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The objective of this paper is to analyze the influence of board resource diversity on firm reputation. We classify board members as business experts, support specialists, political directors and other community influentials, in an effort to address whether business, technical expertise or political ties in the boardroom affect stakeholders' opinion and, therefore, firm reputation. This study confirms that not all outside directors are equally effective in improving firm reputation, and that certain kinds of outside directors, especially business experts, help increase it. However, the findings note an inverted U-shaped non-linear relationship with these directors, which means that the effect of business experts on reputation is positive up to a point, after which the relationship becomes negative. The findings also evidence that, contrary to popular beliefs, directors with previous experience as politicians are not negatively viewed by stakeholders. Moreover, this type of community influential directors has positive effects on firm reputation in regulated firms as well as in those of the public work sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effect of corporate governance on value creation. It relies upon a dataset that includes the companies listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange for the period from 2005 to 2012. Attention is focused on the structure and composition of boards. In particular, four variables are analyzed: BOARD_SIZE, BOARD_INDEPENDENCE, BOARD DILIGENCE (measured by the number of meetings), and DUALITY (chairman and chief executive officer being the same person). Over the period of the deepest economic crisis (2009---2012) the most significant variables that had a positive effect on value creation were BOARD_INDEPENDENCE and BOARD_SIZE. Hence, the global financial crisis has highlighted the need for effective corporate governance. Policy makers should think about translating the recommendations of the Good Governance Codes into legislation (mandatory), to improve corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]