Search results

A significant dilemma facing humankind in the present time is environmental degradation. To alleviate the pressure on natural resources, green banking (GB) has been acknowledged as an effective solution. However, creating consumer engagement is still challenging for banks. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of religiosity on GB adoption among Muslim consumers.

The deductive approach was used to explain how GB adoption is affected by the religiosity of the consumer. A total of 332 sample data were collected cross-sectionally from Islamic bank customers in the UAE. Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) via Smart PLS 4 was used to analyse the data. Five dimensions (i.e. ideological, ritualistic, intellectual, consequential and experimental) were used to measure religiosity which served as the independent variable. Customer intention to adopt GB represents the dependent variable.

The PLS-SEM results revealed that Islamic religiosity affects the adoption of GB among Muslim consumers. Indeed, their religious commitment and beliefs affect the products they intend to adopt and how they intend to do it.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a pioneering study in the investigation of Islamic religiosity and its influence on the intention to adopt GB. This is a pioneering study in the sense that it proposes a comprehensive religiosity construct using five intertwined dimensions in the literature of GB. This study offers an improved and broader insight assessment of Islamic religiosity, which would help emphasise its significance and utility for business-related decisions by developing an emotionally-driven link between GB practices and the Muslim-oriented consumer market towards increasing the latter’s engagement.

The study applies Erving Goffman's (1974) “frame analysis” principles to examine how Sharia governance is practiced in Islamic banks and explores the interaction and strategies adopted by bank managers to influence the decisions of Sharia scholars. The study also aims to identify inherent flaws in the Sharia compliance review system.

The study employs the principles of Goffman as a lens to critically analyse a rich dataset obtained through interviews undertaken with 46 key players operating in the governance framework of the Malaysian Islamic banking industry due to its progressive Islamic governance framework.

The study demonstrates that managers of Islamic banks may engage in “passing” and “covering” strategies while interacting within the governance structure. Concurrently, Sharia boards (SBs) implement “protective practices” during their interactions, adding complexity to their responsibilities within the banks. Consequently, SBs cannot merely be viewed as instruments for legitimising banking operations. This raises questions about the “impression management,” “concealment” and “competence” strategies employed by managers and SB members, as suggested by Goffman's framework. These findings indicate that there is room for further enhancement in the governance practices of Islamic banks.

Future research could explore aspects related to the governance of Islamic banks, such as investigating the independence and effectiveness of internal Sharia officers. Examining the strategies employed during their interactions with external Sharia boards and other stakeholders could provide further valuable insights.

By highlighting shortcomings in the governance and compliance review process, the findings could serve as a valuable resource for policymakers. The insights derived could inform the development of regulations aimed at reducing opportunistic behaviour and promoting accountability in the Islamic banking sector.

This study uniquely employs Goffman's concepts of “frontstage” and “backstage” strategies to offer insights into the interactions between Islamic bank managers and SBs and the impact of these interactions on Sharia compliance. The study contributes to the understanding of the dynamics between key players in the governance of Islamic banks and the factors influencing their adherence to Sharia principles.

This study investigates the influence of corporate income tax on two corporate financial decisions — dividend and capital structure policies, particularly for Shariah compliant companies in Malaysia.

The study considered data from a sample of 529 Malaysian listed companies from four industrial sectors from 2007–2021 (6,746 company-year observations, before eliminating outliers). Panel models such as Fixed Effect and Random effect models were used. The study specifically tested the effect of corporate income tax on dividend and capital structure policies for Shariah compliant companies (3,148 observations) and controlled for industrial sectors.

(1) Firms are mostly Shariah-compliant, less liquid, less profitable and smaller in size, (2) Broadly when analysed together, tax has no impact on debt-equity ratio while it has an impact on dividend per share, (3) However, when tested separately for Shariah compliant companies, the influence of effective tax on capital structure is very evident but not for dividend and (4) influence of industrial sector on the relationship between corporate tax and capital structure and dividend policy is significant. Results indicate that Shariah firms might be raising debt to gain tax advantage. Companies in general pay dividends to avoid reputational damage.

This study assumes that leverage and dividend policy decisions are the main outcomes of the changing tax policies, while it seems that there could be other important outcomes that can be tested in future research. The study also shows the changing tax regimes of different ASEAN countries but they have not been tested to see the differences between countries. It will be indeed interesting for future researchers to focus on this aspect.

