Rashid Zaman

Boardroom gender diversity and intellectual capital efficiency: evidence from China

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between boardroom gender diversity and intellectual capital (IC) efficiency in China – while the previous literature focuses only on traditional accounting-based performance measures such as return on assets or Tobin’s Q.,A well-developed Arrelano–Bond generalised method of moment (GMM) is applied to account for endogeneity – mainly because of simultaneity and unobserved heterogeneity. Moreover, this study uses an adjusted-value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) model to measure the IC efficiency of 906 Chinese listed firms for 2010-2014.,The empirical analysis shows a significant relationship between gender diversity and IC efficiency, in static ordinary least square estimation, but this disappears when endogeneity is accounted for using dynamic GMM. This insignificant relationship remains consistent, even when two alternative proxies of gender diversity, i.e. the Blau index and the women dummy, are used.,This study provides some useful insights into the traditional Chinese corporate structure where females cannot use their powers to bring corporate changes in firms. The findings show that gender-related stereotypical attitudes continue to exist in China. The regulators, therefore, should look into strengthening gender related regulations – which are currently non-existent in China.,This is the first study of its kind to investigate the relationship between gender diversity and IC efficiency in China using the A-VAIC model and GMM to mitigate endogeneity.

Religiosity and corporate social responsibility practices: evidence from an emerging economy

The purpose of this study is to present and test a conceptual framework that describes the Islamic religiosity parameters of riba, zakat and mafsadah and their influence on the adoption of firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices.,The study applied structural equation modelling to empirically test the proposed model on a sample of 109 Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms.,The study finds that the Islamic religiosity parameters of riba and mafsadah have a positive influence on the adoption of CSR practices, thus confirming the two study hypotheses. However, the authors did not find any significant influence of the zakat parameter on the adoption of firms’ CSR practices.,This study is limited to the Islamic religious concept and only surveyed one stakeholder group, i.e. firms’ managers in the Pakistani context. The authors recommend that future studies should look beyond a single religion with the inclusion of multiple stakeholders in a cross-country setting.,The findings possess important policy implication for regulators, stakeholders and practitioners, as the authors demonstrate that different parameters of religiosity are related to CSR practices and these parameters can be used as a substitute for and complement legal institutions in promoting and developing CSR practices.,The stakeholders’ particular investors and other market participants should be aware of the degree of religiousness and the CSR nexus, as surveyed manger responses in PSX listed firms indicate that better religious firms seem to place more emphasis on social responsibility obligations.,This study is among few studies that propose a comprehensive conceptual Islamic religiosity framework to evaluate the influence of a firm’s Islamic religiosity on CSR best practices. It differs from the past studies that were either on Islamic financial institutes or examined the religious influence on a firm’s economic behaviours.