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Traditional savings and credit associations, also known as ‘Osusu’ in Sierra Leone, are unions of individuals with common economic goals aimed at reducing poverty and economic vulnerability. The chapter examined the ecosystem of traditional indigenous savings and credit associations, their role as an emerging financial inclusion strategy, and contributions to the socio-economic transformation of business processes in the ecosystem of business operations in Sierra Leone. The chapter adopted the case study method to discuss the Tawoponneh model of ROSCAs in Sierra Leone. The institutional theory provided insight into why individuals join ROSCAs, as well as the resulting outcomes and benefits. Additionally, this chapter discusses the challenges associated with indigenous financial sustainability practices and provides actionable recommendations for joint private and government policy collaboration in supporting traditional entrepreneurial businesses.

To investigate, compare and document the magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure to sustainability disclosure during a transition from a voluntary to mandated “comply or explain” sustainability reporting regime. And to empirically test if, during the regime transition period, changes in the magnitude (extent) of sustainability disclosure is a significant determinant of changes in the magnitude (extent) of intellectual capital disclosure.

Content analysis of 1,744 annual reports drawn from 436 Singapore listed firms spanning a four-year observation window (i.e. April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2018). The magnitude (number of sentences) and extent (number of items) of (1) intellectual capital disclosure measured using a 38-item index; (2) sustainability disclosure of a 105-item index; and (3) 15-item index to measure the magnitude and extent of joint sustainability/intellectual capital disclosure.

The average magnitude and extent of sustainability and the joint sustainability/intellectual capital disclosure increased whilst the average magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure increased when regulatory discussion of a change to mandated sustainability reporting emerged. However, in the annual period the mandated sustainability reporting became effective while the average magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure declined. Regression tests indicate a significant (insignificant) association between the change in the magnitude (extent) of sustainability disclosure and intellectual capital disclosure.

From a research perspective, the analysis implies researchers investigating the consequences of mandated sustainability disclosure should consider impact on alternative non-financial disclosure themes and develop theoretical frameworks to derive why and how management may shift non-financial reporting strategies and practices.

For regulators, findings suggest there may be a need to weigh spillover costs of reductions in transparency related to intellectual capital. For investors, declines in the magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure following a transition to mandated sustainability reporting may limit future firm valuation particularly of heavy intangible asset-oriented firms.

Initial study empirically investigating the impact of the transition from a voluntary to mandated sustainability reporting regime on the magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure.

Under a gradual long-term plan of the Saudi Stock Market (TADWUAL) from 2016, Saudi Arabia decided to work with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) board to fully adopt its accounting standards. Saudi Arabia has undergone several reforms in governance and standards of internal controls are changing rapidly. This study aims to assess whether IFRS adoption has any moderator role in the relationship between disclosure quality and firm-specific characteristics in the Saudi Stock Market.

This study assesses whether IFRS adoption has any moderator role in the relationship between disclosure quality and firm-specific characteristics in the Saudi Stock Market. The key research hypotheses postulate that compared to IFRS status, after adoption, several independent variables influence the disclosure level. The analysis covers a local sample of 184 Saudi listed firms over the period 2016 to 2020. Using an in-depth content analysis technique, the voluntary disclosure and number of annual report pages are measured manually and year by year to capture levels and unique characteristics. The authors apply cross-sectional regression, first difference method, Pooled OLS and feasible general least square estimations. The mean of disclosure level increases from 33.03% in 2016 to 56.14% in 2020.

The results reveal that the vast majority of firm-specific characteristics were significant in pre-IFRS adoption period. First difference analysis shows a significant impact of firm size and non-executive composition on the disclosure level. The authors confirm that IFRS adoption plays a critical role in the quality of firms’ financial reports and supports to create a conducive economic environment in Saudi Arabia.

First, the implementation of IFRS adoption should impact the Saudi accounting information and disclosure quality in Saudi context markedly. Second, firm-specific characteristics align with corporate governance are the main determinants of accounting information and transparency; therefore, focusing on this angle enables regulators and policymakers to mitigate uncertainty and asymmetric information. Third, the findings of this research state that there is a negative relationship between disclosure quality and board meetings. This encourages policymakers to reconsider the number of board meetings in firms that was not as high as in the developed markets. Notwithstanding all previous implications, it is recommended that future research undertake a various quasi-experimental design such as a difference-in-difference approach to estimate the causal effect of corporate governance mechanisms on IFRS 7 mandatory disclosure requirements on in Saudi Arabia context.

There is a lack of studies on this realm and such as these studies will enrich the understanding of aspects of IFRS adoption and contribute to the prior empirical literature. Importantly, the extend of this sample into other Gulf Cooperation Council countries and exhibition the difference effect can be very useful to enrich the knowledge of IFRS adoption aspects in corporate disclosure and accounting information quality.

