Purpose This study investigates the mediating role of working capital management (WCM) efficiency between board diversity (based on gender and financial knowledge) and firm performance. The study further examines which WCM approach (conservative, moderate, and aggressive) they employ to increase (decrease) firm performance.Design/methodology/approach The study employs listed energy firms of Pakistan over the period 2010 to 2019. The system generalized method of moments estimator and logit model are utilized to estimate the underlying relationships.Findings The results show that WCM efficiency partially mediates the relationship between board financial expertise (BFE) and firm performance. Nonetheless, the presence of female directors is merely symbolic until they reach a certain level as only the quadratic term of board gender diversity (BGD) has a significant effect on firm performance. Female directors do not influence WCM efficiency. The results also demonstrate that BGD encourages a conservative WCM approach, while BFE encourages a moderate WCM approach. Furthermore, both conservative and moderate WCM approaches are significantly associated with firm performance.Practical implications The findings hold implications for increasing the representation of women and financial experts on board to improve the capital structure decisions of the energy firms in Pakistan.Originality/value This study is the first attempt to explore the mediating role of WCM efficiency between board diversity and firm performance. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no previous study has investigated the effect of BGD and BFE on different WCM approaches distinctly.

This study investigates the effect of CEO power on energy firms’ performance, riskiness, and working capital. Our panel quantile regression estimates based on Pakistan data suggest a positive effect of CEO power on firm performance in lower and middle quantiles. Powerful CEOs mitigate excessive risk-taking when the riskiness of firms reaches certain levels. CEO power is negatively related to working capital when the cash holdings exceed a certain level.