PurposeThe paper aims to examine the effect of corporate governance (CG) on innovation investment, with consideration of ownership types and legal jurisdictions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors' empirical analysis is based on a sample of publicly listed family businesses (FBs) from the top-500-list that matched worldwide with non-family counterparts from 2009 to 2018. The study uses a holistic measure of CG to mitigate the conflicting impact of individual CG components found in prior studies. This measure is applied to examine the moderating role of firm ownership type and legal jurisdiction.FindingsThe authors' results demonstrate that CG positively influences innovation investment. This positive relationship is more pronounced in FBs than in non-family businesses (NFBs) and is more prevalent in civil law economies than in common law economies.Originality/valueThe study holistically examines the effect of CG, capturing the combination of all individual governance mechanisms and their influence on innovation investment. The study further shows that comprehensive CG has diverse impacts on innovation investment when considering family control and legal jurisdiction.

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PurposeThis study investigates effects of corporate governance on the financial performance of family-controlled firms and how these effects differ between common law and civil law jurisdictions.Design/methodology/approachThis study applies a number of corporate governance measures to the largest 243 publicly listed family-controlled businesses worldwide from 2009 to 2018. The corporate governance measures include board independence, board gender diversity, corporate governance index (CGI) and the percentage of family ownership.FindingsThe empirical evidence indicates that board independence improves financial performance; this positive effect is more pronounced in common law than civil law jurisdictions. Board gender diversity has a negative impact on financial performance under common law but a positive impact in civil law jurisdictions. Moreover, the CGI and family ownership structure are positively associated with financial performance, and no difference is found between the two jurisdiction types. In addition, family ownership negatively moderates CGI in civil law countries only.Originality/valueThis study provides new insight on the relevance of considering jurisdictional differences when examining the effect of corporate governance on performance. The study also addresses important concerns in family business research relating to unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity. Implications of these for research and practice are discussed in the paper.