Professor of Accounting and Deputy Head (Dean) of School, Southampton Business School, University of Southampton. Phone: 00442380594285 Address: Southampton, England, United Kingdom
The aim of the project was to investigate corporate governance practices in UK higher education i... more The aim of the project was to investigate corporate governance practices in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). Specifically, the project sought to examine the role and effectiveness of the audit committee in supporting what was initially conceptualised as ‘financial leadership’ in HEIs. What makes a board, and its various committees, an effective mechanism is a key and recurring question, which has been raised in academic, practitioner and policymaking circles and is relevant to companies, public bodies, charities and universities alike. The case of the audit committee is often highlighted in practice and in the literature, since it is a central plank of any corporate governance structure, normally tasked with overseeing the financial, control, auditing and risk management aspects of the organisation. In the light of the rapidly changing and uncertain financial environment faced by UK HEIs, the role of the audit committee is critical in monitoring, advising and shaping the HEI...
Our study analyses the nature, quality and extent of human resource disclosures (HRDs) of UK Fina... more Our study analyses the nature, quality and extent of human resource disclosures (HRDs) of UK Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 firms by relying on a novel disclosure index measuring the depth and breadth of disclosures. Contextually, we focus on the 5-year period following the then Labour government’s attempts to encourage firms to formally report on their human resource management practices and to foster deeper employer–employee engagement. First, we evaluate the degree to which companies report comprehensively (or substantively) on a number of HRD items that we classify as “procedural” or “sustainable.” Second, we hypothesise that a company’s employee relation ideology (using a proxy to measure a company’s level of “unitarism”) is positively associated with HRD. Our results indicate that: (i) whilst there has been an increase in the breadth of HRD in terms of procedural and sustainable items being disclosed, the evolution towards a more comprehensive and in-depth form of H...
The international higher educational institutions (HEIs) environment has experienced rapid change... more The international higher educational institutions (HEIs) environment has experienced rapid changes and/or reforms over the past decades. Specifically, the HE sector has been characterised by increasing student numbers, declining government funding, but tighter external regulation, increasing competition, and greater accountability through increased ‘managerialism’, ‘commoditisation’, ‘commercialisation’ and ‘corporatisation’ of academics and HEIs. These changes have brought to the core the issue of sound financial management through good internal governance, increased public accountability and transparency, and stronger performance within HEIs. This paper, therefore, investigates why and how HEIs internal governance structures might influence their voluntary public accountability and transparency disclosures (PADs). Using a 2012 cross-sectional sample of 130 UK HEIs, we find that audit committee quality, governing board diversity, independent or lay governors, and the presence of a corporate governance committee impact positively in PADs. By contrast, we do not find any evidence that audit firm size, governing board size, and the frequency of governing board meetings have any significant effect on PADs. The central tenor of our findings remains unchanged across a number of econometric models that sufficiently account for different kinds of endogeneities, as well as alternative internal governance mechanisms and PADs measures. Our results are generally in line with the predictions of our multi-theoretical framework that incorporates insights from agency, institutional, legitimacy, public accountability/stewardship, resources dependence, and stakeholder theories
We examine the relationships among religious governance, especially Islamic governance quality (I... more We examine the relationships among religious governance, especially Islamic governance quality (IGQ), national governance quality (NGQ), and risk management and disclosure practices (RDPs), and consequently ascertain whether NGQ has a moderating influence on the IGQ-RDPs nexus. Using one of the largest datasets relating to Islamic banks from 10 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries from 2006 to 2013, our findings are three-fold. First, we find that RDPs are higher in banks with higher IGQ. Second, we find that RDPs are higher in banks from countries with higher NGQ. Finally, we find that NGQ has a moderating effect on the IGQ-RDPs nexus. Our findings are robust to alternative RDPs measures and estimation techniques. These results imply that the quality of disclosure depends on the nature of the macro-social level factors, such as religion that have remained largely unexplored in business and society research, and therefore have important implications for policy-makers.
