Tax payments stimulate business enterprises to choose tax management through tax avoidance activities, which is the legal practice to reduce the amount of tax payable. In developing economies, taxation is considered more critical for budget and revenues of a country. This paper investigates whether various business strategies influence corporate tax avoidance decisions of firms by adopting business strategies. Besides, it explores how gender diversity can ease this relationship. This study has chosen a sample of organizations from non-financial sector in Pakistan. The time frame is 5 years, including once a year. The present model employed a generalized moment method (GMM) and tested the proposed hypothesis to draw the results. The study has taken the size, leverage, and business profitability as control variables of firms. The study outcomes by using the GMM method demonstrate that the presence of female directors reduces tax avoidance behavior in prospector companies. This study provides insight into future research for stakeholders, government officials, tax authorities, and policymakers. The findings offer valuable recommendations and practical insights and implications. The findings provide future directions for research to test different frameworks to attain beneficial results to promote the responsibility of tax payment culture.

The main purpose of this study is to systematically analyse and synthesise the empirical literature on the drivers and motivations of CSR disclosure in developing countries. Previous studies on CSR disclosure have primarily investigated the accuracy of disclosure claims, impact on various actors, and the factors deriving CSR disclosure. While literature on CSR disclosure dates back to 1983, the number of studies have increased substantially in recent years, with 86% of studies being published in the last decade and a half. The results revealed that both internal and external factors influence the disclosure of CSR information. Internal factors influencing CSR disclosure include company characteristics such as size, industry, financial performance, corporate governance elements such as board size and board independence, and types of ownership. In addition, corporate polices and concerns also influence the disclosure of CSR-related information. External category factors influencing CSR disclosure include, regulatory pressures, government pressure, media concerns, social-cultural factors, and industry-level factors such as the level of industry competition, customers’ concerns, and multiple listing of a firm. Furthermore, global value chains, international buyers, international NGOs, and international regulatory bodies pressure companies in developing countries to disclose social and environmental information. In terms of motivations, companies disclose CSR information to improve their corporate reputation, improve their financial performance, access investment opportunities, and manage key stakeholders. The dominant theoretical frameworks used to explain the determinants of CSR disclosure include legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of market imperfection, namely, variation in managerial ability (MA), on dividend policy in China. The authors focus on the Chinese market as it is dominated by state-owned enterprises and test whether the association between MA and dividend policy varies systematically with the degree of state ownership. Design/methodology/approach To measure MA, this study exploits a novel measure developed by Demerjian et al. (2012) to estimate how efficiently manager utilizes firm’s resources. Manager efficiency is defined in terms of output a manager produces based on inputs available within firm. Findings The authors find that relationship between MA and dividend policy is primarily driven by non-state own enterprises compare to state own enterprises, more prevalent for financially unconstrained firms with strong balance sheet and more pronounced under high marketized groups as compare to low marketized groups. These finding are robust under battery of robustness checks. This research adds new insight for the policy makers and investors to pay more attention on MA. Practical implications This research adds new insight for the policy makers and investors to pay more attention on MA. Originality/value This study augments the dividend policy literature by relaxing perfect capital market assumption of Miller and Modigliani, and neo-classic view of firms by incorporating a new novel factor – variation in MA – and applies it to the emerging market of China.

Purpose Numerous researchers have developed theories and studies to uncover the issues pertinent to dividend policy dynamics, but it is still one of the unresolved problems of finance. The purpose of this paper is to focus on a new dimension, i.e., financial expertise on the corporate board for explaining the dividend policy dynamics in the emerging equity markets of China and Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach The study employs static (fixed effect (FE) and random effect (RE)) and dynamic models – two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995) – during the timespan from 2009 to 2014. Further, this study re-estimated FE, RE and GMM two-step estimation techniques by excluding the non-dividend-paying companies, and also employed instrumental variable regressing by using two instrumental variables – industry average financial expertise of the board and board size – as proxies for board financial expertise to control the possible endogeneity. Findings The study reveals that Chinese firms having more financial expertise on the board do not take dividends as a control mechanism (substitution hypothesis), while Pakistani firms support the compliment hypothesis and use dividends as a control mechanism to mitigate agency conflict to protect shareholders’ interests and keep additional funds from the manager’s opportunism. Further robustness models also confirm the presence of a significant association between dividend policy and board financial expertise in both equity markets. Originality/value This study introduces the financial expertise on a board as a determinant of dividend policy. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have focused on board-level financial expertise as a contributing factor toward dividend policy.

The objective of the study is to investigate the impact of female representation on boards and female CEOs on firms’ sustainable performance in the context of an emerging economy. We also introduce the CEO duality as a moderator variable between sustainable firm performance and board gender diversity. For this purpose, the study uses a panel data sample from 2005 to 2020 for non-financial listed firms in Pakistan. We use the firm’s operational self-sufficiency for the sustainable performance of firms. For robustness, the study also uses other accounting-based and market-based proxies. We apply the static (fixed and random effect) and dynamic panel estimation (GMM) techniques to deal with the heterogeneity and dynamic endogeneity issues in panel data estimation. The finding shows a significant positive impact of female directors on board and female CEOs on sustainable performance, whereas CEO duality does not moderate this relationship. Furthermore, we find that CEO duality has a significant negative impact on firms’ sustainable performance, which supports the agency theory hypothesis. The study also controls corporate board level factors, including board size and board independence, and uses leverage, firm size, capital expenditure, and tangible assets as firm-level control. The results also reveal that board size and board independence have a significant positive impact on firms’ sustainable performance. Furthermore, firm size, tangibility, and firm age have a significant positive, whereas leverage and capital expenditure have a negative impact on firms’ sustainable performance. Finally, the study has policy implications for stakeholders.