Question/issue This is a study of the relationship between nonexecutive director personal ownership and firm's bid ask spreads in listed firms from across the Caribbean offshore securities exchanges. Research findings/insights We report that bid ask spreads increase with nonexecutive ownership. However, this result is reduced (negatively moderated) in the context of higher formal institutional quality and also if the territory has a fixed exchange rate regime but exacerbated (positively moderated) if the firm is located within an offshore jurisdiction. Theoretical/academic implications The results regarding the influence of nonexecutive director ownership on firm liquidity-based transaction costs, namely, market estimates of bid ask spreads, are interpreted in terms of the contingency of this relationship on the wider institutional context. The effectiveness of nonexecutive directors is highly contingent upon the specific institutional context. Higher formal institutional quality and the presence of a strong macroeconomic tie between territory and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country lead to a reduction in these costs, while offshore financial centers lead to their increase. We argue that this highlights a shortcoming of agency theory's more limited view of institutions. Practitioner/policy implications The results support regulator's focus on board of director composition and in particular nonexecutive remuneration in the form of ownership. Given the increasing dominance of Anglo-American governance, firms worldwide are increasing the proportions of nonexecutive directors on their boards. However, their role is acutely context specific which is reflected in the relationship between their personal ownership and the liquidity-borne transaction costs of the firm as a whole.

This paper provides new evidence on how both governance bundles and directors' social capital together can help to determine cash holdings for foreign cross-listed firms. Using a large cross-country sample of 1677 publicly listed firms from 32 countries during the period of 2004-2015, we find a positive relationship between governance bundles and cash holdings for foreign cross-listed firms with higher directors' social capital. We address potential issue of endogeneity. Therefore, our findings are robust to alternative model specifications and instrumentations and alternative measure of social capital. The findings of our study contribute to the inconclusive decision in the academic literature related to cash holdings, governance bundles, and directors' social capital, especially related to the foreign cross-listed firms. In addition, the findings can assist the stakeholders of foreign cross-listed firms to understand the intention of the firms' cash holdings and allow policy makers to identify the need of modification for governance structure by controlling the opportunistic behaviour of the firm manager.

We investigate the impact of directors' networks on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by using an unbalanced panel data of 2023 publicly listed firms from 17 countries during 2003–2018. Drawing on network theory, stakeholder theory, and institutional theory, we find that directors' networks is positively related to their decision of CSR activities. Additionally, we find a positive relation between directors' networks and CSR during financial crises. Our results still hold after a set of sensitivity tests. The findings in our study expand the academic literature related to directors' networks and CSR activities, and assist policymakers and investors in understanding the importance of directors' networks as determining factor of CSR policies.

In this paper we predict and find that the lobbying activities of firms can complement executive networks in determining executive compensation. Firms of all sizes, after considering market competition as a governance mechanism, prefer to consider lobbying as a means of networking along with executive level networking to determine executive compensation. The empirical implication of the study provides guidance to scholars who should consider lobbying along with executive networks in determining executive compensation. The composite theoretical underpinning and the importance of information flow through lobbying activities of firms will be an important insight for policy makers involved in determining executive compensation.