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The review examines the existing literature on blockchain-based small and medium enterprise (SME) finance and highlights its trend, themes, opportunities and challenges. Based on these factors, the authors create a framework for the existing literature on blockchain-based SME financing and lay down future research paths.

The review follows a systematic approach. It includes 53 articles encompassing multiple dimensions of blockchain-based SME finance, including peer-to-peer lending platforms, supply chain finance (SCF), decentralized lending protocols and tokenization of assets. The review critically evaluates these approaches' theoretical underpinnings, empirical evidence and practical implementations.

The review demonstrates that blockchain-based SME finance holds significant promise in addressing the credit gap by leveraging blockchain technology's decentralized and transparent nature. Benefits identified include reduced information asymmetry, improved access to financing, enhanced credit assessment processes and increased financial inclusion. However, the literature acknowledges several challenges and limitations, such as regulatory uncertainties, scalability issues, operational complexities and potential security risks.

The article contributes to the growing knowledge of blockchain-based SME finance by synthesizing and evaluating the existing literature. It also provides a framework for the existing literature in the area and future research paths. The study offers insights for researchers, policymakers and practitioners seeking to understand the potential of blockchain technology in filling the SME credit gap and fostering economic development through improved access to finance for SMEs.

National cultures significantly explain cross-country differences in the relation between asset growth and stock returns. Motivated by the notion that managers in individualistic and low uncertainty-avoiding cultures have a higher tendency to overinvest, this study aims to show that the negative relation between asset growth and stock returns is stronger in countries with such cultural features. Once the researchers control for cultural dimensions, proxies associated with the q-theory, limits-to-arbitrage, corporate governance, investor protection and accounting quality provide no incremental power for the relation between asset growth and stock returns across countries. Evidence of this study highlights the importance of the overinvestment hypothesis in explaining the asset growth anomaly around the world.

The study aims to examine the difference of financial-based brand equity of Sharia-compliant and non-Sharia-compliant companies listed in the stock market.

The five-year data were collected from 561 companies listed in the Indonesian stock market (349 Sharia-compliant firms and 212 non-Sharia-compliant firms).

Based on five years of observations, the study shows that Sharia-compliant companies have much higher brand equity than companies that are not Sharia-compliant. However, the study did not find consistent results when the study examined the differences between brand equity in newly listed Sharia-compliant firms in the short run (two-quarters of the observations). In other words, Sharia-compliant status positively impacted a company’s brand equity only in the long run.

The study examines only the brand equity of Sharia- and non-Sharia-compliant companies in the Indonesian stock market.

The study suggests that companies should list their equity in the Islamic stock market as the empirical evidence shows that the companies listed in the Sharia index have much higher brand equity than companies listed in the non-Sharia index, although this impact can only be seen in the long run.

The study integrates finance and marketing perspectives, which are often disconnected in daily business. In addition, the study provides a piece of empirical evidence on the effect of financial decision to be listed in the Islamic stock market on the establishment of brand equity, which represents the long-term intangible assets of the firm in the eyes of the customers.

An intractable effect of revenue and expense recognition based on tax regulation and accounting rules is unresolved and may be manageable only by reducing the value of deferred taxes. Therefore, in this study, the authors examined the relationship between the International Accounting Standard 12 (IAS 12) and deferred income taxes associated with tax and accounting rules.

The authors used a large sample of balanced data from 144 firms across 1992–2019. To mitigate the problem of superfluous results, the authors used the same number of firms and years for pre- and post-IAS 12 periods. The authors employed robust econometric estimations to establish the impact of IAS 12 on deferred tax.

The regression results show that deferred tax assets decreased significantly, whereas deferred tax liabilities increased significantly, in the post-IAS 12 period. These contrasting results imply that IAS 12 implementation has increased conservatism and prudence in financial reporting. However, the authors find that the increase in deferred tax assets post-IAS 12 is value destructive, suggesting that its implementation has unintended consequences. The results are robust to alternative measurements and econometric identification strategies.

While prior studies have explored topics such as deferred tax measurement and the impact of income and expense recognition, the authors specifically analyzed how IAS 12 affects deferred taxes and their effect on the market valuation. The authors find that certain accounting standards may not be relevant to the capital market.

The purpose of this paper is to enlighten the intriguing process of industry asset consolidation. It is critical for firms to manage their business acquisitions strategically for survival in this industry life cycle process, which develops through multiple company mergers. The companies extensively acquiring industry assets have utilized acquisition programs consisting of both pre-acquisition strategizing and post-acquisition integration; however, the existing literature on acquisition programs focuses on post-acquisition integration activities. This study aims to bridge this gap.

This study focuses on pre-acquisition strategizing of acquisition programs and proposes a model in which an acquiring company could manage its acquisitions for industry asset consolidation over the industry evolution.

