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This paper aims to examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) is associated with firms’ earnings quality (EQ) and how this association is context-specific. The authors consider specific institutional differences in strength of corporate governance (CG) attributes, quality of law enforcement and level of investor protection found between Anglo-American, European and South-Eastern Asian CG models to test the impact of above country-level factors on this association.

To test the association between CSR and EQ, the authors consider EIRIS (Ethical Investment Research Service) (2018) CSR issues of sustainability indicators as proxy to capture CSR. Following Rezaee and Tuo’s (2019) study, the authors classify EQ into innate earnings quality (IEQ) and discretionary earnings quality (DEQ). The authors investigate the innate (discretionary) EQ as to refer to firm’s inherent operating uncertainty (earnings management). Several dependency models for panel data applying the generalized method of moment (GMM) estimator of Arellano and Bond (1991) are ruled based on archival data of 4,206 non-financial international listed firms over the period 2012-2017.

Univariate and GMM multivariate cross-country analyses show that CSR is positively associated with EQ and that this association is more pronounced for firms within countries where good CG tools and higher investor right protection are preserved. The authors interpret the findings as evidence that the CSR-EQ association is shaped by the degree of monitoring role played by institutional features at the country level. The results are robust to a battery of robustness tests.

The originality of this research is twice. On the one hand, it examines whether CSR is a reflection of manager’s ethical opportunistic behavior resultant on earnings quality derived from a firm’s innate traits. On the second hand, it tests whether CSR is a reflection of discretionary earnings quality manifested by earnings management behavior. This paper is the first to support that institutional features significantly matter when investigating the association between CSR and EQ.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between boardroom gender diversity (BoGD) and risk-taking by property-liability (P-L) stock insurers from an analytical framework that control for organizational form and ownership structure. It relies on the behavioral agency model, the resource dependency theory and the concept of socioemotional wealth (SEW).

This study builds on an unbalanced panel of 2,285 firm-year observations from 232 European and US P-L stock insurers covering the period 2010–2019 and measure risk-taking by using four proxies: total risk (TR), upside risk (UpR), downside risk (DwR) and default risk (DR). Reverse causality and endogeneity concerns are treated by applying different approaches.

Findings suggest that BoGD mitigates the TR, DwR and DR but does not interfere with the UpR, which conceptualizes firm expectations to enhance patrimony and safeguard SEW for heirs, especially in family-owned insurers. The findings hold in various robustness checks including endogeneity and alternative specifications of BoGD and risk-taking.

This study contributes to practice by contrasting the role of female directors’ bevahior when assuming risk, which seems significantly different depending on the risk-taking specification and the organizational form. The author advises policyholders and policymakers to look at closely on BoGD and ownership structure as they affect insurance company risk-taking.

This study takes a more direct approach to highlight the BoGD’s effect on corporate risk-taking by focusing on the insurance sector which is characterized by risk and uncertainty bearing. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to consider the full range of the stock organizational forms and the degree of family control in displaying this effect in both widely traded and closely traded insurers and to assess risk-taking from both market-based and accounting-based aspects.

Considering corporate governance (CG hereinafter) practices' variety across Anglo-American and European countries, this study relies on contingency and complexity theories to investigate the effect of environmental sustainability performance (ESP hereinafter) on shareholder value under various configurations of board of directors (BoD hereinafter), firm and country characteristics.

The author used the Thomson Reuters Environment Pillar Score (ASSET4) and the Total Shareholder Return to assess ESP and shareholder value respectively. The author applied a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA hereinafter) to an unbalanced panel of 2,284 observations from 486 European and Anglo-American non-financial listed firms over the period 2016–2020.

The author found a positive association between ESP and shareholder value and he displayed notable differences between Anglo-American and European economies regarding causal predictors of this positive association. Within European firms operating under civil law code where investor protection is low and family ownership is widespread, ESP creates shareholder value under configurations of causal predictors that significantly differ from those of their Anglo-American peers. The author's findings are robust to different identification strategies.

This study assists researchers, practitioners, shareholders and policymakers the significant roles that BoD diversity, organisational and institutional traits are jointly playing as determinants of the ESP-shareholder value relationship.

The author's study offers a more encompassing, complete and theoretically richer picture of the key drivers and outcomes of ESP.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board diversity on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The aim is twofold; does board diversity has any effect on CSR, do structural and demographic differences between one-tier and two-tier board models may impact this effect?

