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The purpose of this research is to investigate the link between external audit quality and integrated reporting (IR) quality in the Jordanian market, a developing market. Furthermore, the research model considers the mediating effect of earnings management practices and the moderating effect of board gender diversity. As a result, it intends to provide further empirical evidence in this area.

This research investigates its model using data from Jordanian services companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) during the period 2013–2022. With 430 company-year observations, the current research’s sample includes all companies in the research population for which complete data were available during the period under investigation. Data relevant to the research setting were obtained from annual disclosures and the ASE's database.

The findings of this research show that audit firm size and audit firm specialty have a positive influence on IR quality, but audit firm tenure does not. External audit quality (as proxied by the size, specialty and turnover of the audit firm) had a negative impact on earnings management practices, while earnings management practices had a negative impact on IR quality. Additionally, the findings reveal that earnings management practices completely mediate the relationship between two external audit quality proxies (audit firm size and audit firm specialty) and IR quality. Furthermore, in terms of the moderating impact of board gender diversity, it is obvious that board gender diversity favorably moderates the relationships between all external audit quality proxies and IR quality.

Using agency theory and stakeholder theory, this investigation fills a gap in previous literature by adding scientific explanations and empirical evidence from the Jordanian market, a developing market, in the context of the impact of audit quality on IR quality, mediated by earnings management and moderated by board gender diversity.

This study investigates the relationship between management's psychological characteristics (managers' narcissism, overconfidence and managers' myopia) and earnings management in the pre-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and post-ISIS eras.

A multivariate regression model was used to test the hypotheses. The research hypotheses were tested using a sample of all companies listed on the Iraqi Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2020.

Findings indicate a positive and significant relationship between managers' narcissism, overconfidence and myopia with accrual and real earnings management. According to the results, the ISIS weakens the relationship between managers' narcissism, managers' overconfidence and managers' myopia with accrual and real earnings management.

Because no study has addressed this issue in Iraq so far, the results of this research can provide helpful information for its users and improve the knowledge and science in this area.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between corporate COVID-19 disclosure (COVID_DISC) and stock price volatility (SPV) in Egypt.

The authors used the manual content analysis method to measure corporate COVID-19 disclosure in the narrative sections of annual reports. The authors use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to examine the impact of corporate COVID-19 disclosure on stock price volatility using unique data from Egyptian-listed firms during COVID-19 pandemic over the period of 2020 to 2022. Propensity score matching method was adopted to mitigate the potential endogeneity issue.

This study reveals that corporate COVID-19 disclosure has a significant negative impact on stock price volatility, suggesting COVID-19 disclosure reduces stock price volatility. In addition, the results confirm that COVID-19 disclosure offers value relevant information to investors, which is consistent with the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority’s (EFSA) motivation in calling for more information on COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings of this study can help corporate managers and EFSA in enhancing corporate disclosure and transparency during future financial crises. Moreover, the findings offer valuable insights to investors, helping them gain a better understanding of the business environment during COVID-19 crisis.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first Egyptian empirical evidence that examines the relationship between corporate COVID-19 disclosure and stock price volatility.

This study delves into the nuanced relationship between financial constraints, ownership structures (state-owned and foreign) and innovation engagement within China’s A-share market, aiming to uncover how these dynamics vary across different industries and regional contexts.

By retrieving data from various datasets in China (2010–2022), this study analyzed the effectiveness of each variable, employing various dimensions to reflect innovation engagement among Chinese listed companies. Meanwhile, for the measurement of financial constraints, this study tested all four typical ones and opted for the KZ Index, as it is the most suitable for China’s A-share market. Then, by fixing the industry and year effects, the study examined the main and moderating effects. At last, in order to address endogeneity issues and capture the dynamic nature of innovation activities, this study follow the suggestion of Khatib (2024) and employed the two-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation.

The results demonstrate that while the government has introduced many policies to promote innovation, state-owned ownership does not consistently enhance innovation engagement as expected, especially when firms are in financial dilemma. Particularly, in Hi-tech industries, foreign ownership demonstrates greater interest and confidence in the innovation capabilities of China’s A-share market. Findings also reveal significant regional heterogeneity in the moderating role of ownership structures. While state-owned and foreign ownerships have a buffering effect against financial constraints in the eastern and western regions, but this effect is notably different in the middle part, even though it is China’s political heartland.

The findings offer a different insight for policymakers and corporate strategists, suggesting that targeted financial and regulatory policies that leverage specific ownership structures can foster innovation in different ways, particularly in financially constrained environments. However, how to stimulate innovation vitality in the middle part of China still requires further research.

Prior research shows that co-opted directors adversely impact many corporate outcomes, yet little is known about these directors' impact on CSR performance. The authors investigate whether and how co-opted boards affect the firm's CSR score and component CSR scores.

The authors use panel regression models to investigate this study's research questions and address endogeneity concerns using the system generalized method of moments (system GMM) and a quasi-natural experiment.

The authors report new evidence showing that co-opted boards negatively impact CSR performance based on the CSR score. Results identify board characteristics that accentuate or moderate the effect of co-option on the CSR score and show that board independence, the presence of women on the board, and CEO duality positively and significantly impact the CSR score. These findings are robust across alternative measures of co-option and in the results of models addressing endogeneity concerns. An extended analysis utilizing CSR component scores reveals a significant negative impact of co-option on the environment component score using various measures of co-option and on employee relations, product quality, and human rights component scores using selected measures of co-option.

Findings have implications for board structuring and composition for firms aiming at improving their CSR score.

