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This paper aims to investigate the differences in patronage factors influencing “retail customers” and “institutional clients” to bank Islamically and to identify the reasons bankers perceive that their customers’ bank with them in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A total of 237; 416; and 70 balanced responses were collected from Islamic bankers, retail customers and institutional clients of UAE, respectively. Weighted average scores were computed for ranking the selection criteria factors across the data set and paired comparison analysis was conducted to analyse the variation of selection criteria between the data sets.

Empirical results indicate that Islamic banking practitioners maintain an identical perception with retail customers in relation to the selection criteria of Islamic banking products and services, with the “Sharīʿah-compliance” factor dominating other factors under examination. With respect to the perception regarding institutional/corporate clients, Islamic bankers exhibited a divergent perception in connection with selection criteria of Islamic banking products and services and the factor “cost and affordability” and “rates and return” are prioritized above factor “Sharīʿah-compliance”.

The scope of the study is limited to a single country. Hence, the finding of this study cannot be generalized to the other regions. Although the study covers a considerable sample from each segment, still there is an avenue for improvement by covering more respondents into the survey. Consequently, the results of this study should be read with these limitations. Further, analysis of the variation among intra divisions of each segment such as Muslim and non-Muslim with respect to retail customers; the different level of management at the banks and focusing the specific sector of the industry is beyond the scope of this study. These directions provide avenues for future research.

The study provides useful insights for bankers to revisit their marketing strategies to attract and retain more clients. Hence, the findings also suggest policy recommendations for nascent Islamic banking markets to move to the next stages of maturity. The findings of this study have implications for firms’ strategic directions and future investments of organizations, especially when the competition in the industry is intense. Future studies are recommended in other countries where the Islamic financial market share is significant.

While ample perception studies have carried out in the Islamic banking industry of the UAE, studies that focus on institutional clients, especially with reference to the factors that determine the selection criteria; studies examining banker’s perception towards Islamic banks and their clients (retail and institutional); studies that reconcile the perception of bankers and customers (retail and institutional) are all inadequately covered in existing literatures. This study attempts to fill some of these significant gaps.

This paper aims to reveal whether there is a difference in perception of banking clients toward participation banks (PBs) and conventional banks (CBs) operated by the same bank.

The data were gathered with an online questionnaire from 254 participants. Questionnaire consisted of the Chaouch (2017) bank perception scale and the Koenig and Büssing (2010) religiosity scale. The data of the study were analyzed using the paired samples t-test and regression analysis.

The findings exhibit that Turkish bank clients, as a secular society, differently perceive financial activities of PBs and CBs that operate under the same roof in terms of compliance with Islamic laws. The findings also reveal that perceptions of the Turkish bank clients toward PBs' activities to compliance with the Islamic rules differs by the religiosity level. On the other hand, findings show that there is no difference in the perceptions of the CB's activities regarding compliance with Islamic rules by the clients’ religiosity level.

This study uses quantitative data. These type of data both can miss sometimes certain knowledge and restricts of participants thoughts on the study phenomena.

Based on the results of the study’s findings, beneficial suggestions are made for researchers and banking sector managers.

While many studies have been on Islamic banking, this study extends the role theory to compare perceptions of bank clients between PBs and CBs and provides an empirical evidence for bank clients' perceptions to dual banking in a developing and a secular country like Turkey.

Changes in external auditing over four decades motivates a historical investigation of how client employees' perceptions of auditors have changed across this period.

This paper uses a longitudinal quasi-experiment to compare current client employees' perceptions of the auditor with results from 1972.

Changes in client employees' perceptions of the audit, its usefulness and of auditor-client conflict suggest increases in auditor independence. However, this paper also finds that despite decades of efforts to strengthen auditor independence and skepticism, the primary analogy client employees apply to the external auditor remains “consultant”.

The findings contribute to the discussion of whether regulatory and standard changes in the audit environment have changed aspects of client employees' perceptions of auditors.

The paper contributes by presenting a unique approach to partially replicating a historic study using a quasi-experimental research design.

This research explores the expectation gap between tax clients’ motivations to hire tax preparers versus tax preparers’ perceptions of those client motivations. The study builds on limited previous research by examining preparers primarily from local firms rather than focusing solely on large international firms. The Gaps Model of Service Quality provides the theoretical lens for the paper. We employ the recently developed Taxpayer Motivation Scale (TMS) to measure four client motivations to hire a preparer: (1) saving money, (2) saving time, (3) legal compliance, and (4) protection from the IRS. We measure expectation gaps for those four motivations using matched tax preparer–tax client dyads.

We employ statistical sub-group analyses to investigate the effects of both clients’ and preparers’ demographic characteristics that influence tax-expectation gaps. Results suggest client gender plays a noteworthy role in predicting many of the gaps. In addition, complexity of tax returns, children in the home, and client perceptions of tax-preparer advocacy help explain gaps. Finally, female preparers appear to be relatively more sensitive to client needs. We conclude that tax preparers need to (1) better understand their clients’ motivations for hiring them and (2) reexamine marketing efforts to educate clients about preparer credentials and potential strategy options for tax preparation.

This study examines how professional service firms' communication effectiveness (affiliative communications style, social dialogue and information provision), social cognitive capital and rapport established between an auditor and SME client are instrumental in influencing the latter's evaluation of the technical quality of an audit.

The study combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to create a cross-sectional survey covering four geographic regions in an emerging economy – Thailand. The authors examine the hypotheses by employing social interaction theory.

