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This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the financial distress (FD) of firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). Furthermore, the moderating effect of corporate governance (CG) on the CSR–distress relationship is investigated in this study.

The final sample of the study includes 117 companies from 2008 to 2021. The sample firms' CSR engagement is assessed using a multidimensional financial approach, and the likelihood of FD is determined using Altman's Z-score. The governance level is measured using the governance index, which includes 29 governance provisions. To achieve the research objectives, the system generalized method of moments estimator is used. Furthermore, several tests are performed to assess the robustness of the study's findings. The analysis was carried out using STATA software version 15.

The authors find that CSR is significantly inversely related to FD. The governance mechanism was discovered to be inversely related to FD. Furthermore, corporate governance strengthens the negative relationship between CSR and FD. In addition, the authors find that CSR is significantly inversely related to FD in firms with strong CG mechanisms but has no effect on FD in firms with weak CG mechanisms.

The findings of this study provide policymakers, business managers, regulators and investors with a better understanding of the relationship between the quality of CSR investments and the likelihood of FD in Pakistani firms, as well as the role of CG in this context.

This study contributes to our understanding of the role of CG in the CSR-distress relationship in an emerging market. This suggests that policymakers should prioritize CG quality while anticipating the impact of CSR on corporate FD.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of audit committee (AC) characteristics, such as AC size, AC independence and gender diversity on firm risk in the context of an emerging market.

The sample data includes 102 nonfinancial Pakistan Stock Exchange listed firms from 2004 to 2018. Firm risk is measured through three proxies, namely, idiosyncratic risk, total risk and capital expenditure. Along with this, profitability, leverage, market-to-book ratio, firm age, net property plant and equipment (NPPE) and surplus cash are used as control variables. The Housman test is used to select the best model from the fixed-effect model and the random effect model to conclude the findings.

According to the study's findings, AC characteristics have a negative and significant relationship with idiosyncratic risk. In addition, a gender-diverse AC has a significant negative relationship with capital expenditure. In connection with total risk, AC characteristics fail to shows any significant relationship. Among the control variables, the results show that profitability stand for return on asset (ROA) and NPPE have a significant negative relationship, whereas market-to-book value has a significant positive relationship with both idiosyncratic and total risk.

The study's findings offer policymakers, managers and investors guidance. This study will provide new insights to the Pakistani Government, stock market, companies and accounting and auditing regulators in terms of understanding the determinants influencing risk management activities. Furthermore, this study will assist financial institutions in making credit decisions. In addition, this study provides policymakers, such as the stand for Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), with guidelines for developing policies that strengthen the board governance mechanism.

This study investigates the impact of AC characteristics on corporate risk, which is rarely discussed in emerging economies.

The purpose of this research is to look into the governance–performance relationship in the context of critical firm characteristics, such as firm size.

Based on total assets, sample firms were classified as small or large. The governance index, which is based on 29 governance provisions covering the audit committee, board committee, ownership and compensation structure of the respective firm, measures governance quality among sample firms. A higher governance index indicates a higher level of governance quality and vice versa. Accounting and market value measures are used to determine firm profitability. The authors used the two-stage least square (2SLS) method of estimation of the model to eliminate the simultaneous equation bias.

Corporate governance (CG) appears to have a positive impact on accounting return and market indices (Tobin’s Q), but it has little impact on return on equity. In terms of firm size, larger companies profited more from better governance implementation than smaller firms that lacked these principles, thus improving CG. The findings indicate that small businesses should improve their governance mechanisms to reap the benefits of CG in terms of increased profitability.

There are certain drawbacks to this research. First, the authors omitted qualitative aspects of CG from the CG index, such as the board’s decision-making process, directors’ perceptions of the board’s position and directors’ age and qualifications. Such a qualitative component will improve the governance index in the future while building the governance index. Second, as the current study only looks at the nonfinancial sector, caution should be exercised before applying the findings to the entire population.

The findings show that companies that follow good governance standards have better accounting and market efficiency than those that do not. As a result, good governance practices can help firms in developing countries improve their performance. Academic researchers, regulators, investors, lenders and practitioners can find the findings useful in establishing a true relationship between firm performance and CG practices in Pakistan.

