Environmental reporting has become a key tool used by firms to communicate their environmental efforts, performance, risks, and initiatives to stakeholders. Scholarly interest in understanding how corporate governance mechanisms impact the environmental disclosure practices of businesses has grown significantly due to stakeholder expectations, heightened regulatory pressures, and global sustainability frameworks (Cucari et al., 2018). However, research on the impact of board diversity on environmental reporting is still dispersed across diversity dimensions and methodological approaches, with the majority of studies using a single proxy, usually gender, to represent a multidimensional construct. This study conducts a systematic review, applying the PRISMA methodology, to determine which aspects of board diversity have been studied. Furthermore, it determines the extent to which gender diversity has been utilised as a single proxy and which dimensions remain underexplored. The findings of the study demonstrated a disproportionate concentration on board gender diversity. Unlike prior reviews that record how board diversity has been measured, this is the first to quantify the degree of single-versus multidimensional approach. This study highlights a construct validity problem rather than a simple coverage gap. The study proposes directions for future research avenues that take a more thorough, multifaceted conceptualisation of the topic.
The credibility of financial reporting may be undermined when managers use accounting discretion to alter reported earnings, with possible consequences for investors’ confidence. This study investigates the individual and joint relationships between board and audit committee attributes and earnings management for 49 manufacturing companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) from 2012 to 2024. Using an ex post facto panel design, the analysis relies on secondary information extracted from audited annual reports. Earnings management is proxied by the performance-matched discretionary-accrual measure developed by Kothari et al. (2005). Fixed- and random-effects models are estimated, and the Hausman specification test guides the preferred model. Results show negative associations between earnings management and board independence (β = -0.015), board financial expertise (β = -0.012), and board gender diversity (β = -0.009), all significant at p < 0.05, while board size is positively associated with earnings management (β = 0.005, p < 0.05). Taken together, the governance variables are statistically significant (R² = 0.624; F = 27.46; p < 0.001). The evidence highlights the importance of substantive board and audit committee monitoring within Nigeria’s corporate-governance framework (Nurjanah et al., 2025).
Audit committees play an important role in today’s corporate governance systems as they help the board oversee the integrity of financial reporting, the quality of external audits, the effectiveness of internal controls, and, more recently, sustainability and risk reporting. This focused literature review attempts to integrate theoretical and empirical work on corporate audit committees in India and beyond. The review, using seminal works, organizes data on different dimensions of regulatory evolution, applicable theoretical frameworks (agency and resource dependence theories), structural and process characteristics (independence, financial expertise, size, diligence, and diversity), and outcome areas of earnings management, financial reporting, audit, firm performance, fraud and related-party risks, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. Against the backdrop of Clause 49, the Companies Act, 2013, and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR), Indian data have been interpreted, while global data analyses focus on the post-Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and international code-based frameworks (Bédard et al., 2004; Chakrabarti et al., 2008). The synthesis confirms the overwhelming consensus on the role of independence and the presence of accounting/financial expertise in driving audit committees’ effectiveness. The paper outlines a multi-level agenda for future studies at the crossroads of regulation, ownership structure, and widening audit committee roles.
This study investigates the effects of chief executive officer (CEO) ethnicity, audit committee ethnic diversity, audit tenure, and accounting financial expertise on audit delay in consumer non-cyclical (CNC) companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). Drawing upon the resource-based view (Barney, 1991) and expanding the demographic frameworks of prior literature (Harjoto et al., 2015), this research employs a quantitative methodology using panel data regression with a fixed-effect model (FEM) on 73 firms during the 2022–2023 period (146 firm-year observations). The empirical results reveal that CEO ethnicity, audit committee ethnic diversity, and accounting financial expertise are significantly and negatively associated with audit delay, effectively minimizing financial reporting lag. Conversely, audit tenure exerts a significant positive influence on audit delay, suggesting that prolonged auditor-client relationships may compromise independence and slow reporting. These findings offer critical practical insights for companies, regulators, and investors aiming to strengthen internal corporate governance mechanisms and optimize financial reporting efficiency in emerging markets. Future studies can extend this single-sector scope by investigating broader governance determinants across diverse industries.
This study examines whether the within-firm relation between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and executive compensation depends on conventional financial performance. The sample comprises 12,866 firm-year observations for Taiwanese listed and over-the-counter (OTC) firms during 2016–2023. ESG performance is reconstructed from the Taiwan Economic Journal’s (TEJ’s) relative Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) main-industry ranking, and executive compensation is the natural logarithm of average remuneration for compensated general managers and vice general managers. We estimate firm and year fixed-effects (FE) models with standard errors clustered by firm. Consistent with evidence on the increasing use of sustainability criteria in executive contracts (Cohen et al., 2023; Aresu et al., 2023), ESG is positively associated with compensation in contemporaneous tests. The ESG × ROA (return on assets) coefficient is positive across the baseline, alternative-measurement, sector-year, and lagged specifications. By contrast, ESG × Tobin’s Q is not significant in the joint model. Lagging the regressors removes the direct ESG association but leaves the ROA interaction positive. The evidence, therefore, supports profitability as a conditioning factor, while not establishing a causal ESG-to-pay effect.