This paper highlights the role of cash flow forecasting process in capital budgeting decisions. T... more This paper highlights the role of cash flow forecasting process in capital budgeting decisions. To achieve this goal, we examine the influence of contingency variables on the use of forecasting procedures & methods, which in turn reflects on the extent of use of capital budgeting techniques (CBT). The descriptive results of this study reported that most manufacturing and oil companies operating in Libya depend on personal estimates for forecasting future cash flow, as well as use the payback period and accounting rate of return to evaluate the investment projects. Statistically, the findings of this research provided robust evidence that the use of forecasting procedures & methods is significantly associated with the extent of CBT usage. In addition, the results of this study proved that the contingency variables have a direct and significant impact on the use of forecasting procedures & methods. In this regard, we found that the influence of the combined contingent variables differ...
ERN: Econometric Studies of Capital Markets (Topic), 2012
Despite experiencing rapid growth in their number and size, existing evidence suggests that Afric... more Despite experiencing rapid growth in their number and size, existing evidence suggests that African stock markets remain highly fragmented, small, illiquid and technologically weak, severely affecting their informational efficiency. Therefore, this study attempts to empirically ascertain whether African stock markets can improve their informational efficiency by formally harmonising and integrating their operations. Employing parametric and non-parametric variance-ratios tests on 8 African continent-wide and 8 individual national daily share price indices from 1995 to 2011, we find that irrespective of the test employed, the returns of all the 8 African continent-wide indices investigated appear to have better normal distribution properties compared with the 8 individual national share price indices examined. We also report evidence of statistically significant weak form informational efficiency of the African continent-wide share price indices over the individual national share pri...
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Modern Research in Management, Economics and Accounting, 2018
This study aims to determine the extent to which the dynamic programming can be used in the prepa... more This study aims to determine the extent to which the dynamic programming can be used in the preparation of capital budgeting to rationalize investment decisions under limited resources. Ras Lanuf Oil & gas processing company is chosen as a case study, due to the importance of the company's investment activity and its impact on the future of the company's business. The importance of this paper is that it illustrates how to link the managerial accounting tools and mathematical models to create a new synthesis that can be used in planning and control of investment expenditures. This paper presents a mathematical model that contributes to raising the efficiency of the capital expenditure decisions implemented by Ras Lanuf Company. A Dynamic programming (DP) is one of the important mathematical models which is suggested in order to select the optimal investment alternatives under the available funds. The DP is suitable for problems that require sequential decisions or that can be...
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the highest prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the world, with negative ... more Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the highest prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the world, with negative effects on productivity, profitability, economic growth, and development. The social responsibility role of public companies in contributing towards reducing the negative effects of HIV/AIDS is priceless. This paper investigates the impact of corporate governance (CG) on social and environmental accounting (SEA) with specific focus on corporate health accounting (CHA) and, consequently, examines whether CG can moderate the link betweenCHA andfirm value (FV), with particular focus onHIV/AIDS disclosures. First, employing one of the most extensive data on CG, CHA, and FV from a sample of listed SSA companies to date, our results suggest that companies that are better-governed tend to engage in increased CHA disclosures. Second, we find that the combined effects of CG and CHA on FV are stronger than CHA alone, meaning that the quality of firm-level CG moderates the link between CHA and FV. ...
This paper investigated the changes in competitive behaviour of banks in sub-Saharan Africa, foll... more This paper investigated the changes in competitive behaviour of banks in sub-Saharan Africa, following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. Using 481 bank-year observations from an unbalanced panel of 83 banks from six countries over the period 2008–2013. We employed the Panzar-Rosse model of firm competition, and found that the degree of competition among banks in Sub-Saharan Africa increased. This increase is due to the effect of reform/liberalisation policies, largely initiated in the pre-crisis era. The success that followed via the development of banking systems, nonetheless moderated at the onset of the 2007/2008 financial crisis. System instabilities, which were characteristic of a post-crisis period, exposed deficiencies in regulation and asymmetric incentives for bank management. A significant recalibration of prudential policies followed, as regulators sought to restore system stability, which again had an impact in altering competitive conduct of banks. Policymakers sho...
