| Profitability (ROA) | Net income divided by the average of total assets for the year (Chithambo and Tauringana, 2014; Choi et al., 2013; Luo et al., 2013) |
| Growth (GRW) | Current year’s revenues divided by the revenues from the previous four years (Luo et al., 2013) |
| Leverage (LEV) | Total debt divided by total assets (Clarkson et al., 2011; Luo et al., 2013) |
| CEO duality (CEOD) | A dichotomous scale of 1 or 0. A score of 1 when the CEO and chairman are the same person, and a score of 0 for companies with separation of power (Donnelly and Mulcahy, 2008; Qu et al., 2013) |
| Board composition (BCOM) | Number of independent directors divided by the total number of directors on the board (Matolcsy et al., 2007) |
| Size (LnSIZE) | Natural logarithm of total assets (Brammer and Pavelin, 2006; Zeng et al., 2012) |