The board of directors and the financial performance of the Tunisian listed companies

In this study, we would like to study the role of the board of directors in the corporate governance and check whether the characteristics of the board improve business performance. Based on sample of 17 Tunisian firms listed on the Tunisian Stock Exchange (TSE) between 2002 and 2007, we have performed the regressions of the board of directors’ variables on the various measures of the accounting and financial performance. Our results show that the size and the number of the institutional directors have a positive impact on the accounting and financial performance while duality has no effect on the accounting performance but acts negatively on the market performance measured by Tobin's Q and Marris’ ratio. In addition, the relationship between the number of the outside directors and the accounting and financial performance is negative