The relationship between governance and profitability in the context of firm size is examined in this research. Firms with varying resources and ability to implement CG codes have varying effects on profitability. To the authors’ knowledge, there was a gap in the literature that addressed this topic in the local context.

The present study aims to explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the likelihood of financial distress for a sample of 139 Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms throughout 2008–2019.

Panel logistic regression (PLR) and the dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator are used to examine the impact of CSR on financial distress. The investment in CSR measures through a multidimensional financial approach which comprises the sum of the contribution made by the company in the form of charitable donation, employees’ welfare and research and development, whereas the Altman Z-score and ZM-Score are used as an indicator of financial distress. The higher the Z-score lower will be the probability of financial distress, whereas the higher ZM score shows a greater probability of financial distress risk.

The authors find a significant negative impact of CSR on financial distress in both PLR and GMM models. This finding is consistent with the stakeholder view of CSR, as an investment in CSR not only aligns the interest between shareholders and stakeholders but also mitigates the risk of financial distress as well.

Like other studies, the present study is not free from limitations. First, financial firms skipped from the sample, although literature witnesses a lot of studies highlight the financial firms' commitment to achieving CSR goals. Second, financial distress occurs in different stages, the authors fail to establish linkage CSR engagements at different stages of CSR. In the future, researchers can make a valuable addition by covering these missing links in present studies.

The findings of this study provide more insight to corporate managers and investors about the association between the quality of investment in CSR and the degree of financial distress, concerning Pakistani firms. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing literature by adding new evidence from developing countries such as Pakistan which are helpful for regulatory bodies and policymakers in the formulation of long-term CSR strategies to manage financial distress.

The study extends the body of existing literature on CSR and the likelihood of financial distress in Pakistan. The results suggest that policymakers may pay special attention to the quality of CSR while predicting corporate financial distress.

This study aims to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on financial constraints (FC). Furthermore, the authors investigate the moderating impact of two key ownership variables, insider and institutional ownership, separately and their interacting effect on the CSR-FC relationship.

The study sample consists of 137 nonfinancial Pakistan Stock Exchange listed firms from 2010 to 2019. Firms’ participation in socially responsible activities is measured using a multidimensional financial approach, whereas FC are determined using the WW index. The findings were observed using the dynamic generalized method of moments model.

According to the findings, CSR has a negative impact on FC. In terms of moderating impact, the interactive variable of CSR and insider ownership does not affect FC, implying that when an insider owns a majority of shares, the negative relationship between CSR and FC is weaker. The findings demonstrate the entrenchment effect of insider ownership. In terms of the moderating effect of institutional ownership, CSR and institutional ownership have a significant but positive relationship with FC, implying that when powerful institutional investors are present, the negative relationship between CSR and FC disappears, demonstrating that higher institutional ownership leads to shareholder conflicts. Finally, the interactive variable of insider and institutional ownership has no statistically significant effect on the CSR-FC relationship. This insignificant relationship does not support the substitution or complementarity effect of corporate governance.

The authors measure CSR activities using a multidimensional financial approach; however, in the future, CSR should be measured using qualitative aspects such as content analysis to strengthen the findings. Because the research is limited to a single emerging economy, Pakistan, the generalizability of the findings is limited. In the future, this research could be replicated in other emerging economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The findings of the study will assist regulatory authorities, investors, financial analysts and other stakeholders in better understanding CSR practices in Pakistani firms, as well as the role of CSR and two other important aspects of internal governance mechanisms, namely, insider ownership and institutional ownership, in the CSR-FC relationship.

Few studies in the literature investigate the impact of CSR on FC. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind in an emerging market to empirically test this relationship and further investigate the role of insider and institutional ownership in this unexplored relationship.

The current study aims to investigate the impact of firm performance on chief executive officer (CEO) remuneration in the context of an emerging market, i.e. Pakistan. Further, the interactive effect of financial constraints is investigated in the pay–performance relationship.

The study's sample includes 173 non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. This study covers the years 2010–2019. The CEO compensation of the sample firms is measured in terms of salary and bonuses, perquisites and stock options paid to the CEO, whereas firm profitability is measured by return on assets, return on equity, Tobin's Q (Q) and earnings per share. The KZ Index measures the degree of financial constraint. The fixed effect model (FEM) and system GMM estimation techniques were used to conclude the study's findings. In addition, to test the robustness of the results, the authors computed the level of financial constraints using the WW Index.