A study of 744 SME executives plus post-survey interviews with three audit partners revealed that an affiliative communications style and information provision are positively associated with the rapport developed between financial auditor and client, and that rapport, in turn, had a strong association with client perceptions of audit quality. In addition, affiliative communication style, information provision and social cognitive capital had a direct (positive) association with perceptions of audit quality. The effects of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital varied, depending on whether or not the SME client possessed formal accounting qualifications.

The study contributes to the literature on the business-to-business professional services, and accounting in particular, by explicating the important roles of communication effectiveness, rapport, and social cognitive capital in the relationship between an auditor and a client. Moreover, the paper reveals that the differences in educational background of clients result in differential impacts of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital on rapport and perceptions of audit quality.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main findings and conclusions of four separate studies on treatment in therapeutic communities (TCs) for addictions.

The first two studies address the core characteristics of the TC approach: a study on the workable and destructive elements of the Synanon model; and a comparative study on the essential elements of TCs for addictions in Europe and in the USA. The final two studies highlight clients’ perceptions of the TC treatment process in relation to retention: a study on clients’ first month perceptions of the TC treatment process and the influence of fixed and dynamic client factors; and a longitudinal study on changes in clients’ perception of the TC treatment process and the impact of motivation, psychological distress and cluster B personality traits.

The first study showed that Synanon’s therapeutic and pedagogical methods are still highly valued despite its negative reputation. The results of the second study suggest that while traditional TCs operate as concept-based TCs in Europe, modified TCs might differ in the extent to which they apply the core principles and elements of the TC approach. The third study provides evidence that suitability for treatment is a very important predictor for clients’ first month perceptions of the community environment. The fourth study shows that with time in treatment clients develop more profound perceptions regarding the essence of TC treatment.

Finally, implications for clinical practice, general limitations and some concrete recommendations for future research are presented in this paper.

The PhD summary study contributes to the existing literature on TC treatment.

Focuses on the perceptions held by organisational clients of the legal advice provided by their primary law firms. Previous work on service quality has been dominated by studies in consumer services and has been primarily outside the professional service context which is examined here. Empirical data collected from 152 corporate clients across a number of business sectors is used to examine a number of hypotheses relating client quality perceptions to key factors exhibited by both the legal service provider and the organisational client. The relationship between marketing and quality, and the marketing implications of the study for law firms are also discussed.

The efficiency and the effectiveness of the audit depend in part on the efficiency and the effectiveness of the client inquiry process. This paper presents a model that helps auditors to understand the stages of the client inquiry process and the factors that influence its reliability. The model serves to illuminate the client inquiry process and thereby assist auditors in evaluating the evidence thus obtained. Our model is a multistage communication channel that connects reality, the client’s perception of reality, the client’s representation of reality, the auditor’s perception of reality, and the auditor’s representation of reality. Distortions of reality occur between adjacent stages as the result of the subjectivity, technical incompetence, untrustworthiness, and poor presentation skills of either the client or the auditor. We discuss our model in the context of the analytical review task.

The purpose of this paper is to promote full involvement of construction project leaders in the attempt by Nigerian banks to develop new branches and expand the scope of their services to customers whose banks were either liquidated or merged after the 2005 consolidation exercise.

Structured questionnaires are used to collect data on status, professions, services and leadership roles of construction project leaders from a sample of 80 clients' representatives selected randomly from the 24 Nigerian banks that survived the liquidation exercise.

The study discovers that Nigerian banks appoint mostly their staff who may not be project managers as project leaders and engage them mostly with services which relate to the day to day running of their new projects. It also discovers that the authority giving to project leaders is not full rather the control over the delivery of banks' projects is shared with the banks and this does not influence the banks' perception of the performance of project leaders. While this finding may appear as if the control giving to project leaders is not important in their performances, the study reveals that the performances of project leaders have significant influence on the performance of other project team members.

Although, there have been studies on project leadership in the construction industry generally, specific attention has not been given to project leadership in the banking industry as done in this paper.

The study considers the development as unhealthy because it will not encourage construction project leaders to regard the success or failure of the projects as their responsibility and will not motivate them to perform their duties effectively. It therefore advocates that clients in the Nigerian banking industry should adopt a practice whereby project managers instead of any construction professionals are the ones to be appointed as construction project leaders and that more authority and leadership functions on the delivery of the projects than those retained by clients be delegated to them.

The results of the study have identified some of the shortcomings in project leadership practice in the Nigerian banking industry which will spur changes that promote greater achievement of the goals of the banks for developing new projects.

We examine the relationships between clients’ level of coaching readiness and trust in their executive coach and increases to both personal learning improved work performance. Distance relationships, the setting for this study, epitomize the norms of the New World of Work (NWoW), but also provide particular challenges for building trust and recognizing similarities between client and coach.

This study investigates distance coaching relationships in matched-pairs, longitudinal investigation of formal executive coaching.

Results support the proposed moderated mediation path. Findings reveal that both coaches’ perceptions of client readiness for coaching and client trust in coach each predict both client personal skill development and performance improvement.

While important toward gaining a better understanding of the relational functioning of distance coaching relationships, inclusion of only distance relationships may truncate the generalizability of our findings.

The study’s findings have practical implications for organizations that invest in executive coaching with regard to the importance of evaluating the candidates' readiness for coaching before the assignment, trust-building throughout distance coaching relationships and perceptions of similarity on client coaching outcomes.

Distance relationships, the setting for this study, provide particular challenges for building trust and recognizing similarities between client and coach and the current investigation points to the relevance of these relational mechanisms to client outcomes. In so doing, this study explores how perceptions of deep-level similarity between a coach and client may serve as moderators of these relationships.