Impact of corporate governance characteristics on intellectual capital performance of firms in India

This study examines the corporate governance characteristics and its influence on the intellectual capital (IC) performance for a sample of 95 firms listed on National Stock Exchange in India. The corporate governance (CG) characteristics are represented through board size, independence of directors, frequency of board meetings, remuneration of directors and composition of board. The impact of these CG characteristics on the performance of intellectual capital and its components is studied for a 7-year period, i.e. FY2010–2011 to FY2016–2017, using panel regression. The research findings provide clear evidence that CG characteristics influence the IC performance of only large-cap firms in India. Further, board size and independence of directors are seen to have the most significant impacts. Board size is negatively associated with IC performance of large-cap firms. Capital expended efficiency and productivity of midcap firms are observed to have a significant inverted-U relation with board size. The relative significance of various other CG factors varies for IC as well as its sub-components. The findings of this study are important because it gives a strong empirical evidence for regulatory authorities in India to strictly monitor the compliance of rules on structure and composition of the board of directors besides just laying down broad guidelines for the listed companies. This also serves as the first research work to justify the significance of corporate governance on IC performance of firms in India. One of the limitations of this research is inability to incorporate several other characteristics of board such as duality and detailed profile of board members due to non-availability of time-series data for all the firms.