Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically capture the impact of a chief executive officer’s (CEO) personal and organizational characteristics on firm performance in the context of a developing country and to explore whether capital structure mediates the relationship between CEO characteristics and firm performance.Design/methodology/approach: In order to test the hypothesized model, CEO duality, tenure and personal characteristics (age, gender and education) were taken as explanatory variables to study their impact on firm performance. Data were collected from 179 Pakistani companies from 2009–2015. The collected data were processed via panel data regression analysis under fixed effect assumptions.Findings: Results show that CEO duality has a negative impact on firm performance and that a CEO with a dual role is more inclined toward debt financing. Moreover, a CEO with a longer tenure tends to be opportunistic and prioritize his/her personal interest while making strategic financial decisions, thus creating agency costs for the firm. Furthermore, CEO characteristics like age, gender and education have significant effects on firm financial decisions and firm performance. Finally, the debt and equity ratio partially mediates the link between CEO characteristics and firm performance.Research limitations/implications: The findings of this study have limited generalizability due to the specific nature of the sample characteristics.Originality/value: To the best of the authors knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of CEO characteristics on capital structure and firm performance. This work is also the first to explore the mediating role of capital structure in the relationship between CEO characteristics and firm performance by using Pakistani data.

All industries depend on natural capital assets and ecosystem services, either directly, through their supply chains, or through their investments. Companies are therefore challenged to reorient their production systems and turn the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity into an opportunity for sustainable economic development. In this paper, we analyze the interest of institutional investors in these corporate policies through the role they play in the disclosure that companies make about them. For a balanced data panel of 8,320 firm‐year observations from 832 global companies operating in different sectors of activity over the period 2011–2020, the results obtained indicate that institutional investors, especially those with investment a long‐term investment horizon, are interested in biodiversity commitments and exercise their demand for information on these initiatives through their representatives on the board of directors. Furthermore, we show that companies are rewarded for disclosing relevant information on business policies, biodiversity management, and the valuation of ecosystem services in the value chain.

Assessing the role of diversity in corporate governance has attracted growing interest. In addition, significant relationships are expected between diversity dimensions and firm performance. This research aims to analyze the relationships between female presence in corporate board-firm financial performance and the extent to which such influence is moderated by family ownership. The study’s sample, based on the listed firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), represents the nonfinancial sector from 2008 to 2019 with 2087 firm-year observations. Fixed-effect regression analysis was applied to examine the proposed hypothesis. The study’s findings indicate that the presence of women in corporate governance is positively associated with firm financial performance. Simultaneously, the mentioned relationship is less pronounced when family ownership is a moderator. The empirical findings of the study support the argument that the presence of women in corporate boards is positively associated with financial performance and supports the reforms made by codes of corporate governance (CCG) that make the presence of female directors’ mandatory on the corporate boards. Additionally, the study findings partially confirm that a higher proportion of women on the board increases firm performance. This study offers insights for policymakers to implement legislation for a diverse gender placement in the board of directors and exploit the potential benefits of the gender-balanced board, which generally improves firm performance.

In the last two decades, scholars have proposed that implementing democratic practices and ideas in organizations results in significant improvements in employees' attitude and behavior. Using two widely advocated and debated dimensions of organizational democracy (empowerment and communication), the present study provides empirical evidence of this mentioned relationship between organizational democracy and employee outcomes (commitment, citizenship behavior, and turnover intentions) under mediating role of organizational justice. Based on the data of 262 employees working in fan manufacturing companies, structural equation modeling was employed to estimate the results. Results suggest that bringing democratization at workplace enhance employee commitment and citizenship behavior and reduce intentions to leave the organization. Furthermore, the study also supports organizational justice as a mediator, suggesting that the relationship between organizational democracy and employee outcomes becomes more strengthened once justice is introduced. The study provides empirical evidence to ideas and prepositions of many organizational democracy researchers working for decades.

As an important platform for participating in international competition and cooperation, supporting economic growth and promoting coordinated regional development, urban agglomeration plays an important role in China’s economic, social and urbanization development. At this time, the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration (GZPUA), as the second largest urban agglomeration in western China, has a moderate population density. The high demand and high input of resources for population growth make the regional ecological destruction and environmental pollution more prominent. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the coordinated development of urbanization and ecological environment in GZPUA. By using the panel data of the GZPUA of China between 2008 and 2017, this study constructed evaluation index system of new-type urbanization and ecological environment quality and calculated the weights of the indices within the evaluation system via the improved entropy weight method, finally determined the new-type urbanization and ecological environment quality of each city. Then the coupling coordination degree model was used to analyze the coupling coordination relationship between two systems of GZPUA and their coupling stages and levels. In addition, the driving mechanism of their coordination degree was explored by using geographic detector method. The results show that: 1) The GZPUA new-type urbanization quality is characterized by both slow growth except Xi’an by a rapid increase. The ecological environment quality is characterized by both slow growth and fluctuations, except Qingyang by a decrease. There are spatial differences between the quality of new-type urbanization and the quality of ecological environment. 2) The 11 cities can be divided into high-high type (Xi’an), high-low type (Xianyang, Yuncheng, Linfen), low-low type (Pingliang, Weinan), and low-high type (Shangluo, Tianshui, Qingyang), different types should take different development paths. 3) The coordination degree between urbanization and ecological environment quality in GZPUA showed an upward trend, and formed a spatial distribution pattern with Xi’an as the core and decreasing to the outer circle cities, with regional differences. 4) The coordinated development of new-type urbanization and ecological environment is a process in which various driving factors act on different driving forces. These driving forces can be summarized as market driving force, endogenous driving force, outward driving force and administrative driving force. Based on the current situation of coordinated development of new-type urbanization and ecological environment in the GZPUA, it is recommended to promote the coordinated development of urbanization and ecological environment according to local conditions, strengthen the urbanization market mechanism, and optimize the industrial layout. Further, guide the flow of various factors across regions, strengthen technological innovation on the basis of breaking regional divisions, narrow the gap between urban and rural areas, establish the concept of coordinated development, and give play to the government’s “visible hand” role.