Corporate Governance Mechanisms and Jordanian Companies’ Financial Performance

Abstract

Previous studies in the literature review that dealt with corporate governance have recently witnessed significant growth that led to some new trends. The purpose of the current paper is to significantly contribute to such trends through investigating and analyzing the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on firm’s financial performance for a sample consisting of industrial and service companies in Jordan. The current study examined cross sectional data through 109 companies (industrial and service companies). The study uses the annual reports for the fiscal year 2011 of the most active Jordanian companies in order to examine the predictions of corporate governance effects on financial performance. This cross sectional study tested all hypotheses of the study and used statistical software, SPSS 20, to analyze data. The findings indicated that board size has a negative association with firm financial performance. Furthermore, the empirical investigations for the current study revealed that the presence of independent directors in the board is not associated with financial performance. Likewise, the result showed that CEO duality has no impact on firm financial performance. From developed and developing countries’ perspective, the current paper uniquely contributes to the literature that dealt with corporate governance and firm performance throughout introducing a market share variable as a measurement to represent firm’s financial performance. In doing so, the paper is the first of its kind to provide new insights on the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance. It therefore provides a new indicator considered as extending for prior research in this discipline as, to the best of researcher’s knowledge; no prior work has been done in both developed and developing economies including Jordan. The study provides empirical evidence to the academic, policy makers and all beneficiary parties of stakeholders in the Middle East, specifically Jordan.