Empirically, in the multi-case study of telecommunications infrastructure companies, the authors collect an extensive set of archival records accumulated over the whole industry life-cycle, spanning more than 30 years, and they apply a qualitative data analysis to reveal strategic actions within the companies.

The discoveries elaborate on activities comprising the acquisition process model: social legitimacy, strategic alignment, resource fulfillment, consolidation pursuit and merging.

The counterintuitive findings are that the companies strived to ensure legitimacy early in the telecommunication infrastructure markets before they reached strategic alignment with their owners.

The results extend the understanding of industry asset consolidation as an organization-level phenomenon and show how contextual factors connected to industry life-cycle phases, such as regulatory regimes and financial cycles and industry evolution, influence the attributions of an acquisition program.

This study aims to empirically analyze the asset allocation capabilities of Outsourced Chief Investment Officers (OCIOs) in Korea. The empirical analysis used data from 35 funds that were evaluated by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance from 2012 to 2020. The results of the analysis are summarized as follows. First, this study found that funds that adopted OCIO improved their asset allocation performance. Second, the sensitivity between risk-taking and performance decreased for funds that adopted OCIO. Third, it is found that OCIO adoption improves a fund's asset management execution (tactical capabilities). This study has methodological limitations in which the methodology used in this study is not based on theoretical prior research, but on practical applications. However, considering the need to clearly analyze the capabilities of OCIO and the timeliness of the topic, this study is valuable and can provide meaningful information to funders who are considering adopting OCIO in the future.

Multinational business deliver value via multiple sites with similar operational capacities. The age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) delivers significant opportunities for the deployment of digital tools for business optimization. Therefore, this study aims to study the Industry 4.0 implementation for multinationals.

The key objective of this research is multi-site systems integration using a reproducible, modular and standardized “Cyber Physical System (CPS) as-a-Service”.

A best practice reference architecture is adopted to guide the design and delivery of a pioneering CPS multi-site deployment. The CPS deployed is a cloud-based platform adopted to enable all manufacturing areas within a multinational energy and petrochemical company. A methodology is developed to quantify the system environmental and sustainability benefits focusing on reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and energy consumption. These results demonstrate the benefits of standardization, replication and digital enablement for multinational businesses.

The research illustrates the ability to design a single system, reproducible for multiple sites. This research also illustrates the beneficial impact of system reuse due to reduced environmental impact from lower CO₂ emissions and energy consumption. The paper assists organizations in deploying complex systems while addressing multinational systems implementation constraints and standardization.

Our result of this paper aims to indicate that the beta pricing formula could be applied in a long-term model setting as well.

In this paper, we show that the capital asset pricing model can be derived from a three-period general equilibrium model.

We show that our extended model yields a Pareto efficient outcome.

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) model can be used for pricing long-lived assets.

Long-term modelling and sustainability can be modelled in our setting.

Our results were only known for two periods. The extension to 3 periods opens up a large scope of applicational possibilities in asset pricing, behavioural analysis and long-term efficiency.

This paper aims to focus on the use of unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) in South Africa as a civil method to act upon lifestyle audit results that have indicated wealth from unknown, possibly unlawful, sources.

This paper applied a comparative methodology. Legislation and the application of UWOs in Ireland, the UK and Australia were compared with the situation in South Africa.

It is proposed that South Africa includes UWO legislation within its Prevention of Organised Crime Act or be established as a separate piece of legislation. Also, South Africa should follow both the civil and criminal route to target the proceeds of crime.

Corruption in South Africa is rampant and, without the necessary legislation, impossible to fight. For these purposes, this paper proposes measures to be used from a civil forfeiture perspective.

This study investigates the optimum size for manufacturing firms and the impact of subcontracting on firms' likelihood of achieving their optimal scale in Vietnam.

Using data from the enterprise census in 2017 and 2021, the paper first estimates the production function to identify the optimum firm size for manufacturing firms and then, applies the logit model to investigate factors associated with the optimal firm size.

The study reveals that medium-sized firms exhibit the highest level of productivity. Nevertheless, a consistent trend emerges, indicating that nearly 90% of manufacturing firms in Vietnam operated below their optimal scale in both 2017 and 2021. An analysis of the impact of subcontracting on firms' likelihood to achieve their optimal scale emphasizes its crucial role, especially for foreign firms, exerting an influence nearly five times greater than that of the judiciary system.

The paper's findings offer crucial policy implications, suggesting that initiatives aimed at enhancing the overall productivity of the manufacturing sector should prioritise facilitating contract arrangements to encourage firms to reach their optimal size. These insights are also valuable for other countries with comparable firm size distributions.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the relationship between firm size and productivity as well as the role of subcontracting in firms' ability to reach their optimal scale in a country with a right-skewed distribution of firm sizes.