Drawing on institutional theory, we examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) on corruption... more Drawing on institutional theory, we examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) on corruption. The interaction effects of national culture and CG on corruption are also examined. By employing a dataset of 149 countries, our baseline findings indicate that the quality of CG practices reduces the level of corruption. Findings also show that three cultural dimensions, namely, power distance, individualism and indulgence moderate the CG-corruption nexus. Our findings indicate that CG and national culture explain the level of corruption among societies, with national culture appearing to matter more than the quality of CG. Our findings remain unchanged after controlling for endogeneities, country-level factors, CG and corruption proxies.
Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance
The last three decades has seen the term “corporate governance” emerged clearly as an independent... more The last three decades has seen the term “corporate governance” emerged clearly as an independent field of study. Its scope has also witnessed great expansion such that it is now an amalgam of different disciplines, including accounting, economics, ethics, finance, law, management, organizational behavior, and politics, among others, with no universally accepted definition. As a corollary, there exist a large number of definitions of corporate. Despite the existence of heterogeneous definitions, however, researchers frequently classify the existing corporate governance definitions as either “narrow” or “broad.” As a prelude, the narrow broad dichotomization is based on the extent to which a corporate governance regime essentially focuses on satisfying the parochial interests’ of shareholders or meeting the broader interests of diverse societal stakeholder groups.
The development of credit information sharing schemes in developing countries has gained signific... more The development of credit information sharing schemes in developing countries has gained significant attention in recent times along with ongoing financial sector reforms. In this paper, we provide first-hand evidence of the effect of credit information sharing on credit intermediation cost in these countries, and consequently ascertain the extent to which the credit information sharing–credit intermediation cost nexus may be accentuated by banking market concentration and governance quality. Using a large dataset covering 272 banks from 27 African countries over the 2004-2012 period, we uncover four new findings. First, we find that credit information sharing does reduce credit intermediation cost. Second, we show that the relationship between credit intermediation cost and credit information sharing is conditional on banking market concentration. Third, our findings suggest that governance quality moderates the effect of credit information sharing on credit intermediation cost. Finally, we find that banking market concentration reduces credit intermediation cost, but the effect is moderated by credit information sharing. Overall, our findings suggest that credit information sharing may serve as a useful policy tool for achieving financial sector stability in developing countries.
This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on financial ri... more This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on financial risk reporting in the UK.,The study uses a panel data of 50 non-financial firms belonging to 10 industrial sectors listed on the London Stock Exchange in the period 2011-2015. Multivariate regression techniques are used to examine the relationships.,The findings of this study reveal that CG has a significant influence on financial risk disclosure. Specifically, it is found that block ownership and board gender diversity have a positive effect on the level of corporate financial risk disclosure (FRD). While there is no significant relationship between board size and corporate FRD.,This study has significant implications for policy-makers, investors and regulators. Evidence of growing FRD implies that efforts by several stakeholders have had some positive impact on the level of FRD in the firms examined. Examples of such changes include, namely, increasing board size and gender diversity acting as effective firm level advisors and monitors of FRD. As a consequence, regulators and policymakers should continually pursue reforms to encourage firms to follow CG principles that are promoted as good practice.,This study adds to the emerging body of literature on CG–risk disclosure relationships in the UK context using content analysis. The study also highlights that gender diversity enhances FRD.
This paper provides an up-to-date and comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) of the exi... more This paper provides an up-to-date and comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) of the existing research on women on corporate boards (WOCBs) and corporate financial and non-financial performance. The aim is to synthesise and extend current understanding of both the existing (i) theoretical (i.e., economic, psychological and social) perspectives and (ii) empirical evidence on the (a) multi-level (i.e., individual-, social-, firm- and country-level) antecedents of WOCBs, and (b) the effects that WOCBs have on a wide range of corporate financial and non-financial performance. We achieve this by adopting a three-step SLR approach to analyse/review one of the largest SLR datasets to be employed to date, consisting of 634 mixed, qualitative, quantitative and theoretical studies conducted in over 100 countries from more than 10 disciplines (e.g., accounting, finance, economics and governance) from 1981 to 2019 and published in 270 top-ranked journals. Our findings are as follows. F...