The findings show that firm performance has a significant positive impact on CEO compensation in all profitability measures except Tobin's Q. Further financial constraints have a significant negative impact on CEO compensation. The interactive variables of FC with all profitability measures have a significant negative impact on CEO compensation.

This study examines the relationship between firm performance and CEO compensation. Furthermore, the current study expanded the analysis by incorporating the role of financial constraints in the pay–performance relationship, which has not previously been tested, particularly in the context of an emerging market.

This study aims to analyse 508 financially distressed firm-year observations for the period 2010–2018 of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms to examine the magnitude of indirect financial distress costs (IFDC) and to investigate which firm-specific variable is relatively important in explaining these indirect costs. This will not only enrich empirical literature but also helpful in cross-country comparison.

Optimal model selection along with panel data analysis technique is used to select the most optimal model to observe the findings. Financial distress is measure through Altman’s Z-score and firm-specific variables cover leverage, level of intangible assets, investment policy, tangible assets, firm’s size, level of liquid assets and Tobin’s Q of sample firms.

The findings of this study show that the average size of IFDC for the sample observations is 6.70%. In addition to this, finding further suggest that leverage, the level of intangible assets and changes in investment policy have positive while the size of the firm and Tobin’s Q have a significant negative impact on IFDC. Further, this paper argues that the level of tangible assets and liquid assets are statistically unimportant in observing the IFDC for PSX financially distressed firm-year observations.

The findings of this study provide more insight to corporate managers and investors about the association between firm-specific financial characteristics and IFDC concerning Pakistani firms. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing literature by adding new evidence from developing countries such as Pakistan which are helpful for regulatory bodies and policymakers in the formulation of long-term strategies to manage the financial distress costs.

The study extends the body of existing literature on IFDC regarding Pakistan. The results suggest that policymakers may pay special attention to the quality of a firm’s capital structure strategies while predicting corporate financial distress costs.

This study aims to explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the likelihood of financial distress for a sample of 139 Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms throughout 2008–2019.

The dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator is used to examine the impact of CSR on financial distress. The investment in CSR is measured through a multidimensional financial approach which comprises the sum of the contribution made by the company in the form of charitable donation, employees’ welfare and research and development, while the Altman Z-score is used as an indicator of financial distress. The higher the Z-score, the lower will be the probability of financial distress.

The authors find a significant positive impact of CSR on financial distress in GMM model. This finding is consistent with the shareholder view and over-investment hypothesis of CSR as management makes an investment in CSR to get personal benefits, which resultantly leads the firm toward financial distress state. Further, this positive relationship remains present for firms having strong involvement in foreign business through exports.

Like other studies, the present study is not free from limitations. First, financial firms are skipped from the sample, although literature witnesses a lot of studies highlight the financial firms’ commitment to achieving CSR goals. Second, financial distress occurs in different stages, and this study fails to establish a linkage between CSR engagement at different stages of financial distress. In the future, researchers can make valuable addition by covering these missing links in present studies.

Findings suggest several practical implications. For policymakers, they should encourage firms to adopt more socially responsible behavior as it not only prevents them from distress but also comes with better investment behavior, minimize bankruptcies and make economies more strong and stable. Second, results suggest corporate managers emphasize socially responsible behavior as its benefits are beyond the “societal benefits” as it lessens financial distress through lower cost of debt, lesser financial constraints and reduced cost of information asymmetry, and it minimizes the cost of capital. Lastly, investors make risk premium assessments related to future earnings by determining the likelihood of financial distress in the future.

The study extends the body of existing literature on CSR and the likelihood of financial distress in Pakistan, which is according to the best knowledge of the authors, not yet studied before. The results suggest that policymakers may pay special attention to the quality of CSR while predicting corporate financial distress.

There is an ever-increasing number of patients suffering from various forms of acute and chronic pain and getting treatment for such ailments is a basic human right. Opioid analgesics remain one way of managing and attending to such patients. However, due to the prevalence of opiophobia, many doctors avoid prescribing opioid-based medicines, even at the cost of patients suffering leading to a hindrance in providing optimal health care. Up till now, there has been no reliable and valid instrument to measure the severity of opiophobia in doctors. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to represent the construction of a precise and reliable instrument for measuring opiophobia along with its validation for doctors in Pakistan.

