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This study aims to theoretically investigate the effect of activating corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on the association between adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) and tax avoidance (TA). Based on the analyzing of the previous studies, the authors support the results of studies that found a positive effect for activating CG on the adoption of CSR. Also, they found that there is a negative impact of activating CG mechanisms on TA, as CG includes controls and procedures that contribute to limiting opportunistic behaviors of management and ensures making decisions that maximize value for shareholders. To the best of the authors' knowledge, it is the only chapter that examines the effect of activating CG mechanisms on the association between CSR and TA.

Introduction: The government has taken many initiatives for the overall growth of India after liberalisation and remarkably performed to make India an emerging economy. Due to changes in macroeconomic conditions, investment in companys’ shares includes the possibility of bearing high risk, which cannot be eliminated but, to some extent, minimised. The persistence of risks motivates investors to invest in different available options of investment. Gearing measures, a company’s financial leverage, represent the risk afforded within the company’s capital structure.

Purpose: The research aims to identify the risk-return analysis of financial geared stocks of Nifty 50 companies in India, which have debt equity ratios of more than 1.

Methodology: Convenience and cluster sampling techniques were used to identify companies with debt equity ratios of more than 1. The considered time period is 2010–2019.

Findings: This research found capital structure ratios, debt equity ratio, and total debt ratio. The total equity ratio does not have any visible effect on any of the dependent variables, i.e., Return on equity (ROE), Return on Assets (ROA), Earnings per share (EPS), Return on capital employed (ROCE). It explains the impact of high-levered firms’ performance on profitability and functioning. The study highlights that highly geared companies do not significantly impact the ROA, proving Modigliani and Miller’s (1958) irrelevant theory.

This study aims to study the impact of corporate governance (CG) versus ethical investment on the firm performance. It takes into account the firms of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan for the purpose of the study. A composite variable of CG index and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) index is used to test the impact on the firm performance. Separate country wise and overall analysis is obtained. Regression analysis is used to obtain the results. Two measures of performance are used, one is return on assets (ROA) and other is Tobin Q. The findings of the study reveal that there is an impact of corporate governance index (CGI) on firm performance (overall and country wise) whereas ethical investment (EI) has an impact on firm performance when tested overall and no impact when checked for country wise results. The results further show that on country level, increase in CG measures may lead to positive results, but at the macro level, it may lower the performance. On the other hand, at the micro level, ethical finance may not show its impact; however, at the macro level, it has an impact. The study has implications for the investors and policymakers.

This paper explores the effect of perceived service quality, trust, perceived value and perceived cost on patient satisfaction and loyalty as well as exploring the moderating role of the sociodemographic factors.

The data were gathered from 462 patients via a structured questionnaire, while structural equation modeling was utilized for the analysis.

Results indicated that trust, perceived value and patient satisfaction have important roles in shaping the patient loyalty, while patient satisfaction was found to fully mediate the patient’s perceived service quality. Loyalty relationship was also found to partially mediate the trust–loyalty relationship. Nonetheless, the patient’s satisfaction–loyalty relationship was found to be only moderated by the age factor.

Implications are provided to the Egyptian private hospitals in order for them to formulate improvement plans as well as set higher standards of conduct.

This original research is the first one, up to the researcher knowledge, that explores the drivers of patient satisfaction in the private hospitals in Egypt.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Implementation and Disclosure in the Banking Sector: the case of banks with Islamic identity in Syria. This study aims to explore Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure (CSRD) in Syrian banks which have an Islamic identity, investigating their motivations when implementing and disclosing CSR and the challenges banks have faced. This study employed content analysis to extract knowledge from 33 annual reports published by three banks which have Islamic identity in Syria over the period 2008–2020. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with five participants who are aware of CSRD policy in the banks in the sample, in order to gain a fuller understanding of their motivations in relation to CSR and any challenges they faced. This article draws on the overlap between Stakeholder and Legitimacy theories in order to explain the motivations of the banks in question. The study found that banks which have an Islamic identity increased their levels of CSR implementation during the conflict crisis but were not publishing details on these activities because of a concern regarding the Islamic modesty around charitable actions and to avoid upsetting the sensibility of beneficiaries. Interviewees commented that in the time of conflict crisis, many Syrians needed relief and support. Because of this, banks in our research sample decided to take responsibility to lessen the negative impact of the conflict crisis on the Syrian community. In addition, the analysis revealed that banks engaged with Environment and Human Right issues after 2013 because they wanted to fulfil the requirements of their national partners.

This study aims to investigate the association between corporate tax avoidance and environmental costs and disclosure in Indonesia and Australia for the research period 2015–2019. This study also analyzes corporate strategies for overcoming public concerns about tax avoidance activities, namely, the trade-off legitimacy and risk reduction strategies, through two mechanisms: the mediation and moderation roles of environmental disclosure on the relationship between environmental costs and tax avoidance activities.

The data consists of 675 and 235 observations for Australia and Indonesia, respectively, which were analyzed quantitatively using panel regression.

The results showed that the trade-off legitimacy or risk reduction strategies are not found to be implemented by companies in Indonesia, while in Australia, corporations use the trade-off legitimacy strategy to reduce risk and overcome the negative impact of tax avoidance activities. The results also provide empirical evidence on the impact of environmental costs on environmental disclosure in both countries.