The study provides new evidence on the impact of co-opted boards on CSR performance. The results help inform stakeholders such as policymakers, executives and directors, shareholders, and capital market participants on how board composition affects socially responsible activities and performance and identify CSR component areas that require attention.

This study examines the impact of institutional ownership (IO) on firm performance. It also investigates whether powerful CEOs using a “CEO score index” moderate IO and firm performance nexus by drawing on insights from the agency and resource dependency theories.

Data were obtained from annual reports of companies listed on the Palestine Security Exchange from 2009 to 2019. Panel data regressions were conducted based on 528 observations. In addition, this study repeated the analysis using a one-step generalized method of moments (GMM) and two-stage least squares analysis to deal with the endogeneity issue.

Results show that IO and CEO power is positively associated with firm performance. Besides, it has been established that CEO power strengthens the relationship between IO and performance. Thus, this can be summarized that IO improves firm performance; however, with the powerful CEO intervention, the performance will improve even more.

Studying IO is timely given since the type of ownership is paramount to identify which form of a high degree of ownership affects the performance negatively, especially, in the Palestine environment which is dominated by institutional investors. This is of great importance to the investors as it will enable them to identify the type of firms to which they can commit their funds, and which firm excels through the CEO power. Besides, the inconsistency results in previous literature on IO, and firm performance indicates that there is an indirect effect that needs alternative explanations.

What kinds of support do interstate rivals provide to domestic actors in ongoing civil wars? And how do domestic actors utilize the support they receive? This chapter answers these questions by comparing Iranian and Saudi military and non-military (mediation, foreign aid and religious soft-power promotion) support to the Houthis and to the Government of Yemen (GoY) during the Saada wars (2004–2010) and the internationalized civil war (2015–2018). It also focuses on the processes through which the GoY and the Houthis have utilized this support for their own strategic purposes. This chapter applies a structured, focused comparison methodology and relies on data from a review of both primary and secondary sources complemented by 14 interviews. This chapter finds that there were less external interventions in the conflict in Saada than in the internationalized civil war. During the latter, a broader set of intervention strategies enabled further instrumentalization by domestic actors, which in turn contributed to the protracted nature of the conflict. This chapter contributes to the literature on interstate rivalry and third-party intervention. The framework of analysis is applicable to civil wars that experience intervention by rivals, such as Syria or Libya.

This study aims to explore the impact of capital structure (CS), including total debts, short-term debt, long-term debt and total shareholder equity, on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the context of Jordan.

To achieve the study’s objectives, the authors used the content analysis approach and the longitudinal data generated from the annual reports of 51 industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange for the period 2012–2020.

The findings show that debt financing enhances ESG performance in all dimensions, while financing by equity did not affect ESG. Consequently, Jordanian companies’ managers are trying to reduce agency costs by investing in ESG activities. In addition, companies are focusing on debt financing instead of equity to achieve their financial as well as nonfinancial goals. This is because the opportunism of new shareholders will likely lead to a focus on maximizing their value at the expense of the broader group of stakeholders, and this will adversely affect companies’ ESG performance. Therefore, debt financing limits shareholder control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first examination of the impact of CS financing choices on ESG performance. Thus, this study has important implications for the decisions of executives, policymakers, shareholders and lenders, as it enables them to better understand the linkage between CS and ESG.

Attaining the Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) of zero hunger continues to be a challenge in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, financial inclusion is seen as a potential pathway for reducing food insecurity among poor households. Mobile money is a financial inclusion instrument that is easily accessible to poor households and has the potential to increase the level of financial inclusion. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the determinants of mobile money adoption, its effects on household food security and the choice of coping strategies in Burundi, a post-conflict and fragile country.

Using survey data that involved 860 households in Burundi, we adopted the Household Hunger Scale (HHS) developed under the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project to measure household food security. We further employ the endogenous switching regression treatment effects model for ordered outcomes and the multivariate probit model to achieve our aims.

The results of our study reveal that the adoption of mobile money is influenced by factors such as gender, marital status, age, formal education, membership in a social network, area of residence and access to a tarred road network. Additionally, the food security status of a household was determined by marital status, formal education, social network membership, access to tarred roads, off-farm income, access to credit and land tenure security. We confirm that mobile money adoption has a significantly positive effect on the food security status of households with heterogeneity in gender and area of residence. We also find that mobile money adoption reduces the likelihood of households adopting consumption-related coping strategies.

The promotion of mobile money should, therefore, be included in Burundi’s national food security policies.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the effect of mobile money adoption on household food security and the choice of coping strategies in a post-conflict context.

This paper aims to validate and adapt the Arabic version of Holden Communication Scale (HCS) for assessing communication skills among old people with dementia in care home.

A study involving 210 elderly residents from Jordanian care homes was conducted, where they completed the Arabic version of the HCS. Internal consistency and factor analysis techniques were precisely used to assess the scale's reliability. Additionally, cognitive function evaluation used the Arabic iteration of the Saint Louis University Mental Status (SLUMS) questionnaire, while communication skills were comprehensively appraised using the HCS.

The Arabic HCS has strong content validity, with a one-component structure accounting for 60% of the variation and a three-factor structure accounting for 77.2% of the variance. The original three-subgroup structure of the scale was recreated, and internal consistency varied from 0.85 to 0.87, indicating good reliability.

This study aimed to assess the reliability and validity of the Arabic version of the HCS among old people with dementia residing in care homes. The authors conducted examination of its psychometric properties within this unique population.