Interviews and theoretical knowledge relating to opiophobia were used as the basis for the purpose of generating an item pool. The generated item pool was evaluated by subject matter experts for content validity and inter-rater reliability, followed by Velicer’s minimum average partial method and maximum likelihood factor analysis for establishing the factorial structure of the scale. As opiophobia in doctors prevails the most and causes a lower ratio of prescription of opioid analgesics. The present sample selected for the study was that of n = 100 doctors (men = 50; women = 50) from various hospitals, treating patients with chronic pain, in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

A two-factor structure was suggested by Velicer’s minimum average partial method and maximum likelihood factor analysis, which were labeled as fear of opioid analgesics and justified acceptance of opioids. The developed opiophobia questionnaire along with its subscales displayed appropriate levels of reliability α = 0.733, α = 0.760 and α = 0.725, respectively, suggesting the scale to be reliable.

Like any other study, this study also tried to address every essential aspect, but still lacked at some places which should be considered and catered for in future studies. In the first place the sample size was very limited which was due to the fact, the study was conducted during a pandemic and physically going for data collection was unavailable, thus leading to consequent sample size. It is recommended a correspondent study can be conducted with larger sample size, so they can get more reliable results with greater precision and power. Then, they will have the advantage of a small margin of error. The second limitation was the study involved only doctors as that was the main focus of the present study. However, other hospital staff such as nurses should also be incorporated to assess their level of opiophobia. The current scale suggests the severity of opiophobia with higher scores though no cutoff point has been suggested. Future studies should try and incorporate a cutoff point to assess the difference between doctors who have conventional levels of reservations against opioids and those suffering from opiophobia. Another limitation was that the present scale did not establish additional validities such as convergent and divergent validity. Future studies should collect data from a larger sample to establish these validities to further refine the scale.

This instrument can be immensely effective in identifying doctors who have concerns and fears about prescribing opioids to patients with chronic pain. The findings acquired on such a scale can help in developing appropriate academic and psychological interventions which can help such doctors to overcome their opiophobia. This can enable more doctors to prescribe appropriate medicine to their patients instead of letting them suffer from pain. Additionally, researchers can equally benefit from the instrument as it can enable them to investigate opiophobia with other possible variables.

Developing such a scale about the fear faced by doctors while treating patients would be very useful as it is not possible to take such fear when it comes to a patient’s life. This fear is also common among patients where they have a fear about the undesirable effects, addiction of drugs and fear of dying. Better awareness should be given to them which will be helpful for successful and less painful treatment in hospitals.

This scale is an original work with the aim of accessing opiophobia among doctors toward (chronic) patients with severe pain. There was a lot of research work that has been done on opiophobia in developed countries and few Pakistani researchers have also worked on opiophobia and its impact on pain management but still, no scale has been developed to measure the extent or tendency of opiophobia among doctors or patients. This scale can be used globally on both men and women doctors to access the tendency of opiophobia among them.

Using the notion of sustainable impactful strategies for waqf management, this study examines the governance and best practices on idle waqf management by the Malaysian States Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) in selected states like Penang, Perak and Kuala Lumpur. The waqf management of the SIRCs is also assessed based on the model framework countries such as Singapore, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates (UAE). The findings of this chapter indicate that ineffective administration and management on waqf have hindered its development and expansion in Malaysia. Also, an effective and robust governance framework based on Shariah could and should be implemented to ensure that waqf in Malaysia are managed effectively to gain socio-economic sustainability of Muslim communities. The findings of this chapter will fill the research gap on good governance and best practices in waqf administration and management as a way forward for Malaysia by providing a way forward for SIRCs and policymakers in Malaysia, to enhance the performance of waqf entity using selected other countries as model framework of good governance and best practices. Furthermore, an emphasis on good governance and best practices is important to attract waqf donors. It is imperative to note that to date, there is no qualitative study that compare the impact of good governance and best practices on the management of waqf by selected SIRCs in Penang, Perak and Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, Kuwait and UAE as model framework countries.