BACKGROUND National Health Service (NHS) trusts, which provide the majority of hospital and community health services to the English NHS, are increasingly adopting a 'public firm' model with a board consisting of executive directors who are trust employees and external non-executives chosen for their experience in a range of areas such as finance, health care and management. In this paper we co...

The growing number of corporate scandals globally highlights the importance effective governance mechanisms. Many frameworks that are rooted in agency theory advocate election independent non-executive directors, an chairperson, and a lead director. Shareholder voting on or re-election directors (hereafter referred to as ‘director re-elections’) has been largely unexplored South Africa—a countr...

This study uses the current financial crisis as a quasi-experiment to examine whether and to what extent corporate boards affect the performance of firms. Using cumulative stock returns over the crisis to measure of firm performance, we find that board independence, as traditionally defined, does not significantly affect firm performance. However, when we re-define independent directors as outs...

We appreciate the helpful commerrts and suggestions of Janic» Beyer, Daniei Brass. Linda Johanson, E)awd Kang, Timothy Pollock, Wiiiiam Swann. D ^ n e Taras, Edward Zajac, and three arronymous ASQ reviewers. We atso thank /^na Maria Peredo and Douglas Vickerson for their lebrary research support. This study examines how the influence of directors who are demographic minorities on corporate boar...

The paper considers board practices in the Ukraine and developed countries such as the USA, the UK, Germany and Japan. Investigation on the board practices in the Ukraine is the first ever has been conducted. As a result of investigation undertaken, major conclusions have been made. The most important of them is that the German model is getting spread in the Ukraine from year to year. Major evi...

On December 15, 2010, after 11 months of legal standoff, the Swiss corporation Novartis finally closed a deal to acquire the remaining shares of eye-care company Alcon from minority shareholders. Why did it take almost a year? The acquisition had become a relatedparty transaction after Novartis purchased a 25% stake from then majority shareholder Nestlé and nominated some of its own directors t...

This paper examines a combined set of corporate governance features that influence disclosure quality in a context of ownership concentration. Agency theory presents a theoretical framework linking disclosure decision to corporate governance mechanisms. Using a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), we find that firms with poor disclosure quality have higher ownership concentration, are family...

Financial information disclosed in the annual report is one of the main sources that investors are interested to make informed judgment in their decision for investment. Due to the financial crisis, Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance was introduced and this Code mentions that one of the tasks of the directors is to provide timely and useful information disclosure. However, in Malaysia, ther...

The article investigates the relationship between ownership structure and the role played by the board of directors in the strategic decision process. A comparative case study of strategic decision processes indicates that ownership concentration, the nature of shareholders’ interests and the distribution of relevant knowledge affect the key functions performed by the board of directors, the in...

The board of directors is the most important decision-making body in a corporation. Boards are responsible for approving major strategic and financial decisions, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and changes in capital structure, and also for the most important task of all, which is to hire and fire top executives. Not surprisingly, substantial research focuses on the workings of corporat...