Monitoring function of the board and audit fees: contingent upon ownership concentration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose The aim of this paper is to revisit the board independence–audit fees (BI–AF) relationship while taking into account the ownership structure of the firm. Two effects are unfolding along the ownership concentration spectrum: separation of ownership and control (principal–agent problems) and separation of voting and cash flow rights (principal–principal problems). Design/methodology/approach The study is conducted over a seven-year period (2002-2008) using panel regressions on a sample of Canadian publicly traded companies. The authors use a moderated regression analysis incorporating two-way interactive terms (ownership × BI) and a sub-group analysis. Findings The results show a positive and significant relationship between BI and AF when ownership is concentrated in the hands of a dominant/controlling shareholder. The higher the gap between voting and cash flow rights of the ultimate owner, the stronger the relationship between BI and AF. Overall, evidence supports both the demand-based perspective on AF and the expropriation effect argument. Practical implications Results support a one-size-fits-all approach to governance despite growing concerns from academics and interest groups about the appropriateness of pursuing such strategy when ownership is concentrated in the hands of a dominant/controlling shareholder. Originality/value By taking the excess voting rights into account (difference between voting rights and cash-flow rights of the ultimate owner), the authors propose a refined classification of the sample firms along the ownership concentration spectrum.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.055 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".