International audienceThis paper examines the relationship between boards of directors' demographic diversity and firms' financial performance. In particular, we highlight how women and ethnic minorities can affect Middle Eastern SMEs' financial performance. Using an unbalanced panel of 1,855 firm-year observations of 371 boards of directors from nine Middle Eastern countries, our results support the positive impact of women and ethnic minority group members on Middle Eastern firms' performance. However, our evidence implies that when Western ethnic minority members increase, firms' performances tend to decrease, because these board members are appointed for regional and international board reputation legitimacy, personal business agendas, and links to the external corporate environment

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International audienceThis paper aims to understand how the presence of women in management positively affects firms' financial performance. In order to validate our hypotheses, we used a quantitative method to collect data and performed an inquiry by surveying the top 30 Lebanese firms. The results showed that the presence of women in management in Lebanon is not positively correlated with firms financial performance. Women occupying high managerial positions are most probably a member of the family owning the business, and therefore they are not directly concerned with the management of the business. Moreover, a large number of the surveyed females in our sample are married. Consequently, their priorities change, and they put their family before their career development

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The aim of this paper is to examine whether generational involvement and perceived technological opportunities affect the corporate entrepreneurship of family firms in Lebanon. Using a sample of 85 Lebanese family firms, our results suggest that family-business-related characteristics and strategic planning have a positive relationship with corporate entrepreneurship.Our study provides important insights to regulators and practitioners interested in enhancing governance practices in family firms in Lebanon based on the impact of family-business-related characteristics and strategic planning on