This study investigates the impact of corporate governance practices (namely board characteristics, ownership structure, and audit committee characteristics) on corporate tax avoidance. For this purpose, this study uses generalised least squares regression on a sample of 138 companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Ten-year data from 2009 to 2018 are collected from published annual reports, comprising 1380 firm-year observations. The findings highlight that board independence, concentrated ownership, and audit committee gender diversity are negatively associated with tax avoidance. Conversely, managerial ownership and audit committee independence positively influence aggressive tax behaviour. Additional analysis reveals that these impacts are nonlinear and change with the different levels of tax avoidance. Enhanced governance stifles tax avoidance at lower levels; however, it encourages tax avoidance when firms are already aggressively avoiding taxes. This scenario represents a ‘double down’ behaviour depicted by the Pakistani corporate sector. This is one of the foremost studies to explore the impact of corporate governance on tax avoidance in Pakistan. It contributes to the literature by examining the impact of under-researched factors such as board meetings and audit committee characteristics and provides insights into the conflicting findings on board characteristics and ownership structure.

Carbon emissions and agency costs can have an impact on firms’ financial performance. However, limited attention has been paid to the combined and gradual effects of these two factors on firms’ performance. We explore the separate and combined effects of carbon emissions and agency costs on firms’ financial performance by utilizing data from 2323 US firms that disclosed their environmental information to CDP from 2007 to 2016. The results indicate that firms with higher carbon emissions experience lower performance as the market reacts negatively. Further, firms with both higher carbon emissions and higher agency costs have lower performance. We also investigated year-on-year change in firm performance and found that, keeping agency costs constant, a change in carbon emissions leads to lower performance. Overall, the findings suggest that when the market responds negatively to firms’ environmental decisions, high agency costs exacerbate the adverse effect of high carbon emissions on firm performance.

This study examines the nexus between business strategy and carbon emissions by utilising a dataset of U.S. firms from 2007 to 2020. It focuses on two broad types of firms, that is, prospectors and defenders. Regarding carbon emissions, we consider total emissions (Scope 1 & 2), direct emissions (Scope 1) and indirect emissions (Scope 2). The results reveal a significant association between business strategy and total carbon emissions as well as direct carbon emissions. Notably, the results suggest that prospectors, compared to defenders, display higher levels of total and direct carbon emissions. Our findings contribute to the debate on whether prospectors in developed countries mismanage sustainability issues. The study offers valuable insights into the interplay between business strategy and carbon emissions and provides empirical evidence that business strategy is an important determinant of total and direct carbon emissions.

Carbon emissions bring significant risks and opportunities, and organisations have responded by adopting different strategies and environmental control systems, such as carbon accounting systems (CASs). However, it remains unclear whether a CAS can help reduce emissions, and what role is played by a CAS in the relationship between carbon strategy and carbon performance. Therefore, this paper analyses the strategy-accounting-performance nexus by drawing on 1672 firm-year observations of firms participating in the CDP in 2014 and 2015. The results suggest that the quality of a CAS is influenced by strategic choices; with a proactive carbon strategy being associated with a higher quality CAS. Further, proactive strategies and CASs are found to be associated with carbon savings and emissions reduction. The results indicate a moderating role of CASs on the strategy-performance relationship, with carbon strategy enabling higher carbon savings and lower emissions intensity in the presence of a high-quality CAS. Our findings suggest that formulation of carbon strategies and establishment of carbon measures can drive effective carbon mitigation.

This paper explores the mediation of governance and control structures in an inter-firm relationship between a semiconductor producer and its contractor. As mediating instruments the contract and the control structures are not just pre-given results of distanced managerial decision-making, but are generated in and constitutive of the relationship. They offer the possibility to interpret and to interact and they contribute to more or less unexpected transformations in the relationship. In particular, the study explores how the mediation of the governance and control structures has socialising and/or individualising consequences. The paper particularly offers insights into how the mediation of the governance and control structures is impacted by changes in boundary spanners (i.e. managers who represent their organisations in an inter-firm relationship). The paper draws on Roberts 2001. Trust and control in Anglo-American systems of corporate governance: the individualizing and socializing effects of processes of accountability. Human Relations, 54 (12), 1547–1572. and distinguishes four patterns of governance that may be consequential of mediation by governance and control structures: immobilised governance, individualised governance, socialised governance and complementary governance. The study illustrates that accounting is not so much a force that creates transparency for distanced others, but a constitutive mechanism that produces a collaborative inter-firm relationship with socialised governance. It provides a basis for discussion and debate in the relationship.