The corporate form that developed in the early 20th century created enormous pressure for corporate governance mechanisms to curb the power of corporate managers. Berle and Means, legal pluralists, warned about concentrating economic power in the hands of a small but powerful class of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics and qualifications of audit committee financial experts. Specifically, the paper examines if the majority of the financial experts possess accounting or general management experience. Design/methodology/approach – The...

This study develops and tests empirically a model of the spread of audit committees. This model is based both on the factors from agency and signalling theories and on new ones, drawn from the embeddedness theory. Empirical tests of the spread of committees are performed using a Cox model over...

The highly publicized accounting scandals of the recent past seriously damaged the credibility of the accounting profession. In an effort to restore public confidence in the capital markets, the US Congress passed the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002. A central theme of this new law is the attempted...

Purpose – Recent US reforms aimed at strengthening audit committees and their structure grant independent audit committees the responsibility to appoint, dismiss, and compensate auditors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between audit committee characteristics and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics and qualifications of audit committee financial experts. Specifically, the paper examines if the majority of the financial experts possess accounting or general management experience. Design/methodology/approach – The...