<p>This study primarily aimed to assess the internal audit function’s ability to detect and self-report fraud. The paper investigated the moderating role of internal audit on the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and corporate performance (ROA) and the direct effect of corporate governance characteristics and internal audit characteristics on corporate governance of firms listed in the stock market of Saudi Arabia. one hundred and eighty-eight observations obtained from forty-seven Saudi financial firms were used in this study for the years 2014-2017. The study used the FGLS regression to test the variables relationships and to test the moderating effects of internal auditor on the corporate governance characteristics and corporate performance. The obtained empirical results supported a significant positive relationship between non-executive board, audit committee size, audit committee independence and internal audit profession, and corporate performance. Negative significant findings were also observed between the board size, internal audit size and internal audit education, and corporate performance. As for the moderating effects, the results supported a significant moderating role of internal audit size on the size of the board and its relationship with corporate performance. This study extends past studies dedicated to testing the agency theory and resource dependence theory as underpinning theories in examining the relationship between corporate governance and corporate performance. The study is expected to contribute to conceptual and theoretical studies by highlighting issues concerning corporate governance practice in Saudi listed firms. The study focused on the internal audit committee characteristics, corporate governance characteristics and the corporate governance best practices that practitioners can utilized when it comes to the role of internal audit committee.</p>

This study focuses to achieve an important objective by examining the moderating effect of board diversity (foreign member on the executive committee and executive committee commitment) on the relationship between executive committee characteristics and firm performance in Omani companies excluding those categorized under the financial sector. The sampling covers two years, 2011 and 2012. This study used multiple regression and hierarchical multiple regression to analyze the association between independent, moderating and dependent variables. Based on the findings, a positive association between executive committee independence, executive committee meeting and firm performance is revealed although it is not significant. In the same context, the finding revealed a negative relationship between executive committee size and firm performance but not significant. Moreover, the board diversity moderated the relationship between executive committee characteristics and firm performance but the effect is not significant. Finally, this study offers recommendations for future researchers at the end.

This study attempted to examine the association between two important committees of corporate governance practice namely, audit committee characteristics and executive committee characteristics, and firm performance. The data used comprised of non-financial companies listed in Muscat Security Market (MSM) through 2011 and 2012. Based on widely existing literature that studied the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance, studies that investigated the role of executive committee with firm performance are few and far between and hence, the main aim of this study is to discover this relation. Therefore, this study is an attempt to fill the gap in literature by exploring these new measures and contributing to a rich body of existing literature.The outcome of this study revealed a positive relationship between audit committee size (ACSIZE), audit committee independence (ACINDE) and executive committee size (ECSIZE) and firm performance but not significant. In addition, the association between audit committee meeting (ACMEETIN), executive committee independence (ECINDE) and executive committee meeting (ECMEETIN) and firm performance was negative but not significant. The findings found the relationship between firm size (FIRMSIZE) and firm performance to be positively significant while the relationship between leverage (LEVERAG) and firm performance was found to be negatively significant. Finally, this study discusses the results and provides limitation and recommendations towards the end.

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