Dheif Allah E’leimat

Board diversity is crucial for corporate governance and improves corporate outcomes by aligning management with stakeholders’ interests. Compared to advanced environments, Jordan’s decent sociocultural backdrop exhibits a higher level of gender bias. This study investigates the influence of board gender diversity (BGD) on Jordanian banking sector performance, an under-explored area. This quantitative paper employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), random, and fixed-effect approaches to analyze 182 bank-year observations for balanced longitudinal data analysis. These approaches correctly establish the BGD-Tobin’s Q nexus during 2010–2022. The coefficient of determination was 70.57%. The model confirms a positive correlation between BGD and market-based performance indicators. Findings support agency and resource dependency hypotheses, showing BGD’s role in decision-making. Hence, a one-unit increase in BGD causes a 37.2-cent increase in Tobin’s Q measure. Moreover, a one-unit change in board independence, board meetings, size, women’s representation in top management, and capital adequacy ratio, assuming all other factors remain constant, results in Tobin-Q changes of 2.57 cents, 32.8 cents, 5.78 cents, 51.2 cents, 30.55 cents, and 22.86 cents, respectively, and the same direction. The results show how BGD enhances bank performance and contributes to relevant theories. The results are vigorous in a variety of identification and estimation methodologies.

Recently, corruption has become widespread, and firms' responses to corruption carry significant implications. The aim of this study is to check how corruption levels in Jordan influence the capital structure of 80 non-financial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) from 2013 to 2022. Capital structure is the main dependent variable, and corruption is the crucial variable analyzed as the independent factor. Control variables include company age, profitability, asset tangibility, company size, and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in addition to the inflation rate, to create a solid framework for analyzing this nexus. This quantitative research paper applies the fixed-effect (FE) estimation to examine the static model of the study and the generalized method of moment (GMM) for the dynamic model via panel data investigation encompassing 800 company-year observations. The R2 results explain 42.1% of the variations in capital structure level. Accordingly, a 1% upsurge in corruption is accompanied by a 0.0367-unit upsurge in the capital structure ratio. This response is interpreted through the lens of the shielding theory, suggesting that firms raise debt to protect themselves against the predations of corrupt officials. The analysis reveals meaningful connections between the control variables and the capital structure. Specifically, increases in tangibility, firm size, inflation, and GDP correspond to a 3.56%, 1.07%, 6.06%, and 2.143% increase in capital structure, respectively, indicating a positive influence. Conversely, the firm age and profitability variables show adverse effects on capital structure, with coefficients of –1.46% and –7.3%, respectively.