This study contributes to the literature by providing the latest evidence on the role of environmental costs on environmental disclosure, which has rarely been investigated in previous studies.

The halal cosmetics industry continues to grow significantly. Furthermore, using halal cosmetics is a must for Muslims. This study aims to analyze the factors influencing the switching intention to halal cosmetics in Indonesia.

This quantitative study uses a Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) on 214 respondents. The variables include halal certification, halal awareness, product image, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, attitude, advertisement and switching intention.

The product image plays the most influential role in deriving the attitude toward switching intention to halal cosmetics, following perceived behavioral control, halal awareness and subjective norm, but not halal certification and advertisement. The result indicates that the image of halal cosmetics influences customers’ attitudes toward switching to using halal cosmetics. Indonesian customers know the obligation to use halal products because they are Muslim. However, the existence of halal certification does not derive the switching intention to halal cosmetics.

This study conducts research only in Indonesia. As a recommendation, further studies might conduct a comparative test using multicultural respondents in several countries. Other studies also suggested examining factors of switching intention through different generational, especially in countries with high individualism traits.

This study will encourage the halal industry, especially the halal cosmetics industry, to pay more attention to the product image. Meanwhile, the government can provide incentives or rewards to promote industry participation in halal cosmetics. The findings provide a more detailed understanding of how product image can influence someone to switch to halal cosmetics.

Research on switching intention to halal cosmetics is still limited. This study uses halal variables, while previous studies only used religiosity. This study also introduced the product images motivating customers’ switching intention to use halal cosmetics.

The “United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal” 9 seeks to “… foster innovation” in all sectors of an economy. Thus, this conceptual piece addresses the indirect effect of innovative behaviour (INB) between total quality management (TQM) and innovation performance (INP). It further explores the context-contingent effect of four external factors [government regulation (GOV), market dynamism (MKD), competitive intensity (CMP) and technological turbulence (TUR)] on the TQM–INB linkage.

By incorporating both theoretical and empirical works in the fields of strategic management, innovation and business performance, this conceptual piece constructs a conceptual model, using a systematic literature review, alongside suppositions that can be tested in further studies.

This conceptual piece puts forward that TQM will be favourably connected to INP, and this favourable association will be mediated by INB. Moreover, GOV, MKD, CMP and TUR will have a favourable context-contingent effect on the favourable direct connection between TQM and INB.

This conceptual piece affords suggestions for both practitioners and researchers alike in the areas of innovative and strategic decision-making in banking establishments for reinforcing INP by introducing TQM, INB, GOV, MKD, CMP and TUR as innovative-strategic tools. It also delivers suggestions for forthcoming academics to examine this conceptual piece, empirically, in diverse banking sites worldwide.

Practical lessons for managers, employees, customers and consultants within the banking sector for the superior advantage of all key stakeholders are deliberated.

This study provides a new model to demonstrate how TQM leads to INP by passing through INB of employees, and how TQM fosters INB under diverse degrees of GOV, MKD, CMP and TUR. It shows how internal factors (7 TQM dimensions) and external factors (GOV, MKD, CMP and TUR) interact to foster employee INB. It also underscores the theoretical authority of three theories utilised, both individually and in combination, by using them to explain new relationships.

Community centers play a socio-economic and urban role of combining different communal necessities, that serve inhabitants, at different neighborhoods in cities. Their role emerged in importance as being a hub for improving and customizing quality of life experiences of the public. This research presents a code-based risk assessment tool for evaluating fire safety measures that can be adapted in the context of community centers. It also provides an exemplary case study to demonstrate its application.

The study identified the factors that render community centers as a high-risk type of facilities in fire events. Various fire codes and standards were reviewed to describe the relevant fire safety measures. A code-based fire risk assessment tool was developed and implemented, through a case study. A set of recommendations were developed to improve the fire safety conditions of the case study facility.

Several violations to fire safety were identified in the case study building. The findings led to identifying a set of recommendations to improve its fire safety conditions.

This research introduced a systematic approach to raise awareness about fire incidences and consequences in community centers, and provides facilities managers with a tool, to assess compliance based on international fire code requirements.

In fire events, community centers are considered as high-risk facilities that may lead to significant losses of human lives and damages to assets. It is significant to study the causes of fire, for ensuring effective prevention and safe operations.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and the moderating effect of financial constraints on the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and ESG performance.

The sample consists of a global data set involving 24,259 firm-year observations from 49 countries for the years 2011–2020. Corporate ESG performance was extracted from the Thomson Reuters database. The book-tax difference model was used for measuring corporate tax avoidance, while financially constrained firms were identified using the Kaplan and Zingales (1997) index.

The results show that firms with higher tax avoidance are associated with higher ESG performance, but lower ESG performance is shown for firms with higher financial constraints. The results further indicate that the positive impact of corporate tax avoidance on ESG performance becomes weaker for firms with higher financial constraints.

The findings imply that policymakers and regulators should focus on mechanisms to promote more internal funds to assist firms in pursuing ESG-related initiatives, such as through tax incentives. Investors should understand the “smokescreen” effect of corporate tax avoidance on ESG performance, especially for firms with financial constraints.

This analysis provides international evidence on the link between tax avoidance and ESG and considers the joint effect of pressures for internal funds, through tax and financing constraints, on corporate ESG performance.