This paper applies a panel generalized method of moments estimator to a sample of 2,544 non-financial listed firms from 42 countries over the period of 2013–2017.

The findings reveal that board diversity leads to effective CSR. By distinguishing between diversity among boards from diversity within boards, the results display the effects of the specific variables that make up the manner and latter’s constructs within unitary and two-tier board structures. Specifically, this paper reveals that tenure, ideology and educational level (gender and nationality) predominantly appear to drive a firm’s CSR within one (two)-tier boards settings. These results remain consistent when robustness tests are ruled.

The study provides managers, investors and policymakers with knowledge about how among and within board diversity attributes favor the decision-making process around CSR. The evidence is useful for companies in setting the criteria to identify directors who can support their strategic decisions. It benefits, moreover, academics in better understanding firms’ CSR determinants and practices under different corporate board models.

Examining how different sets of board diversity affect firms’ CSR given divergences between one-tier and two-tier board structure is a useful and informative endeavor for all community actors.

Unlike prior studies that identify the limited scope of diversity, the study is the first to examine the effect of broader dimensions of board diversity on CSR under both one-tier and two-tier board settings. This paper provides a contribution to a greater understanding of the impacts underlying board models and different attributes of board diversity on CSR. This new understanding will help to improve predictions of different features of board diversity impacts on decision-making processes around organizational outcomes.

This study aims to investigate the impact of top management team (TMT)'s gender diversity on corporate social performance (CSP). It sheds light on inconsistent results in literature by testing the moderator effects of chief executive officer (CEO) managerial ability and corporate governance (CG) on such impact.

A dynamic panel estimator is applied to an international sample of 8640 firm‐year observations from 2013 to 2017.

The author finds reliable evidence that the critical mass of at least three women leaders has a positive impact on the firm's CSP. Obtained results suggest, moreover, the deterrence effects of CEO managerial ability and CG tools (board independence, board gender diversity, the presence of a corporate social responsibility committee and family control) on the women leaders' contribution to the firm's CSP level. These results remain consistent with alternative measures for women leaders and CEO managerial ability. However, findings are lost when women achieve the CEO position, the chairperson position or both positions, which imply that men and women leadership styles are closely similar rather than different. Furthermore, women leaders' effect on CSP seems dependent (do not) on the country (industry) which a firm belongs to.

From a practical standpoint, the study highlights the importance of fostering the achievement of a critical mass of women leaders and the combination of CEO managerial ability – educational/professional backgrounds – and CG attributes to improve the firm's CSP. The study has important implications for investors and regulators. If investors wish to increase CSP, they should ask for more gender diversified TMTs. Furthermore, this study supports regulators in their efforts to increase senior women's quotas by providing empirical evidence of better social outcomes under leader gender diversity. The study’s evidence is also useful for companies in setting the criteria to identify CEOs who can support their strategic decisions.

By studying the impact female leaders have on CSP under CEO managerial ability and CG as moderators, this study is the first to display complementarities and substitutions between CEO's managerial ability and selected CG attributes in the promotion of CSP by female senior executives. Furthermore, it fills the void on how TMT's gender diversity impact CSP. In fact, while it is conventionally considered that women are more likely to engage in socially responsible activities, sensitive findings of this study shed light on the brighter side of female executives when they achieve the CEO, the chairperson position or both positions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not there is a link between CEO incentive-based compensation and earnings management and to examine how institutional environment's features influence such link.

To test the predictions, the authors use a panel of 1,500 American, Canadian, British, and French firm-year observation over the period 2004-2008.

The authors find a significant association between earnings management and CEO incentive-based compensation. Moreover, the analysis provides evidence that institutional factors are strong determinants of this association. Specifically, the results show that firms from countries within the Anglo-American corporate governance model, which provides greater protection of shareholder rights, ensures strict enforcement of law, and scores high on board oversight, tend to have lower level of earnings management. The analysis shows however, that beside the formal corporate governance quality, it is relevant to consider weaker shareholder protection and lower law enforcement indexes to explain earnings management in firms from countries within the Euro-Continental corporate governance model.

This paper is the first to provide insights regarding the extent to which CEO incentive rewards imply management discretion and to indicate how much institutional features matter. The analysis contributes to two distinct strands of research. It extends prior research on the association between executive compensation and earnings management and adds to the literature demonstrating a relationship between institutional factors and financial decisions.

