Sustainable corporate governance and gender diversity on corporate boards: evidence from COVID-19

The unprecedented challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a need to re-examine sustainable corporate governance practices. Within this context, the current study investigates the moderated effect of gender-diverse corporate boards on sustainable corporate governance practices in Malaysian financial and non-financial firms during the period 2011–2020, employing the dynamic estimator (S-GMM). During the COVID-19 pandemic, a negative relationship between ownership constructs and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators is observed in non-financial firms, whereas the opposite is reported for financial firms. Moreover, the moderated effect of gender-diverse boards is only substantiated in financial firms. The findings reveal that sustainable corporate governance is practised in financial firms but not in non-financial firms. Particularly, we draw significant implications for policymakers and regulatory bodies of Malaysia to carefully monitor the implementation of sustainable corporate governance given uncertain circumstances of COVID-19 pandemic. Further, our study is beneficial for academics, practitioners, and research scholars for their future research endeavours.