Responding to the call for research into the behavior of family companies to provide better understanding of corporate governance, this paper aims to examine the impact of boards’ effectiveness on the investment in monitoring costs (i.e. audit fees, internal audit function budget and executive remuneration) and how this relationship is moderated by family control.,A sample of 2,176 firm-year observations of Malaysian listed companies is used. The ordinary least square regression is used to examine the associations. Additional sensitivity tests are performed.,The study finds that there is no relationship between boards’ effectiveness and the demand for monitoring costs for the full sample. However, the findings of sub-samples (family and non-family companies) indicate that a family company with an effective board is less likely to invest more in monitoring, suggesting that the complementary association between the board’s effectiveness and investment in monitoring is a more dominant relationship than the substitution relationship in non-family companies. These findings show that the boards of directors of Malaysian family companies perform a deficient monitoring role, where the presence of family controlling shareholders in management may reduce their independence and efficiency in performing their monitoring role. The findings remain robust after performing additional sensitivity tests.,This paper contributes to the literature on corporate governance in a unique setting (family companies), where conflict of interest is created between controlling insiders and minority shareholders (Type II agency problem). It provides insight for Malaysian policymakers in assessing the issue of expropriation in family companies and enhancing the policy related to its boards.

中文翻译：

---

董事会的有效性和监督成本

为了响应对家族企业行为的研究以更好地了解公司治理的呼吁，本文旨在研究董事会有效性对监控成本（即审计费用，内部审计职能预算和执行人员薪酬）投资的影响。以及如何通过家族控制来缓和这种关系。使用了马来西亚上市公司2,176个公司年度观察的样本。普通最小二乘回归用于检查关联。研究还进行了其他敏感性测试。研究发现，董事会的有效性与监控整个样本成本的需求之间没有关系。然而，子样本（家族企业和非家族企业）的发现表明，拥有有效董事会的家族企业不太可能在监督方面进行更多投资，这表明董事会的有效性与监督投资之间的互补关系是更主要的关系。比非家族企业的替代关系要大。这些发现表明，马来西亚家族企业的董事会在监督方面的作用不足，家族控制股东在管理层的存在可能会降低其独立性和执行监督职能的效率。在进行了其他敏感性测试后，研究结果仍然很可靠。，本文为独特环境下的公司治理（家族企业）提供了文献资料，在控制内部人和小股东之间产生利益冲突的地方（第二类代理问题）。它为马来西亚的政策制定者提供了见识，帮助他们评估家族企业中被没收的问题并增强与董事会有关的政策。