This paper attempts to investigate the relationships between the board of directors' characteristics and earnings management being a proxy of earnings quality in two separate countries, France and Canada. Specifically, it aims to investigate how certain contextual features affect differently earnings management behavior, and to reveal which factors are the most prominent incentives of management discretion in both cases.

The paper uses a performance matched discretionary accruals (PMDA) measure as a proxy for earnings management. Three separate panel‐regressions are then performed on a full sample, comprising a French sub‐sample and a Canadian sub‐sample, to detect board characteristics and institutional features' impacts on the PMDA. Regressions are based on a panel of 180 French and Canadian listed firms' data over the period 2006‐2008.

Evidence shows that CEO stock ownership, independent monitoring and institutional investor's property are strong earnings management determinants in both the French and Canadian frameworks. Nevertheless, leadership structure and board size seem to be neutral. Furthermore, French firms show specific earnings management incentives which are related to high ownership concentration, low equity widespread and high contractual debt costs. Dominant minority ownership and capital market forces are the key earnings management incentives in the Canadian context. These findings are robust to alternative sensitivity tests.

Even though the findings answer some questions, earnings management incentives are still to be decided. Future research could further highlight the impact of contractual, legal, cultural, ethical and political country‐specific factors related to financial reporting.

This paper investigates how an effective board of directors is able to provide a monitoring mechanism to ensure high quality of earnings. Moreover, it builds on cross‐country variations in corporate governance features and contextual‐specific factors to reveal earnings management behavior's incentives in two separate environments, namely French and Canadian ones. The underlying promise is that poor corporate governance (weak board monitoring), high ownership concentration, and intensive financial market forces create incentives that largely influence manager's willingness to report earnings that don't reflect a firm's true performance.

The optimal contracting view assumes that compensation arrangements should not reward performance upward that is beyond the management's control. Critics to this view assert, however that unearned compensation boom may be suggestive of pay for luck. Hence, the authors ask if CEOs' incentive pay is sensitive to lucky as to purely corporate performance. If such, one could question: Are CEOs rewarded for luck? Do institutional features matter for CEOs pay‐for‐luck? How does systematic incentive effect sensitive to luck's nature? Accepting the premises of both contacting and skimming agency's approaches, this paper aims to answer these questions.

General and separate ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variables (IV) estimations have been run to estimate the general sensitivity of CEOs' pay, respectively, to performance and luck. These estimations are based on a sample of 300 publicly traded firms covering four countries from the Anglo‐American and Euro‐Continental corporate governance models for the period 2004 to 2008.

In support of the paper's theorizing, it was found that CEOs pay to be positively related to outside contingencies as well as to shareholders' interests. Positive pay sensitivity to exogenous shocks, which we label systematic incentive effect, shows that management take advantage of lucky external events. Further analyses show, moreover, two stylized facts. First, this effect is asymmetric as executives are rewarded more for good luck than penalized for bad luck. Second, it is less generous under stronger corporate governance, higher investor rights protection, and stricter law enforcement rules. The latter institutional factors seem to be overwhelmingly influential variables in explaining the differences in such effect across countries.

The paper contributes to the CEO compensation research by: showing that a simple contracting view can mislead shareholders about the effective CEOs' skills and efforts; and filling the lack of consensus within the empirical literature as to whether pay for luck depends on institutional features such as the law enforcement level, the degree of investors' right protection, and the corporate governance system's quality.

The paper's findings offer insights to shareholders, pay consultants, and regulators about the effects that unobservable macroeconomic shocks can have towards the design and the efficiency of a CEO pay contract. The findings help, however, academics understanding the international pay gap's causes.

Based on stakeholder and upper echelons theory, this study aims to analyze whether the link between environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and financial performance is moderated by chief executive officer (CEO) power.

Listed corporations with reference to the German two-tier system (HDAX and SDAX) for the business years 2010-2018 (775 firm-year observations) have been included. Fixed effects panel regression analysis was conducted to analyze the link between ESG performance (in total and its three pillars) and financial performance (ROA), with special reference to the interaction of a CEO power index.

While ESG performance has a positive impact on financial performance, the link is more pronounced by CEO power. Thus, in line with prior research on the one-tier system, CEO incentives can positively contribute to the CSR-business case in the German two-tier system. The results remain constant after conducting several robustness checks.

A key contribution to the empirical CSR literature can be stated, as the moderating role of CEO power in the ESG–financial performance link is rather neglected in prior studies. Thus, corporate governance and sustainability should be classified as interactive aspects for the business case of a successful stakeholder management.