Purpose – Do women contribute to performance of companies on which they serve as board of directors? Many prior studies examine this issue, but no consensus is reached on the benefits of women taking on leadership positions. The present study considers this thorny issue from a slightly different perspective. Does the association between gender diversity and business performance vary across sectors and economic cycles?

Design/methodology/approach – The sample for this study was derived from the firms included in the S&P Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) 300 Index, and the study period of 2004–2016 allowed authors to consider the effects of different sectors as well as different economic cycles on the relationship between gender diversity of boards and business performance. The authors consider the Australian context, which is somewhat unique from the other Western countries, as quotas on boards of directors are not made mandatory and the corporate governance practices are principle-based rather than rule-based.

Findings – Employing panel data models, at the aggregate level, the authors find no evidence of board gender diversity impacting business performance. Consideration of sectoral differences and economic cycles in the empirical analyses yielded additional insights. In particular, gender diversity has a beneficial association with performance for businesses in the services and financial sectors after the changes to corporate governance guidelines relating to diversity in 2010. These economic benefits, however, are not evidenced in the resources sector.

Research limitations/implications – These findings offer support for critical mass and resource dependence theories.

Practical implications – The findings of this study have implications for inclusion and diversity policies of businesses and the society. Specifically, the findings offer support for gender diversity of corporate boards of directors.

Originality/value – This study highlights that women bring their unique skills and experiences to create economic value in sectors where they traditionally have more experience and opportunities.

While a voluminous empirical literature has investigated university efficiency, much less attention has focused on the impact of administrative intensity on university performance. In this article, we seek to contribute to the empirical literature by examining the relationship between operational efficiency and administrative intensity in the Australian higher education sector over the period 2009/10–2018/19 using a second stage boots trapping Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) fractional regression model. We find that administrative intensity positively affects the performance of universities for both the standard and bias-corrected efficiency models. Moreover, administrative intensity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with university efficiency. We also find that administrative intensity has a differential impact on the efficiency of the different types of university. Various public policy implications are considered.

The conflicts encountered by the owner-managers in family-owned firms in Malaysia are explored in this chapter. Drawing upon the theoretical lens from agency, stewardship, resource-based and socioemotional wealth theories the lived experiences of conflicts on the basis of type, nature and extent by the owner-managers of family-owned firms are investigated deeply through in-depth interviews. Macro and micro thematic categories of relative importance are elicited by employing qualitative data analysis. Results obtained indicate that owner-managers in family-owned firms experience task, process, internal and/or external-oriented conflicts alongside affective, conative and/or cognitive nature of conflicts to a lesser or greater extent on the basis of gender and ethnicity leading conflict triads. The study provides important implications for theory, practice and family business environment.

Although migrant entrepreneurship has existed for many decades and has contributed to various economic dimensions, it has not been thoroughly investigated, and the theoretical underpinnings that can explain migrant entrepreneurship lack clear articulation and argument. The overarching aim of this study is to use the disadvantage, interactive and cultural theoretical models to understand in depth the uptake, enactment and embeddedness of migrant entrepreneurship. A qualitative case study methodology is employed to gather information on the lived experiences of migrant entrepreneurs to determine the influence of temporal, spatial and contextual dimensions. The distinct characteristics of migrant entrepreneurship in regional Australia are identified, and the implications for practice, policy, theory, methodology and society are discussed.

A vast empirical literature has investigated economies of scale in local service provision, especially in water and waste management. By contrast, the question of scale economies in local government administration has attracted much less attention, especially in Australian local government. To address this gap in the Australian empirical literature, we investigated administrative scale economies in the New South Wales (NSW) local government system for rural, regional, and urban local authorities over the period2014/15 to 2017/18. We find that total municipal population and municipal staff exhibit a U-shaped relationship with the total administration costs of urban councils in NSW. However, we find no economies of scale for administrative intensity in rural and regional councils in NSW.

The main aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between family ownership, characteristics of board of directors and both the dividend policy and capital structure in the Saudi context. Saudi Arabia is a member of the G20 group and one of the leading countries in the Middle East and among developing states. It is distinguished by different economic and financial systems to more advanced and developed countries. In addition, the Saudi Arabian economy is largely characterised by family-owned businesses. Furthermore, the ownership structure of the listed Saudi Arabian companies is dominated by families. However, little research has been conducted to examine the association between family ownership, characteristics of board directors and both the dividend policy and capital structure in the Saudi setting. Therefore, it is vital to addressthe research gap in the existing literature review. Groups of theories and frameworks used in the current study include social emotional wealth theory, agency, stewardship, stakeholder theory, transaction cost and political theories. As a result of reviewing of these theories and findings, a range of hypotheses have been formulated. Additionally, the data were gathered from the Refinitiv Eikon and company annual reports of 88 non-financial firms listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2018, for a total of 787 observation year data sets. Panel regression procedures employed to analyse the data include random effects logistics, random effects tobit, panel correction standard error regressions and the generalised method moments estimator.

The findings of this study have revealed that family, government and foreign ownership is positively and statistically significantly correlated with dividend policy. More specifically, the effect of family ownership appeared to have a significant positive relationship with dividend policy. In terms of the family involvement findings, CEO (chief executive officer) family appeared to have a significant negative relationship with dividend policy, showing the entrenchment effects. In term of board characteristics' findings from this study, board size and frequency of board meetings showed a positively and statistically significantly relationship with dividend policy. The results also show the positive effect of the Big-4 on dividend policy. On the other hand, a significant negative relationship was found between board independence and dividend policy in Saudi listed firms.

With respect to the capital structure, the outcomes indicate a significant and negative effect of family ownership on capital structure. Similarly, managerial and foreign ownership have a significant and negative effect on capital structure measures. In contrast, the results found a significant and positive effect of government ownership on capital structure. The outcomes also show that the interaction between family ownership and managerial ownership negatively affects leverage ratio in Saudi firms. The results also reveal that CEO family is a statistically and significant negative factor associated with capital structure. The findings also show a significant positive relationship between CEO tenure and capital structure. In addition, the results reveal a significantly positive association between board size and total debt-to-equity. Furthermore, the findings found a positive relationship but an insignificant one between board independence and capital structure. The study reveals that the coefficient board meeting is negative related to capital structure. Finally, the findings also found that firms audited by Big4 auditors acquire less debt.