The relationship between board structure and firm performance: evidence from post amendment Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance 2012 / Nurul Hilmiah Abu

Board of director becomes issue of concern due to corporate failures that involved small and big firms. It is found the board failed to control the conflict of interest exist among managers. In addition, when CEO also served as chairman of the board, their independence was impaired. Furthermore, when the board is too large, free riders exist in the group and increase agency problems. Thus, this study examined the relationship between board structure and firm performance after the amendment of Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance 2012. The data were collected from the annual reports. Descriptive analysis found average number of independent director present on board. The average of CEO duality is low, where most of the CEO holds only one role. While the average size board of director of Malaysian public listed companies in Malaysia was 8. According to the correlation analysis, there was a significant negative relationship between board composition and firm’s performance. CEO duality shows a positive relationship with firm performance while board size shows a negative relationship with firm performance. However, association between board size and CEO duality with firm performance is insignificant. The main contribution of the study is to highlight the outcome of changes in Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (revised 2012) specifically board structure towards firm performance. The findings provide useful information especially to the Malaysian regulator in developing new policies and improving existing policies. In addition, other stakeholders such as investors, shareholders, managers, researchers and academicians also benefited from this study during their decision making or furthering research gap.