The aim of the project was to investigate corporate governance practices in UK higher education i... more The aim of the project was to investigate corporate governance practices in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). Specifically, the project sought to examine the role and effectiveness of the audit committee in supporting what was initially conceptualised as ‘financial leadership’ in HEIs. What makes a board, and its various committees, an effective mechanism is a key and recurring question, which has been raised in academic, practitioner and policymaking circles and is relevant to companies, public bodies, charities and universities alike. The case of the audit committee is often highlighted in practice and in the literature, since it is a central plank of any corporate governance structure, normally tasked with overseeing the financial, control, auditing and risk management aspects of the organisation. In the light of the rapidly changing and uncertain financial environment faced by UK HEIs, the role of the audit committee is critical in monitoring, advising and shaping the HEI...
Our study analyses the nature, quality and extent of human resource disclosures (HRDs) of UK Fina... more Our study analyses the nature, quality and extent of human resource disclosures (HRDs) of UK Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 firms by relying on a novel disclosure index measuring the depth and breadth of disclosures. Contextually, we focus on the 5-year period following the then Labour government’s attempts to encourage firms to formally report on their human resource management practices and to foster deeper employer–employee engagement. First, we evaluate the degree to which companies report comprehensively (or substantively) on a number of HRD items that we classify as “procedural” or “sustainable.” Second, we hypothesise that a company’s employee relation ideology (using a proxy to measure a company’s level of “unitarism”) is positively associated with HRD. Our results indicate that: (i) whilst there has been an increase in the breadth of HRD in terms of procedural and sustainable items being disclosed, the evolution towards a more comprehensive and in-depth form of H...
The international higher educational institutions (HEIs) environment has experienced rapid change... more The international higher educational institutions (HEIs) environment has experienced rapid changes and/or reforms over the past decades. Specifically, the HE sector has been characterised by increasing student numbers, declining government funding, but tighter external regulation, increasing competition, and greater accountability through increased ‘managerialism’, ‘commoditisation’, ‘commercialisation’ and ‘corporatisation’ of academics and HEIs. These changes have brought to the core the issue of sound financial management through good internal governance, increased public accountability and transparency, and stronger performance within HEIs. This paper, therefore, investigates why and how HEIs internal governance structures might influence their voluntary public accountability and transparency disclosures (PADs). Using a 2012 cross-sectional sample of 130 UK HEIs, we find that audit committee quality, governing board diversity, independent or lay governors, and the presence of a corporate governance committee impact positively in PADs. By contrast, we do not find any evidence that audit firm size, governing board size, and the frequency of governing board meetings have any significant effect on PADs. The central tenor of our findings remains unchanged across a number of econometric models that sufficiently account for different kinds of endogeneities, as well as alternative internal governance mechanisms and PADs measures. Our results are generally in line with the predictions of our multi-theoretical framework that incorporates insights from agency, institutional, legitimacy, public accountability/stewardship, resources dependence, and stakeholder theories
We examine the relationships among religious governance, especially Islamic governance quality (I... more We examine the relationships among religious governance, especially Islamic governance quality (IGQ), national governance quality (NGQ), and risk management and disclosure practices (RDPs), and consequently ascertain whether NGQ has a moderating influence on the IGQ-RDPs nexus. Using one of the largest datasets relating to Islamic banks from 10 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries from 2006 to 2013, our findings are three-fold. First, we find that RDPs are higher in banks with higher IGQ. Second, we find that RDPs are higher in banks from countries with higher NGQ. Finally, we find that NGQ has a moderating effect on the IGQ-RDPs nexus. Our findings are robust to alternative RDPs measures and estimation techniques. These results imply that the quality of disclosure depends on the nature of the macro-social level factors, such as religion that have remained largely unexplored in business and society research, and therefore have important implications for policy-makers.
