Title: The determinants of the effectiveness of corporate governance at Islamic banks

Authors: Majdi Anwar Quttainah; John Cocco; Awad Al-Zufairi

Addresses: College of Business Administration, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5486, Safat 13055, Kuwait ' Lally School of Management & Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th St, Troy, NY 12180, USA ' College of Business Administration, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5486, Safat 13055, Kuwait

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of institutional corporate governance on the financial performance of Islamic banks, with a specific focus on their religious supervisory boards. The findings of this study indicate that Islamic banks with religious supervisory boards embedded into their governance structures outperform Islamic banks without such integrated boards, as measured by return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and asset growth (AG). Our findings also indicate several characteristics of religious supervisory boards, including size, influence the financial performance of Islamic banks with such boards. Moreover, religious supervisory boards provide tighter monitoring and control, as well as more advising and counselling, compared with Islamic banks without dedicated religious supervisory boards. Overall, our study provides strong evidence that religious supervisory boards benefit Islamic bank shareholders by complementing corporate boards and thus mitigating agency problems and agency costs.

Keywords: Islamic banks; corporate governance; Shari'ah supervisory board; traits; management performance; financial performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBGE.2017.086479

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2017 Vol.12 No.2, pp.174 - 196

Received: 21 Jul 2016
Accepted: 25 May 2017
Published online: 10 Sep 2017 *

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