This paper investigates a critical aspect of agency conflict between dispersed minority and majority (controlling) shareholders in firms affiliated with family business groups. Corporate governance literature indicates that majority shareholders can exploit minority shareholders through tunneling the resources for their benefit or they provide insurance through propping to group firms in distress. For years 2009-2013, the study uses a unique hand-picked data set of 290 non-financial (i.e. 177 family business group and 113 stand-alone or non-group) firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). The study finds that majority shareholders expropriate minority shareholders by tunneling (transferring) important resources from low cash-flow rights firms affiliated with family business group. While measuring the sensitivities of firms to the industry earnings shocks, the empirical results reveal that about 15% resources of low cash-flow rights firms are tunneled to high cash-flow rights firms in family business groups. It is also confirmed that equity held by directors representing majority shareholders has negative relationshi p with earnings of minority shareholders in low cash-flow rights firms affiliated with family business groups. These findings have certain policy implications for governance related regulation development, diverse shareholders and firm management.

The basic aim of this paper is to systematically review the corporate governance research trends in Pakistan and to give directions for future researchers in this field. The methodology adopted in this paper is “Systematic Literature Review,” 108 papers have been used from the period 2002–2020 along with 17 research theses in this study. The findings of this study show two trends in corporate governance research first one form 2008 to 2016 and the second one is from 2017 to 2020. The first trend shows that corporate governance (variables) is linked with traditional topics such as firm performance, dividend policy, capital structure, cost of capital and earnings management. The theory which is mostly used in the first corporate governance trend is the agency theory. In the second trend, corporate governance (variables) are linked with multiple issues while taking various theoretical perspectives such as risk taking, tunneling, CSR, investment portfolios, board-related issues, financial distress and much more. This paper has identified and filled the research gap by writing a comprehensive review paper of the prevailing corporate governance literature and has given directions for future researchers to consider it. To the best of researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study that has systematically reviewed and synthesized the corporate governance literature by adopting the systematic literature review methodology in Pakistan an emerging economy. It is an extensive effort for the purpose to encourage the interested researchers/scholars to add and expand their contributions to the corporate governance literature in Pakistan on the potentially identified areas of corporate governance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the board of directors’ related clauses such as independence, female director, CEO Duality and the expertise of director included in the Code of Corporate Governance 2017 (CCG-2017) on earnings management with the pre- and post-CCG-2017 analysis. This study has used the sample of 323 non-financial listed firms of the Pakistan Stock Exchange from 2015 to 2019. Data were manually collected from companies’ annual reports, and two proxies of earnings management have used: one is discretionary accruals and the other is real activity manipulation. The results of the study show that as compared to the pre-period of CCG-2017 in the post-period of CCG-2017 board independence, expertise and female inclusion has increased significantly. Moreover, board independence and financially expert directors are negatively related to discretionary accruals, while there is a positive relationship of female directors with discretionary accruals, which is also same for real activity manipulation. The findings also show that there is no relationship of board independence/outside directors and expert directors with real activity manipulation. This study recommended the CCG-2017 reforms introduced by the regulator. Moreover, we recommend that the regulator needs to augment the authentic independence of independent/outside directors in listed firms (concentrated ownership context) of Pakistan. This study adds its part in the corporate governance literature by focusing board attributes with regulatory reforms on earnings manipulation, which is lacking in the related literature in general and in Pakistan an emerging economy in particular.

This study analysis the family business groups ownership structure in the framework of corporate legal system, regulatory institutions and codes of corporate governance of Pakistan. The study uses unique handpicked data comprising a sample of 326 non-financial firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange for a period of 2009-13. The results reveal that Pakistani corporations have high degree of concentration of ownership. The controlling shareholders own about 87 % of firms with 10 % or more shareholding and 60 % of firms with 20 % or more shareholding. Most of the businesses are controlled by families. In 63 % of business group firms, families own 20 % or more top shareholdings. The novel contribution of the study is to develop the ownership structure of family businesses and measure the cash flow leverage, cash flow and voting rights of ultimate owners in family business groups. The study finds the considerable difference in voting and cash flow rights in family business group firms. This has strong implications for regulators, minority shareholders and dispersed investors.

The aim of this article is to investigate the relationship between the CEO, Director and executives’ compensation on firm performance. Moreover research and development as moderator check the relation of R&D over firm performance and CEO, directors, executives’ compensation in an emerging Pakistan market. This research uses the GSEM approach for the problem of abnormality and homoscedastic arise the sample data collected from PSE 100 index non-financial list over the era of 2014-2019.The data collection sample from 75 non-financial firm and final sample consisted on 69 firm 6 organization exclude due to unavailability of data. This study provide the evidence that CEOs, Director, executives’ compensation have a significant relation with firm performance while, R&D show that insignificant relation with CEO/directors and Executives compensation perhaps R&D show significant relation with firm performance. This research contributed the firm with their better remuneration to the executive; CEO and director have better financial performance. Meanwhile research and development also play pivotal role toward firm performance due to their innovative idea and technique. In future other Asian countries included in the sample set like India and also some variable like CSR, Firm age, top executive education and tenure for showing the better significant results.