The code of corporate governance in Saudi Arabia places a greater focus on social responsibility initiatives by Saudi companies and the reporting of such activities to the community. The current study examines the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures amongst Saudi companies. In particular, we extend previous studies by covering unique Saudi corporate governance mechanisms (i.e., the presence of members of the royal family on the board (BROY) and of external members on the audit committee (ACEXT)), and their impact on ESG disclosure. Using 206 company-year observations for Saudi listed companies spanning the period 2010 to 2019, we find the presence of BROY and ACEXT has a positive and significant association with ESG disclosure. The findings of this study may help policymakers to develop regulations regarding corporate governance mechanisms to enhance ESG disclosure.

Only a few studies have investigated the association between the characteristics of the chief executive officer (CEO) (i.e., tenure and local or expatriate) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Our study adds to the fledgling literature by providing new evidence from Saudi Arabia. Given the dominance of family control among Saudi Arabian listed firms, additionally, this study examined the moderating effect of family ownership on the CEO-CSR relationship. Using CSR scores from Bloomberg database from 2010 to 2019 and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, the findings reveal that the association between CEO tenure and CSR reporting is positively significant; however, the association between CEO nationality and CSR is not significant. In addition, the findings indicate that family ownership is an important contingency factor that explains the association between CEO tenure and CEO nationality, and CSR reporting. Our study contributes to an emerging line of CSR research that investigates the effects of foreign CEOs on CSR transparency, and supports prior evidence on the benefits to investors of having long-serving CEO and the costs of family entrenchment.

This study examines whether financial analysts consider or incorporate the environmental, social and governance disclosures (thereafter ESG) in their recommendations. We then test whether royal family directors affect this relation. Using a dataset from six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, we find evidence that analysts’ recommendations are influenced by ESG information. Further, we find the political connection negatively moderates the relationship between sell-side analysts’ recommendations and ESG. This suggests that financial analysts may assess the ESG disclosure in those firms with the political connection of royalty, in GCC countries, as superficial compliance rather than a genuine commitment. Our results are robust when subjected to endogeneity tests.

The main aim of this study is to investigate the influence of institutional investors’ ownership (INOW) on firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting in Saudi Arabia. Using data on ESG reporting from the Bloomberg database for 206 Saudi-listed firms spanning the period from 2010 to 2019 and employing ordinary least squares regression (OLS), the results show a significant and positive association between INOW and ESG reporting. When institutional investors are classified into government and privately managed institutions, the research findings clearly show that only government-managed institutional investors (Govt_IO) are linked to ESG reporting in a positive and significant way, whereas there is no significant association between privately managed institutions (Prvt_IO) and ESG reporting. In addition, when the ESG score is disaggregated by individual pillars, we find Govt_IO is positively associated with environmental score and social score. These results suggest that the association between INOW and ESG varies depending on the types of INOW, as well as the ESG components. Even after several additional analyses, including tests for endogeneity, the main results of this study still hold.

Motivated by a recent call from DeFond and Zhang (2014) for auditing scholars to use “a richer set of audit firm, auditor office, and individual auditor characteristics to capture competency”, this study aims to extend the related line of research by examining the association between lead engagement partner workload, defined as the number of public listed clients the partner is in charge of, and audit lag. The moderating effects of partner tenure on the partner workload–audit lag relationship have also been examined. The association between auditor workload and financial reporting timeliness on 651 non-financial firms listed on Bursa Malaysia is tested in this study. Data to compute the partner workload are based on 222 lead engagement partners who signed off the audit reports for all 892 public listed firms in 2013. The busy auditors are observed to prolong audit lags, and the effect is more acute for non-Big 4 clients, busy season clients and a short partner tenure. The engagement partners with heavy workload can also mitigate the adverse effects of reduced audit report timeliness when they have a longer partner–client tenure. This study may understate the level of engagement partner workload when partners have private firms in their client portfolios. Notwithstanding that, this study reiterates the growing importance of examining accounting and auditing outcomes at the individual partner level. The findings that over-burdened engagement partner takes a longer time to complete the audit add to the current debate, where audit regulators and various stakeholders are actively promoting discussions on potential indicators of audit efficiency and quality. This study provides new evidence on the association between partner workload and audit reporting lag, which has hitherto been unexplored. This study also extends the research carried out by Gul et al. (2017) and Sharma et al. (2017) by providing additional evidence on the relationship between partner tenure and audit delay.

The purpose of this study was to extend our understanding of how corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures impact capital market participants, specifically sell-side analysts. The sample of this study was based on a dataset from a panel of 285 Malaysian firms for the period of 2008–2013 (738 firm-year observations). This study employed ordinary least square regression. This study found that firms with better CSR disclosures are more likely to receive optimistic investment recommendations. Subsample analyses revealed that the CSR-recommendation nexus is more pronounced under a transparent information environment (i) when there is less family control and (ii) when a firm is audited by a prominent Big Four auditor. The results implied that analysts tend to give favorable stock recommendations to high CSR companies operating in a more transparent information environment. To gain analysts’ confidence and make them more appreciative of the CSR disclosures, family firms with proactive CSR engagement are encouraged to switch to Big Four auditors or to seek assurance on their CSR reports. This study broadens our understanding of the factors influencing analysts’ recommendations and the preferences of analysts towards CSR engagement in an emerging market. This paper expands the literature on how corporate responsibility disclosures impact analysts’ final output, as reflected in the recommendation opinion, an area that has so far received little attention, particularly in emerging markets. Furthermore, this study also provides fresh evidence that analyst behavior towards CSR disclosures varies based on the strength of the firm’s information environment.