 Ethnicity, politics and firm performance: Evidence from MalaysiaFerdinand Gul (), Sa'adiah Munir and Liang Zhang Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 2016, vol. 40, issue PA, 115-129 Abstract: Motivated by the inconclusive evidence on the role of ethnic diversity of directors and the limited research, this study examines whether there is an association between board ethnic diversity in Malaysian firms and firm performance. We find that the association between ethnic diversity of boards and firm performance is non-linear; at low levels of ethnic diversity there is a positive association but at higher levels of ethnic diversity, the association is negative. However, when we split the sample into politically and non-politically connected firms, we find that this association only holds for non-politically firms. Further, when we split our politically connected sample into Malay and non-Malay dominant boards, we find generally, that in both groups of firms, board ethnic diversity does not influence firm performance. Overall, these results suggest that the presence of political connection could undermine the role of ethnic diversity in influencing firm performance. Keywords: Corporate governance; Ethnicity; Politically connected firms; Firm performance; Malaysia (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:40:y:2016:i:pa:p:115-129 DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2016.10.005 Access Statistics for this article Pacific-Basin Finance Journal is currently edited by K. Chan and S. Ghon Rhee More articles in Pacific-Basin Finance Journal from Elsevier |
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