Saudi Arabia has undergone several reforms in governance, and their standards of internal controls are changing rapidly. This has been attributed to the importance of providing guidelines, practices and regulations for listed companies. One of the major turning points of financial reporting quality in Saudi listed firms was adoption of IFRSs. This adoption deems to be necessity in ensuring the highest level of transparency and information reliability. Based on the findings of this research, the present investigations set up a platform and furnish many implications for policymakers, companies’ board of directors, financial analysts and other related authorities. The results should provide policymakers with greater insight of the relationship between disclosure quality and corporate-specific characteristics throughout the IFRS adoption periods. Thus, the results derived from this study can be effective and useful for the IFRS adoption committee in the Saudi Organization for Certified Public Accountants (SOCPA). According to the best of the authors’ knowledge and based on official secondary information sourced from the SOCPA website, there are several standards that are subject to difficulties in measurement and are modified from time to time, such as: IFRS1, IFRS8, IFRS12, IFRS16 and IFRS18.

This paper aims to consider the relevance of asset impairments when evaluating stewardship by management.

This paper considers association of earnings (including and excluding asset impairments) with contemporaneous stock returns which are used as a measure of management performance and demonstration of stewardship.

Evidence is provided of earnings including asset impairments (an accounting measure of current measure firm performance) having a higher explanatory power for contemporaneous stock returns (an objective evaluation of current period firm performance) than earnings exclusive of asset impairments. Consistent with this, recognized asset impairments are significantly associated with contemporaneous stock returns. These results occur across firm years generally, as well as for firm years exhibiting indicators of impairment and firm years recognizing asset impairments.

This paper adds to the literature providing evidence of asset impairments not being recognised on a timely basis. Additionally, challenges are identified in evaluating the relevance of accounting information for so-called growth firms.

These findings support continued recognition of asset impairments in the Statement of Profit or Loss if stewardship is accepted as an objective for financial reporting. It also suggests issues with the recognition of asset impairments that might be addressed by enhanced disclosure.

This paper is distinctive in that it considers the relevance of accounting information for evaluating stewardship, as distinct from decision-making. It also considers alternate measure of performance (earnings including and excluding asset impairments) for all firms rather than only those disclosing an alternate measure (i.e. a fair horse race)

Shariah board (SB) is a unique corporate governancemechanism in Islamic financial institutions. Over the last decade, an increasing number of studies discusses the relationship between SB and Islamic banks' (IB) performance. These researches report conflicting findings due to the heterogeneity of their samples. Therefore,the purpose of this paper is to meta-analyze the results of the previous empirical studies to assess if the differences in findings were attributable to moderating effects related either to the system of SB or the used SB variables or the variables used to identify performance.

To examine the direct and moderating effects of SB attributes, this study uses a meta-analysis technique on a sample of 46 empirical studies, using Hunter and Schmidt’s approach followed by three exploratory moderator analyses: ROE, ROA and Tobin’ Q. Significant results are discussed.

Overall, the meta-analysis findings show that there is a positive significant association between SB meetings and qualifications and IBs’ performance. In testing the moderating effects of financial performance measurement during the post-subprime crisis period, the meta-analysis findings suggest that there is a positive significant association between SB characteristics (size, qualification, reputation, interlock and expertise) and performance. The meta-analysis findings stress the importance of several SB attributes in improving IBs’ performance, especially, during the economic recovery period.

This paper adds significance to the extant Islamic finance literature as well as assists the appropriate stakeholders in assessing the determinants of IBs’ performance from Shariah governance perspective. It further aims to reconcile the findings of the previous studies around the world. Moreover, the findings help future research to build a comprehensive Shariah governance index for IBs.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the association of earnings and cash flows with stock prices and returns, and the impact of regulatory changes on the value relevance of accounting numbers.

The authors examine a sample of non-financial firms listed on the Belgrade Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2018 and use three regression models – price, return and differenced.

The authors find evidence that accounting earnings are more value relevant than cash flows. The authors also find negative relation of earnings changes with stock returns and argue that this is due to the lower persistence of negative earnings levels and changes. Finally, the authors find that the value relevance of accounting information in Serbia increases after the improvements in capital market regulation.

Given the empirical focus on a transition economy, the widespread applicability of the study is limited. The findings, however, call for more research on transition economies to better understand the functioning of capital markets and the way information from financial statements is incorporated into stock prices.

The results imply that policymakers in transition economies should improve the accounting and capital market regulation to provide better investor protection and to improve the capital market conditions.

The authors add to knowledge about the value relevance of accounting information in emerging and transition economies. The results could be of interest to standard setters in their efforts to better understand and improve the quality of accounting information in emerging and transition economies.

This paper aims to fill the governance literature void by answering the seemingly unanswered vintage questions regarding governance reform effectiveness towards ensuring a firm’s financial reporting transparency (FRT) in an emerging country of Malaysia. It involves an assessment of the specific maintained assumption in its governance code (Code) introduced two decades ago that the Code would improve FRT through the direct channel of governance practices improvement.

The measured FRT as proxied by the firm’s accruals quality is examined across different governance regimes of pre- and post-Code periods. This paper conjectures that the firm’s FRT should improve post-Code period, evidencing reform effectiveness towards ensuring enhanced governance practices.

