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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms (board size, board independence, separation of chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) roles and external auditor type) on accounting conservatism in Egypt.Design/methodology/approachArchival data relating to CG and accounting conservatism are collected and analysed using multivariate regression techniques.FindingsThe findings indicate that board independence is positively associated with accounting conservatism. By contrast, board size and auditor type are negatively associated with accounting conservatism, while separating the chairperson and CEO roles has no significant relationship with accounting conservatism.Originality/valueTo the best of the author's knowledge, this is one of the first empirical attempts at providing evidence on the relationship between CG and accounting conservatism in Egypt.

AbstractManuscript TypeEmpiricalResearch Question/IssueThis paper investigates the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, consequently, examines whether CG can positively moderate the association between corporate financial performance (CFP) and CSR.Research Findings/InsightsUsing a sample of large listed corporations from 2002 to 2009, we find that, on average, better‐governed corporations tend to pursue a more socially responsible agenda through increased CSR practices. We also find that a combination of CSR and CG practices has a stronger positive effect on CFP than CSR alone, implying that CG positively influences the CFP‐CSR relationship. Our results are robust to controlling for different types of endogeneities, as well as alternative CFP, CG and CSR proxies.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsThe paper generally contributes to the literature on CG, CSR, and CFP. Specifically, we make two main new contributions to the extant literature by drawing on new insights from an overarching neo‐institutional framework. First, we show why and how better‐governed corporations are more likely to pursue a more socially responsible agenda. Second, we provide evidence on why and how CG might strengthen the link between CFP and CSR.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsOur findings have important implications for corporate regulators and policy‐makers. Since our evidence suggests that better‐governed corporations are more likely to be more socially responsible with a consequential positive effect on CFP, it provides corporate regulators, managers and policy‐makers with a new impetus to develop a more explicit agenda of jointly pursuing CG and CSR reforms, instead of merely considering CSR as a peripheral component of CG or as an independent corporate activity.

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 five-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 HRD remains rather limited; and (ii) there is a positive association between a company's employee relation ideology (unitarism) and the level of HRD. Theoretically, we conceive of HRD both as a reflection of an organisation's orientation towards a key stakeholder (unitarist relations with labour) and a legitimacy seeking exercise at a time of changing societal conditions. We contribute to the scant literature on the extent and determinants of HRD since prior research tends to subsume employee-related disclosures within the broader concept of social, ethical or intellectual capital disclosures. We also propose a disclosure checklist to underpin future HRD research.