Investigating the Effects of Board and Firm Characteristics on Firm Performance: An Agency Theory Perspective

The study aims to investigate the effects of various board and firm features on firm performance. Based on an agency theory perspective the study used a sample of 384 observations from the Egyptian Stock Market (EGX) from 2016-2018, the paper uses statistical analyses to identify the characteristics which affect the firm performance by independent variables. The study includes testing the hypothetical conditional influence of seven variables on the firm performance.
The results of this study show that board size, CEO duality, firm size and financial leverage have a significant positive effect on firm performance. In contrast, the other variables; board independence, audit quality and firm industry, had an insignificant association with firm performance.
The results of the study support that large companies which have large boards of directors with low levels of leverage and CEO duality have better financial performance than other firms. However, the impact of economic and political characteristics on the firm performance is not investigated in this study therefore one must be careful when generalizing the results.
The current study contributes to the accounting literature by adding some evidence on the significant effects of some board and firm characteristics, namely role duality, board size, firm size, and leverage on the financial performance of the firm.