACI and NRC appear to have no significant influence on VD. Analysis into the relationship between CG mechanisms and different types of VD reveals that BI, in particular, has a strong negative influence on corporate strategic disclosure (CSD) and forward looking disclosure (FWLD) while GD and RMC both exhibit a significant positive influence on CSD, FWLD, CG disclosure and financial and capital market disclosure. Notably, none of the CG mechanisms under consideration influence human and intellectual capital disclosure. Research limitations/implications The study considers annual reports as the only medium of making VD and ignores all other sources such as websites and press releases. Besides, it mainly emphasizes on corporate board structure, board committees and OC while other ownership structure-related variables family ownership, managerial ownership are not covered, which can be analysed in future studies. Practical implications The study offers some important theoretical, as well as practical connotations for regulators and practitioners operating in India, as well as other emerging economies having similar institutional settings. Originality/value The study is the first of its kind in India that examines the influence of various CG mechanisms on different types of VD and thereby contributes novel findings in the context of an emerging economy.

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of board human capital diversity, measured by educational qualification diversity and gender diversity on the financial performance of Indian firms after controlling corporate governance (CG) and firm-specific variables. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on a panel data set of top 100 listed Indian firms for a period of five years. The authors use Blau index and Shannon index to compute qualification diversity. The authors use three-stage least square (3SLS) model to deal with the potential endogeneity issue in the association of human capital diversity variables and other CG variables with firm performance. Further, the authors adopt generalized estimating equation (GEE) model for robustness check. Findings The authors find a significant positive impact of board’s educational diversity as well as gender diversity on the financial performance of firms. Additionally, they extricate highly significant positive interaction impact of board’s educational diversity and gender diversity on the financial performance of firms. Further, the results indicate a significant positive impact of board size, board independence, ownership concentration, family ownership and audit committee independence on firm performance, while CEO duality exhibits a significant negative impact on firm performance. Originality/value This study fills the existing gap in literature by extending the performance implications of board’s human capital diversity for top listed Indian firms.

Voluntary disclosure (VD) is considered potentially important for efficient functioning of the capital market as it communicates firms’ performance and governance to shareholders and potential investors, which boost their confidence. This article attempts to provide a brief conceptual framework of VD and corporate governance (CG), and also reviews the empirical literature dealing with relationship between them. To this end, the article uses systematic electronic literature search method, which takes into account 65 empirical studies published over the period 1998–2018. An investigation of empirical findings points to some factors that may have contributed toward the apparent inconsistent findings observed to date. In particular, the article focuses on two intervening factors for variation of results—such as CG system and measurement of explanatory variables. The findings suggest that studies mostly from Anglo-Saxon system (ASS) show complementary relationship between different attributes of CG with VD, whereas in case of communitarian system, studies mostly depict an insignificant impact of CG attributes on VD except for few studies showing their positive/negative impact on VD. However, in case of emerging market system (EMS), some studies show substitutive relationship between board independence (BI) and VD while other CG attributes such as board size (BS), (GD), and audit committee independence (ACI) in most of the studies complement VD supporting the resource-based perspective. Furthermore, the association of ownership structure (OS) and role duality (RD) with VD is mixed. Another factor, which is considered to be added to variation of results, is measurement of explanatory variables whereby albeit studies employed same concepts, operational definition of variables intervenes into the relationship between CG and VD. The findings of this article provide some deeper insights about the complementary and substitutive relationships between CG and VD by integrating diverse empirical findings under different research contexts. Future research can extend to analyze some other institutional factors like investors’ protection rights and legal enforcement, which might also have played some role in influencing the relationship between CG and VD. Furthermore, it is also evident from the review that BS and BI are the most commonly studied CG attributes in relation to VD, whereas attributes like GD and ACI, despite their theoretical relevance and practical importance are least studied in relation to VD, thus signaling the need to focus on these attributes in future studies.