The Impact of Corporate Board Meetings on Corporate Performance in South Africa

We investigate the impact of corporate board meetings on corporate performance
for a sample of 169 listed corporations from 2002 to 2007 in South Africa (SA).
Our findings suggest a statistically significant and positive association between
the frequency of corporate board meetings and corporate performance, implying
that SA boards that meet more frequently tend to generate higher financial
performance. A further investigation indicates a significant non-monotonic link
between the frequency of corporate board meetings and corporate performance,
suggesting that either a relatively small or large number of corporate board
meetings impacts positively on corporate performance. Our findings are
consistent across a raft of econometric models that control for different types of
endogeneities and corporate performance proxies. Our results provide empirical
support for agency theory, which suggests that corporate boards that meet more
frequently have increased capacity to effectively advise, monitor and discipline
management, and thereby improving corporate financial performance.