A firm’s ownership structure is important in gauging its market value, These structures have major impacts on the financial performance of firms in either positive or negative way as demonstrated in previous studies. This study aims to identify the relationship between ownership structure (i.e. family, foreign, managerial and institutional ownership) and Jordanian companies’ financial performance. In doing so, we used a sample consisted of 114 companies listed in ASE from 2009 to 2015 (seven years). Using multiple regression using to test whether there are relationships between ownership structure and firms’ financial performance. The results showed a positive relationship among managerial, institutional and family ownership and financial performance, while there is no significant relationship between foreign ownership and firm’s financial performance. Additionally, the result of the current study has documented that the firm size enhances its financial performance, while the leverage has negative relationship to the company’s financial performance. The implication of these findings is important in many ways, i.e. the existence of ownership forms is vital for a company performance, hence, the prospective investors should consider these forms when investing in companies the results show that R2 value is average which opens up possible research areas in the future to explore new explanatory variables to expand the literature on these issues especially in developing countries.

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There is a worldwide debate regarding the implementation of IPSAS due to the potential obstacles that may face governments when they start moving to the full accrual basis. Of equal importance is that each country has its own needs and thus it must be examined separately to find out the factors that may motivate or limit the effective adoption of IPSAS. This study, therefore, aims to explore the key success factors when it comes to adopting IPSAS in Jordan. A 39-item questionnaire was devised and sent to 500 employees who were working in public entity departments. Only 326 questionnaires were returned, yielding a response rate of 65.2%. The results suggested that the most important factors were local legislation and the infrastructure, while the training of staff came at the bottom of list. These results are important to regulators for drawing up a clear road map for transferring fully to IPSAS.

The monitoring role of the board of directors has been extensively slammed as being ineffective since it depends on several factors. This study sheds light on some of the directors’ attributes and the impact on mitigating the opportunistic behaviour. By adopting different perspectives, we argued whether the directors with more expertise, tenure, outside directorships become more effective in mitigating the opportunistic behaviour. These attributes could have a curvilinear effect since such optimal attributes could improve the competency level of the directors. Hence, the board becomes more effective. Meanwhile, its effect could turn inversely to make the directors ineffective. This study adopted discretionary accruals as an indicator for earnings management. A sample of 114 service and industrial firms listed in Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) from 2009-2015 were chosen for this study. Pooled OLS regression model is enlisted to avoid the inconsistently of the slope across individual units and time period. Results show that the directors with financial expertise are more effective to minimise the level of earnings management practices. Conversely, the independent directors with high tenure besides the higher directors with outside directorships are engaged with a high level of earnings management practices. This implies the existence of each of the friendliness hypothesis and the busyness hypothesis in the Jordanian market. Similarly, this also explains the weakness of the board of directors in complying to their monitoring role in the emerging markets in general.