Proefschrift Universiteit Maastricht. / Met index, lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-137). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Tax avoidance activities are complex, and the effective planning of these activities requires a mix of functional knowledge in business and a good understanding of a firm's operations. Armed with hands-on experience of running their firms' business and experience of other firms through their outside directorship appointments, certified inside directors (CIDs) are able to structure and execute tax avoidance activities for their firms. This study finds that firms with CIDs on their boards avoid more taxes. At the same time, only CIDs with no more than three outside directorships help firm save taxes. This study also supports that CIDs in complex firms and firms with bad environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) avoid more taxes. This research extends the literature on corporate governance in general and inside directors in particular by examining whether CIDs can help firms save taxes.

M.Com. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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The primary objective of this study is to test the theoretical framework relating to three major Corporate Governance (CG) hypotheses by means of reviewing cited literature and testing it in the corporate field. These are the Agency, stakeholder and shareholder theories. Many scholars have recognised the predominance of agency theory compared to the others. The literature demonstrates that the agency theory is substantially more established in practice with limited discussions and debate around other two theories. The research adopted a two-phase research approach, which employed qualitative and quantitative methods to collect empirical data. The findings from the field reveal that the Agency Theory indeed succeeds; however, the respondents’ opinions are that academic writers have unnecessarily overstated it. Concurring with claims by writers that the relationship between senior managers and shareholders does not exist, it is found in this research that there is no need for the relationship to exist. The study also found no evidence that senior managers are treated as agents, which is the basis of agency theory. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is the only legislated corporate governance structure, and is aimed at increasing investor confidence in public companies by forcing them to be transparent in their financial affairs. In order for companies to comply with the legislation, significant costs need to be incurred without any guarantee that the benefits will accrue to the investors or the company. The legislation will be regarded as being successful if a) the benefits and costs can be identified and b) the benefits exceed the costs. This study reviews the SOX legislation elements using documentary and secondary interview research, and reveals a convergence between the two. While the purpose of the regulation is to prevent fraud and restore investor confidence, there was no empirical evidence suggesting that investor confidence has increased after complying with the legislation. The benefits of complying with the legislation appear to be access to capital markets in the United States, and awareness of the controls environment by all employees. The costs incurred are listed as initial implementation costs and ongoing sustainable costs, and the overall costs are greater than benefits obtained. In the long term, benefits should exceed the costs, as the sustainable costs are low compared to implementation costs. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study explored the political-economic dimension of corporate governance reform in South Africa. Such reform in South Africa is especially significant in view of the history of South African society. This study investigated the relationship between corporate governance institutions and systems on the one hand and the political, economic and historical context of South African society that produced these corporate governance institutions and systems on the other. The purpose of the study was to establish the political, economic and historical determinants of corporate governance reform, as they evolved in the course of South African corporate history. A literature review was done in order to provide a backdrop for the study, after which a number of documents in the public domain were observed, in particular, a number of historical sources, newspaper reports, internet resources, and analyses of selected statutes and South African case law. The study concluded that South African corporate governance reform and such reform in the Commonwealth economic systems have a lot in common in terms of their historical evolution. The outcome of the political process in South Africa, for very specific reasons, was that a specific shareholder model of corporate governance became the corporate governance system in South Africa. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Corporate scandals such as Enron, WorldCom and Parmalat, have focused recent governance efforts in the domain of financial reporting due to fraudulent and/or erroneous accounting practices. In addition, the ineffectiveness of the current system of controls has been highlighted, including that some directors have been weak and ineffective monitors of managers. This board of director ‘weakness’ has called for additional mechanisms for monitoring and controlling of management, focusing on financial reporting. This problem intensifies in that today companies function in real-time, and decisions are based on available realtime financial information. However, the assurances provided by traditional auditing take place months after the transactions have occurred and therefore, a trust problem arises because information is not verified in real-time. Consequently, the errors and fraud concealed within the financial information is not discovered until months later. To address this trust problem a conceptual causal model is proposed in this study based on the principles of systems theory. The emergent property of the causal model is increased trust and control. This study establishes that mutual assurances assist in building trust and that information security assists in safeguarding trust. Subsequently, in order to have a positive relationship between the company directors and various stakeholders, uncertainty needs to be contained, and the level of trust needs to surpass the perceived risks. The study concludes that assurances need to be provided in real-time to restore stakeholder confidence and trust in the domain of financial reporting. In order to provide assurances in real-time, continuous auditing is required to verify the integrity of financial information when it becomes available, and not months later. A continuous auditing process has its foundations grounded in information technology and attends to the challenges in real-time by addressing the standardisation of data to enable effective analysis, the validation of the accuracy of the data and the reliability of the system.

The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between corporate governance and disclosure of corporate information by listed companies in developing economies. A comparative study was carried out covering listed companies in South Africa, East Africa and Nigeria. The study is based on the agency theory which asserts that enhanced disclosure is one of the fundamental goals of a company's reporting system aimed at reducing agency costs and information asymmetries between shareholders and managers, hence a tenet of any effective governance system. Although corporate disclosure provides a channel through which shareholders obtain valuable information to make investment decisions, prior studies reported mixed empirical evidence on the role of corporate governance in enhancing corporate disclosure. Furthermore, empirical evidence from Sub Saharan Africa and developing economies in general remains scanty. Despite the fact that corporate governance systems have been widely used in strengthening the quality of financial reporting and disclosure, several corporate scandals and failures have continued to occur around the globe and the efficacy of corporate governance on disclosure activities in preventing managers from misappropriating corporate resources remains an empirical question. A comprehensive literature review revealed six corporate governance attributes (CEO non-duality, board size, board composition, composition of audit committees, block and director share ownership) and three control variables (Firm size, leverage, and profitability) that may have a significant influence on corporate disclosure. Corporate disclosure was categorized into disclosure of financial and non-financial information. Data was collected from annual reports of non-financial listed companies on selected securities exchanges in Sub Saharan Africa for the period 2010 to 2013. A comparative panel data analysis was then carried out using STATA MP Version 13, to obtain Random-Effects Regression models which were used to examine the relationship between corporate governance and corporate disclosure. Overall, the findings revealed that CEO non-duality, board size and board composition have a positive significant effect on corporate disclosure, while the effect of block and director share ownership is negative. The study concluded that for effective disclosure of information in developing economies, companies should minimize block and director share ownership, separate roles of chief executive officers and chairpersons of board of directors, increase board size and ensure that there is a higher proportion of non- executive directors on boards.