The findings contribute to the literature on tax planning of the Shariah-compliant firms, a high growth business segment in the Asian context. The study discussed potential tax-based Islamic market product development.

This paper aims to explore the determinants of the level of minibonds issued by companies. In doing so, it discusses the importance of minibonds in providing a market-based funding source. In the empirical analysis, special attention is paid to the study of the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

The analysis is carried out through an econometric approach, on the basis of a high-quality empirical dataset related to the Italian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The reference period covers the recent pandemic. From a theoretical point of view, a regression model is implemented, including a multicollinearity analysis and an outlier detection procedure.

The results of the study indicate that factors such as leverage, cash flow, firm collaterals and seniority can explain the amount of minibonds issued. These findings provide valuable insights into the drivers of minibond issuance and highlight the potential benefits of minibonds as a funding option for Italian SMEs.

Importantly, results highlight relevant managerial implications at two levels. On one side, we carry on a managerial discussion about the worthiness of accessing the minibonds market; on the other side, we give insights on the managerial implications related to the features of the companies issuing minibonds.

The paper investigates an innovative financial instrument that has been introduced recently and has not yet been studied in depth. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first contribution assessing the main drivers for minibonds issuance level, which is a timely and relevant managerial research topic. In addition, this study also takes into account the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on minibond issuance, making the analysis appropriate for explaining the current economic context.

This study aims to explore the relationship between risk governance characteristics (chief risk officer [CRO], chief financial officer [CFO] and senior directors [SENIOR]) and regulatory adjustments (RAs) in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development public commercial banks.

Using principal component analysis (PCA) and regression models, the research analyzes a representative data set of these banks.

A significant negative correlation between risk governance characteristics and RAs is found. Sensitivity analysis on the regulatory Tier 1 capital ratio and the total capital ratio indicates mixed outcomes, suggesting a complex relationship that warrants further exploration.

The study’s limited sample size calls for further research to confirm findings and explore risk governance’s impact on banks’ capital structures.

Enhanced risk governance could reduce RAs, influencing banking policy.

The study advocates for improved banking regulatory practices, potentially increasing sector stability and public trust.

This study contributes to understanding risk governance’s role in regulatory compliance, offering insights for policymaking in banking.

This paper aims to investigate the role of corporate governance on the bank profitability of Indian banks vis-à-vis South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations.

For the Corporate Governance Index, the authors examined board accountability, transparency and disclosure and audit committee, while Tobin’s Q, return on equity and return on assets are used to measure the bank’s profitability. The study used a two-stage analysis based on balanced panel data for robust findings. Sample of this study consists of 60 commercial banks from India and 60 banks from SAARC nations for the period of 2009–2021. This study used panel regression and a generalized method of moment approach using the CAMELS framework on banking industry-specific variables to determine their respective impacts.

The findings of this study suggest that board accountability is positive and significantly affects the profitability of banks as indicated by return on assets, return on equity and Tobin’s Q. In contrast, the audit committee has a positive and insignificant impact on return on assets, return on equity and Tobin’s Q, while transparency and disclosure have a negative and significant impact on these metrics. Furthermore, the country dummy result shows a significant positive impact on all the bank performance parameters, implying that Indian banks have the highest degree of convergence with corporate governance as compared to other SAARC nations.

This study provides insight to the regulators, policymakers and financial institutions to evaluate the role of corporate governance in emerging economies. However, the findings of the study should be interpreted with caution, as the results are sensitive to the disparity between India and other SAARC nations' government policies, climatic circumstances and cultural or religious traditions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to gauge the performance of Indian banks vis-à-vis SAARC nations using the CAMELS framework approach. Further, findings of this study suggest some novel evidence tying corporate governance quality with the profitability of banks among SAARC nations.

The present study assesses the commercial bank profit efficiency and its relationship to banking sector competition in a rapidly growing emerging economy, India from 2009 to 2019 using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA).

Lerner indices, conventional and efficiency-adjusted, quantify competition. Two SFA models are employed to calculate alternative profit efficiency (inefficiency) scores: the two-step time-decay approach proposed by Battese and Coelli (1992) and the recently developed single-step pairwise difference estimator (PDE) by Belotti and Ilardi (2018). In the first step of the BC92 framework, profit inefficiency is calculated, and in the second step, Tobit and Fractional Regression Model (FRM) are utilized to evaluate profit inefficiency correlates. PDE concurrently solves the frontier and inefficiency equations using the maximum likelihood process.