This paper highlights the role of cash flow forecasting process in capital budgeting decisions. T... more This paper highlights the role of cash flow forecasting process in capital budgeting decisions. To achieve this goal, we examine the influence of contingency variables on the use of forecasting procedures & methods, which in turn reflects on the extent of use of capital budgeting techniques (CBT). The descriptive results of this study reported that most manufacturing and oil companies operating in Libya depend on personal estimates for forecasting future cash flow, as well as use the payback period and accounting rate of return to evaluate the investment projects. Statistically, the findings of this research provided robust evidence that the use of forecasting procedures & methods is significantly associated with the extent of CBT usage. In addition, the results of this study proved that the contingency variables have a direct and significant impact on the use of forecasting procedures & methods. In this regard, we found that the influence of the combined contingent variables differ...
ERN: Econometric Studies of Capital Markets (Topic), 2012
Despite experiencing rapid growth in their number and size, existing evidence suggests that Afric... more Despite experiencing rapid growth in their number and size, existing evidence suggests that African stock markets remain highly fragmented, small, illiquid and technologically weak, severely affecting their informational efficiency. Therefore, this study attempts to empirically ascertain whether African stock markets can improve their informational efficiency by formally harmonising and integrating their operations. Employing parametric and non-parametric variance-ratios tests on 8 African continent-wide and 8 individual national daily share price indices from 1995 to 2011, we find that irrespective of the test employed, the returns of all the 8 African continent-wide indices investigated appear to have better normal distribution properties compared with the 8 individual national share price indices examined. We also report evidence of statistically significant weak form informational efficiency of the African continent-wide share price indices over the individual national share pri...
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Modern Research in Management, Economics and Accounting, 2018
This study aims to determine the extent to which the dynamic programming can be used in the prepa... more This study aims to determine the extent to which the dynamic programming can be used in the preparation of capital budgeting to rationalize investment decisions under limited resources. Ras Lanuf Oil & gas processing company is chosen as a case study, due to the importance of the company's investment activity and its impact on the future of the company's business. The importance of this paper is that it illustrates how to link the managerial accounting tools and mathematical models to create a new synthesis that can be used in planning and control of investment expenditures. This paper presents a mathematical model that contributes to raising the efficiency of the capital expenditure decisions implemented by Ras Lanuf Company. A Dynamic programming (DP) is one of the important mathematical models which is suggested in order to select the optimal investment alternatives under the available funds. The DP is suitable for problems that require sequential decisions or that can be...
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the highest prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the world, with negative ... more Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the highest prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the world, with negative effects on productivity, profitability, economic growth, and development. The social responsibility role of public companies in contributing towards reducing the negative effects of HIV/AIDS is priceless. This paper investigates the impact of corporate governance (CG) on social and environmental accounting (SEA) with specific focus on corporate health accounting (CHA) and, consequently, examines whether CG can moderate the link betweenCHA andfirm value (FV), with particular focus onHIV/AIDS disclosures. First, employing one of the most extensive data on CG, CHA, and FV from a sample of listed SSA companies to date, our results suggest that companies that are better-governed tend to engage in increased CHA disclosures. Second, we find that the combined effects of CG and CHA on FV are stronger than CHA alone, meaning that the quality of firm-level CG moderates the link between CHA and FV. ...
This paper investigated the changes in competitive behaviour of banks in sub-Saharan Africa, foll... more This paper investigated the changes in competitive behaviour of banks in sub-Saharan Africa, following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. Using 481 bank-year observations from an unbalanced panel of 83 banks from six countries over the period 2008–2013. We employed the Panzar-Rosse model of firm competition, and found that the degree of competition among banks in Sub-Saharan Africa increased. This increase is due to the effect of reform/liberalisation policies, largely initiated in the pre-crisis era. The success that followed via the development of banking systems, nonetheless moderated at the onset of the 2007/2008 financial crisis. System instabilities, which were characteristic of a post-crisis period, exposed deficiencies in regulation and asymmetric incentives for bank management. A significant recalibration of prudential policies followed, as regulators sought to restore system stability, which again had an impact in altering competitive conduct of banks. Policymakers sho...