The results indicate that while governance reform improves governance practices, it did not, however, bring improved FRT of firms. The interaction analysis provides evidence of the Code’s ability to favourably moderate the link between the firm’s FRT and several board attributes, suggesting improvement in governance practices in ensuring the firm’s FRT pursuant to the introduction of a formally written and legally backed governance code.

This paper contributes to the extent of governance and FRT literature in developing economies in at least two specific ways. First, the paper presents evidence on public policy implications towards governance practices and the firms’ FRT. Second, it contributes to the public policy debate concerning governance reform effectiveness from the specific angle of the firms’ FRT, thereby confirming the potential conditions upon which the “maintained assumption” would be valid.

This research contributes to the extent of governance and FRT literature in emerging economies by studying the dynamic roles of governance in influencing firms’ FRT across governance regime change, something which governance literature repertoire seems to neglect. It also contributes to the public policy debate concerning governance reform effectiveness from the specific angle of the firm’s FRT by evidencing the strategic role of governance reform in influencing the financial reporting behaviour of Malaysian listed firms.

This paper investigates the semantic association mechanisms of weak demand signals that facilitate innovative product development in terms of conceptual and temporal precedence, despite their inherent ambiguity and uncertainty.

To address this challenge, a domain ontology approach is proposed to construct a customer demand scenario-based framework that eliminates the blind spots in weak demand signal identification. The framework provides a basis for identifying such signals and introduces evaluation indices, such as depth, novelty and association, which are integrated to propose a three-dimensional weak signal recognition model based on domain ontology that outperforms existing research.

Empirical analysis is carried out based on customer comments of new energy vehicles on car platform such as “Auto Home” and “Bitauto”. Results demonstrate that in terms of recognition quantity, the three-dimensional weak demand signal recognition model, based on domain ontology, can accurately identify six demand weak signals. Conversely, the keyword analysis method exhibits a recognition quantity of four weak signals; in terms of recognition quality, the three-dimensional weak demand signal recognition model based on domain ontology can exclude non-demand signals such as “charging technology”, while keyword analysis methods cannot. Overall, the model proposed in this paper has higher sensitivity.

This paper proposes a novel method for identifying weak demand signals that considers the frequency of the signal's novelty, depth and relevance to the target demand. To verify its effectiveness, customer review data for new energy vehicles is used. The results provide a theoretical reference for formulating government policies and identifying weak demand signals for businesses.

This study aims to test the relationship between information technology investment (IT_INVEST) and working capital management (WCM) efficiency.

This study utilized a survey research design to collect data from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) owners in India.

Empirical results show that perceived IT_INVEST plays a role in improving WCM efficiency by decreasing the inventory holding period and reducing the cash conversion cycle (CCC) in India. A three-stage least square model (3SLS) shows that IT_INVEST decreases CCC directly and indirectly through the inventory holding period, accounts receivable period and accounts payable period. The empirical analysis also shows that IT_INVEST decreases the inventory holding period and CCC by 16.80% and 26.40%, respectively, for the examined firms.

If MSMEs' owners perceive a higher level of IT_INVEST, then the owners perceive a higher WCM efficiency and vice versa.

This study contributes to the literature on the relationship between IT_INVEST and WCM efficiency. This study may encourage further studies of IT investment and WCM efficiency using data from other industries and countries. MSME owners may find empirical results beneficial to improve WCM efficiency. Moreover, financial management consultants may find results helpful to provide consulting services.

This study examines the association between internal corporate governance mechanisms (i.e. board of directors and audit committee) and the information value of bank earnings. The authors comparatively assess this association across different bank types, Islamic versus conventional banks. The authors also investigate the mediating effect of Shariah governance.

The authors utilize a unique and an international sample of 723 bank-year observations representing 100 listed banks from 16 countries during the period 2007–2015. The authors investigate the characteristics of the board of directors and audit committee (i.e. size and independence) and employ three core analyses for earnings informativeness (i.e. earnings persistence, cash flow predictability and reliability of loan loss provisions). Additional analyses address Shariah supervisory boards’ (SSBs’) size, financial expertise and multiple outside directorships. The authors use the random-effect Generalised Least Squares (GLS) estimation technique and provide several robustness checks and sensitivities.

The authors find that, on average, having large and independent boards (and audit committees) increases the informativeness of reported earnings for banks. Conditional on bank type, our results report strong evidence for differential effects across the two alternative banking systems. In Islamic banks, large and independent board of directors (and audit committees) is positively associated with all measures of information value. There is insignificant evidence for conventional banks. However, SSBs show no significant effect on the reported earnings’ informativeness.

This is the first study, to the best of our knowledge, that empirically and comparatively assesses the information value of reported earnings in association with effective internal governance while recognizing the institutional characteristics of different bank types. The authors offer new insights to policymakers, investors and other stakeholders located within countries operating on a dual banking system. The results could help regulators to improve their rules/guidance related to double-layer governance and financial reporting quality.