The results suggest that foreign banks are less profit efficient than domestic equivalents, supporting the “home-field advantage” hypothesis in India. Further, increasing competition drives bank managers to make riskier lending and investment choices, decreasing bank profit efficiency. However, this effect varies depending on bank ownership and size.

Literature on the competition bank efficiency link is conspicuously scant, with a focus on technical and cost efficiency. Less is known regarding the influence of competition on bank profit efficiency. The article is one of the first to examine commercial bank profit efficiency and its relationship to banking sector competition. Additionally, the study work represents one of the first applications of the FRM presented by Papke and Wooldridge (1996) and the PDE provided by Belotti and Ilardi (2018).

The empirical study of factors related to digital transformation (DT) in the banking sector is still limited, even though the importance of the topic is universally evident. To bridge that gap, this paper aims to explore the role of digital leadership (DL), innovative culture (IC) and technostress inhibitors (TI) to support engagement for improved digital innovation (DI). Based on the literature, these variables are crucial aspects of digitalisation, even though there is no agreement on their conclusiveness.

This quantitative study tested a new conceptual model using survey data from five major banks in Libya. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data from the 292 usable responses.

The results showed that DL and IC positively affect DI. Techno-work engagement (TE) mediated the relationship between leadership, culture and innovation. TI played a significant moderating role in leadership, culture and engagement relationships.

The research findings highlight critical issues about how leadership style and fostering organisational support in the banking sector can enhance DT. Leaders must demonstrate a commitment to long-term resource allocation to avoid possible negative effects from digital stress while pursuing DI through work engagement.

The study suggests that fostering organisational support can enhance DT in retail banks, potentially leading to improved customer experiences and increased access to financial services. These programs will help banks contribute to societal and economic development.

This timely study examines predictor mechanisms of innovation in retail banking that resonate within the restrictions of organisational and DI frameworks and the social exchange theory. Exploring the intervening effect of TE in the leadership, culture and innovation associations is unprecedented.

Academic research has intensively analyzed the relationship between market concentration or market power and banking stability but provides ambiguous results, which are summarized under the concentration-stability/fragility view. We provide empirical evidence that the mixed results are due to the difficulty of identifying reliable variables to measure concentration and market power.

Using data from 3,943 banks operating in the European Union (EU)-15 between 2013 and 2020, we employ linear regression models on panel data. Banking market concentration is measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), and market power is estimated by the product-specific Lerner Indices for the loan and deposit market, respectively.

Our analysis reveals a significantly stability-decreasing impact of market concentration (HHI) and a significantly stability-increasing effect of market power (Lerner Indices). In addition, we provide evidence for a weak (or even absent) empirical relationship between the (non)structural measures, challenging the validity of the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm. Our baseline findings remain robust, especially when controlling for a likely reverse causality.

Our results suggest that the HHI may reflect other factors beyond market power that influence banking stability. Thus, banking supervisors and competition authorities should investigate market concentration and market power simultaneously while considering their joint impact on banking stability.

This study provides a bibliometric analysis of bank efficiency and competition over the past years (from 1993 to 2022) to (1) discover the past and current state of knowledge on bank competition and efficiency, (2) identify leading and authoritative journals and scholars who made significant contributions to the distribution of knowledge and impact, (3) identify nations that made a significant contribution and impact to the literature and (4) identify the structure of collaboration that exists between scholars in the areas of bank competition and efficiency and key thematic areas.

A total number of 868 documents made up of articles, reviews, book chapters, book and conference papers from the Scopus database were gathered. This study used a bibliometric analytic approach.

The number of documents on bank competitiveness and efficiency has increased significantly, as have their total publications, citations and national output. Additionally, the most esteemed and prestigious academic journals of eminent academics who have had a significant impact on the dissemination of knowledge on bank efficiency and competition literature champion papers on banking efficiency and competition. In terms of citation performance and collaborative efforts, the United States tops the developed countries, led by China, which is also the most productive. Additionally, single-country publications predominate in the literature, with China ranking first among the top five countries with corresponding authors. While the Lerner index, H-statistic, concentration index and market power were used to measure bank competitive behaviour, the data envelopment analysis approach predominates efficiency estimation techniques that are linked to cost, profit or revenue, scale, technical and productivity indexes.

This study is one of the first to offer bibliometric evidence of both bank competition and efficiency. It also offers proof of the distribution of knowledge and intellectual structure of the concepts and concerns in bank competition and efficiency.