Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the effect of political connections on earnings quality by simultaneously controlling the firm characteristics; to test whether Pakistani firms’ ownership, specifically family ownership, plays a significant role in political connections–earnings quality association; to draw a conclusion about the agency theory in the context of Pakistan.Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative approach was used to examine the influence of political connections and family ownership on the earnings quality of listed firms in Pakistan. The study uses historical data from 238 active non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange during the period of 2009-2015. The final data set comprises more than 1,600 firm-year observations from ten major non-financial industry classifications. To enhance the robustness of the empirical relationship, the study used several proxies of earnings quality in conjunction with robust regression methods and diagnostic checks.Findings: The present study’s findings are consistent with the findings of the studies on agency theory previous literature, where politically connected firms have significantly lower earnings quality as compared to non-connected firms. The results also indicate that family firms have superior earnings quality than non-family–controlled firms. Furthermore, family ownership moderates the negative influence of political connections on earnings quality. This implies that family ownership diminishes the costs of political connections and improves the earnings quality of the firm.Originality/value: This study is different from previous research in three respects. First, it examines whether family ownership concentration has a moderating influence on the relationship between political connections and earnings quality. Second, it uses a robust methodology and extensive data set to examine the influence of political connections and family ownership concentration on earnings quality. Further, this study is the first to analyze the nexus between financial reporting quality and the political business environment in the context of Pakistan.

This study aims to clarify the relationship between environmental performance and financial performance by introducing clean technology as the moderating variable. We contest two major theories, natural resource‐based view theory and neoclassical theory, to reveal a comprehensive understanding of environmental performance's impact on financial performance. The hypotheses are tested on 111 global oil and gas companies using dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM). Our analysis reveals three key findings. First, lower environmental performance leads to lower financial performance confirming the natural resource‐based view theory. Second, clean technology has no significant effect on financial performance, arguing the marginal abatement cost. Finally, our results report that clean technology has no impact on increasing financial performance during high waste spills or high emissions. Theoretical and practical implications resulting from the adoption of clean technology to moderate the environmental impact on financial performance are also discussed.

This study examines the effect of foreign boards on corporate social responsibility, exploring the issues of two-tier board systems (boards of directors and boards of commissioners). Using data for manufacturing firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange over the sample period of 2017–2019, the results suggest that a foreign board engages more in corporate social responsibility activities. Our key finding remains robust with respect to all foreign board measures (foreign ownership, foreign board members, foreign directors, foreign commissioners, foreign CEO, and foreign chairperson) and to alternative estimation methods, and pass a series of endogeneity checks. We established the causal effect from foreign boards to CSR, supporting institutional theory and contesting agency theory.