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This study investigates the relationship between financial inclusion (FI) and banks’ performance in the economy of Jordan using annual data of 13 commercial banks from 2009 to 2014. Performance is measured by gross income and return on assets (ROA) of these banks. To ensure the robustness of our results, we used six different measures of FI. These include credits for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), deposits for SMEs, number of ATMs, number of ATM services, number of credit cards, and new services. We found a significant impact of FI on ‘ performance when measured by gross income, and ROA, although our study displays different results when considering the effect of FI variables separately. Thus, FI contributes to enhance the banks’ performance. Therefore, the banks should devote more resources to increase FI as it benefits their profitability.

Purpose: The prominence of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) as the practice of exploiting market opportunities is becoming increasingly important to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). It has been stated that SMEs lack resources such as finance, knowledge, experience, and information, compared with larger firms that integrate marketing with innovativeness, which is critical to enhancing entrepreneurship. Therefore, this chapter aims at establishing the theoretical foundation that links entrepreneurial orientation with marketing practices in Jordanian SMEs. More specifically, this chapter provides deep recognition of the current status of EM opportunities and challenges in Jordanian SMEs.

Design/methodology/approach: As SMEs are one of the important components in the private sector in Jordan and contribute to the creation of almost half of the GDP. Accordingly, this chapter adopts a critical review of the relevant literature, governmental reports, business studies, and published surveys in EM among Jordanian SMEs. Moreover, this chapter will present a thorough analysis of the published statistics and insights about EM orientations from different sectors of Jordanian SMEs. Based on the reviewed and analyzed secondary data, EM initiatives, opportunities, and challenges can be extracted and highlighted to achieve the purpose of this chapter.

Findings: The expected outcomes of the chapter are to build the theoretical foundation and promote a deep understanding that bridges the knowledge gap about the status of EM in Jordanian SMEs supported by literature and published report evidence. Another outcome of this chapter is highlighting the important entrepreneurial issues and identifying areas for further research in the Middle East generally and Jordan particularly.

Practical implications: The chapter provides relevant knowledge, literature-based evidence, and lessons learned to empower entrepreneurs in SMEs. This chapter also enhances the best practices of EM for entrepreneurs, marketers, and policymakers. Moreover, this chapter proposes how to overcome potential challenges and threats that may be encountered by practitioners, especially in different cultural contexts such as the Middle East and North African (MENA) region.

Originality/value: The chapter proposed a conceptual foundation about EM in SMEs aimed at different cultural contexts like Jordan. Moreover, the chapter provides a critical review of published research that explains entrepreneurs aspirations for growth, expansion, and innovation, which is critical for the growth and sustainability of SMEs. Finally, the chapter concludes by providing policy implications and practical recommendations that can encourage policymakers in formulating and implementing the relevant interventions and strategic trends for enhancing entrepreneurship in Jordan.

This paper uses the case of Islamic banking in Amman, Jordan, to assess the wide moral range of expectations, levels of satisfaction, and means of evaluating banks’ “Islamicness.”

The information is gathered from interviews conducted during over 21 months of ethnographic research and one month in participant observation and research access as an intern at the Middle East Islamic Bank (MEIB) in Amman, Jordan.

I found three modes for evaluating “Islamicness” when actors decide whether or not to become customers of Islamic banks.

These modes demonstrate that Islamic banking is no longer the cultural protectionism of a relatively homogeneous community of Muslims. Rather it is a fraught and tense field for actors’ debates about types of moralities in the markets and modes of moral assessments of “Islamicness.”

The amplification of the individual and individual choice and authority in the moral assessments of Islamic banking may ultimately serve to unseat prior dichotomous theoretical framings of morality’s presence or absence as “Islamic” or “not Islamic” and “good” and “bad.” By unleashing to individuals the construction of morality in the markets, moral rights and wrongs, and moral evaluations, fragmentation of moral consensus in market practices will occur.

This chapter aims to provide a review of women's empowerment indicator in Arab countries. It estimates the determinants of women's economic empowerment in Arab countries to conclude some insights related to the effect of access to finance on empowering women. Moreover, the chapter aims to assess MFIs performance in supporting women's empowerment, based on actual data during the period 2008–2016 for selected Arab countries. Results show that women access to finance indicator is not sufficient to give clear evaluation for the role of MFIs in Arab Countries in empowering women. This issue requires many efforts from various parties from micro to macro players in the economy. In addition, the analysis of percentage of female borrowers and their share of gross loan portfolio concludes that performance in terms of empowering women through MFIs seems to be effective for some Arab countries while poor for others.