Drawing on institutional theory, we examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) on corruption... more Drawing on institutional theory, we examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) on corruption. The interaction effects of national culture and CG on corruption are also examined. By employing a dataset of 149 countries, our baseline findings indicate that the quality of CG practices reduces the level of corruption. Findings also show that three cultural dimensions, namely, power distance, individualism and indulgence moderate the CG-corruption nexus. Our findings indicate that CG and national culture explain the level of corruption among societies, with national culture appearing to matter more than the quality of CG. Our findings remain unchanged after controlling for endogeneities, country-level factors, CG and corruption proxies.
Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance
The last three decades has seen the term “corporate governance” emerged clearly as an independent... more The last three decades has seen the term “corporate governance” emerged clearly as an independent field of study. Its scope has also witnessed great expansion such that it is now an amalgam of different disciplines, including accounting, economics, ethics, finance, law, management, organizational behavior, and politics, among others, with no universally accepted definition. As a corollary, there exist a large number of definitions of corporate. Despite the existence of heterogeneous definitions, however, researchers frequently classify the existing corporate governance definitions as either “narrow” or “broad.” As a prelude, the narrow broad dichotomization is based on the extent to which a corporate governance regime essentially focuses on satisfying the parochial interests’ of shareholders or meeting the broader interests of diverse societal stakeholder groups.
The development of credit information sharing schemes in developing countries has gained signific... more The development of credit information sharing schemes in developing countries has gained significant attention in recent times along with ongoing financial sector reforms. In this paper, we provide first-hand evidence of the effect of credit information sharing on credit intermediation cost in these countries, and consequently ascertain the extent to which the credit information sharing–credit intermediation cost nexus may be accentuated by banking market concentration and governance quality. Using a large dataset covering 272 banks from 27 African countries over the 2004-2012 period, we uncover four new findings. First, we find that credit information sharing does reduce credit intermediation cost. Second, we show that the relationship between credit intermediation cost and credit information sharing is conditional on banking market concentration. Third, our findings suggest that governance quality moderates the effect of credit information sharing on credit intermediation cost. Finally, we find that banking market concentration reduces credit intermediation cost, but the effect is moderated by credit information sharing. Overall, our findings suggest that credit information sharing may serve as a useful policy tool for achieving financial sector stability in developing countries.
This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on financial ri... more This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on financial risk reporting in the UK.,The study uses a panel data of 50 non-financial firms belonging to 10 industrial sectors listed on the London Stock Exchange in the period 2011-2015. Multivariate regression techniques are used to examine the relationships.,The findings of this study reveal that CG has a significant influence on financial risk disclosure. Specifically, it is found that block ownership and board gender diversity have a positive effect on the level of corporate financial risk disclosure (FRD). While there is no significant relationship between board size and corporate FRD.,This study has significant implications for policy-makers, investors and regulators. Evidence of growing FRD implies that efforts by several stakeholders have had some positive impact on the level of FRD in the firms examined. Examples of such changes include, namely, increasing board size and gender diversity acting as effective firm level advisors and monitors of FRD. As a consequence, regulators and policymakers should continually pursue reforms to encourage firms to follow CG principles that are promoted as good practice.,This study adds to the emerging body of literature on CG–risk disclosure relationships in the UK context using content analysis. The study also highlights that gender diversity enhances FRD.
This paper provides an up-to-date and comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) of the exi... more This paper provides an up-to-date and comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) of the existing research on women on corporate boards (WOCBs) and corporate financial and non-financial performance. The aim is to synthesise and extend current understanding of both the existing (i) theoretical (i.e., economic, psychological and social) perspectives and (ii) empirical evidence on the (a) multi-level (i.e., individual-, social-, firm- and country-level) antecedents of WOCBs, and (b) the effects that WOCBs have on a wide range of corporate financial and non-financial performance. We achieve this by adopting a three-step SLR approach to analyse/review one of the largest SLR datasets to be employed to date, consisting of 634 mixed, qualitative, quantitative and theoretical studies conducted in over 100 countries from more than 10 disciplines (e.g., accounting, finance, economics and governance) from 1981 to 2019 and published in 270 top-ranked journals. Our findings are as follows. F...
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