Alessandro Zattoni, Michael A. Witt, William Q. Judge, Till Talaulicar, Jean Jinghan Chen, Krista Lewellyn, Helen Wei Hu, Jonas Gabrielsson, Jose Luis Rivas, Sheila Puffer, Dhirendra Shukla, Felix Lopez, Emmanuel Adegbite, Yves Fassin, Sibel Yamak, Stav Fainshmidt, Hans van Ees
Prior evidence suggests that board independence may enhance financial performance, but this relationship has been tested almost exclusively for Anglo-American countries. To explore the boundary conditions of this prominent governance mechanism, we examine the impact of the formal and information institutions of 18 national business systems on the board independence-financial performance relationship. Our results show that while the direct effect of independence is weak, national-level institutions significantly moderate the independence-performance relationship. Our findings suggest that the efficacy of board structures is likely to be contingent on the specific national context, but the type of legal system is insignificant. © 2017 Elsevier Inc.
Department of Business and Management, LUISS University and Business School, Viale Romania 32, Rome, 00197, Italy; Strategy Area, INSEAD, 1 Ayer Rajah Avenue, Singapore, 138676, Singapore; Management Department, Old Dominion University, 2126 Constant Hall, Norfolk, 23529, VA, United States; Department of Organization and Management, University of Erfurt, Nordhaeuser Str. 63, Erfurt, D-99089, Germany; Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University Suzhou, China & Nankai University, China; Department of Management and Marketing, University of Wyoming College of Business, Laramie, 82071, WY, United States; Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne, 198 Berkeley St, 3010, VIC, Australia; Department of Business Studies, Halmstad University, P.O. Box 823, Halmstad, S-301 18, Sweden; ITAM School of Business, Mexico DF, Mexico; D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, 02115, MA, United States; Faculty of Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, E3B 5A3, NB, Canada; Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, 47002, Spain; Department of Accounting and Finance, Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Leicester, LE1 9BH, United Kingdom; Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Service Management, Ghent University, Tweekerkenstraat 2, Ghent, 9000, Belgium; Human Resources Department, University of Wolverhampton Business School, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom; Department of Management and International Business, College of Business, Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States; Department Global Economics and Management, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
