Search results

This study aims to investigate the relationship between political instability and the performance of Islamic banks in emerging countries.

For a data sample of 93 Islamic banks in 20 emerging countries during the period from 2011 to 2016, the authors identify indicators that matter most for the activities of Islamic banks.

The study finds that a stable government and law and order are positively correlated with the health of Islamic financial institutions. On the other hand, corruption and military involvement in politics can create an unstable environment for businesses, leading to uncertainty and risk. The study also reveals that Islamic banks operating in regions or communities with lower risk of socio-economic conditions tend to exhibit higher levels of profitability.

Overall, the study provides valuable insights into the impact of political instability on Islamic banks in emerging countries.

Today, the global market for “clean” vehicles is generating double-digit growth annually. However, in most emerging or Islamic countries, sales of such cars remain at a very low level and green consumption patterns are poorly explored. This paper aims to expand the understanding of factors influencing attitudes and behaviors toward electric vehicle in an emerging Islamic country, namely, Saudi Arabia. It investigates whether the willingness of Saudis to purchase electric vehicles depends on religious and ethical considerations. The effects of environmental concern, Islamic and some personal values (self-transcendence and conservation) on green vehicle purchase intention were considered.

The literature review is predominantly of studies on emerging or Islamic countries. A convenience sampling method was used, and a total of 354 valid questionnaires were collected. An exploratory factor analysis under the principal component analysis was used to reveal the factor structure underlying the items in the questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis on Lisrel helped to assess the validity of the measurement models. The causal relationships of the research framework were measured using simultaneous equation modeling.

The results suggest that Islamic Values (IsV) and Conservation (Cv) values do not influence environmental concern (EC) or Electric Vehicle Purchase Intention (EVPI). On the contrary, self-transcendence values (ST) exerted a significant influence on EVPI and the mediation of EC in this relationship was supported.

The theoretical framework provides a better understanding of how customers evaluate electric vehicles and the factors underlying their attitudes and behaviors toward such products in an Islamic and emerging market. The results suggest that consumers’ intentions to purchase electric vehicles are not driven by Islam or conservation values (conformity, tradition and security). Nevertheless, subjects for whom self-transcendence is an important value that guides their lives showed a higher willingness to purchase electric vehicles. This research also confirmed that EC is predictive of EVPI.

Marketers should focus on values of self-transcendence, which are benevolence and universalism, to influence electric vehicle purchase intention in Saudi Arabia. Neither Islamic nor conservation values are useful in this regard. However, managers and authorities are advised to establish a link between Islam and environmental awareness and behavior. Marketing communication and religious preachers should point out the commandments of Islam which stand for the preservation of nature. The authors concluded that much more should be done on the part of scholars to obtain a satisfactory understanding of green behavior in the Islamic world. Although green vehicles are rarely used there, these markets hold great sales potential for such products.

Little is known about consumer attitudes and behavior toward green products in Islamic countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first study to investigate whether Islamic and some personal values are related to environmental concern and electric vehicle purchase intention. The results showed that EC and EVPI depend on ST. The causal model indices for IsV and Cv were not significant.

Most of the major Islamic countries’ stock exchanges have not been able to perform at the same pace with the major emerging countries’ stock exchanges since the mid of 1990s. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of stock market liberalization on cost of capital as one of the crucial driver to stock market development and physical investment growth in emerging Islamic countries.

This study employs static panel data techniques on the sample of seven emerging Islamic countries over the years 1989-2008.

The findings of this study suggest that stock market liberalization significantly reduces cost of capital in the stock markets of sample Islamic countries, which carries policy-oriented implications. Reduction in the cost of capital increases the number of exchange-traded companies, profitability of projects and aggregate investment level; therefore, the study findings are highly concerned by the economic policymakers, corporations and investors alike.

In the literature, different proxies are employed to measure stock market liberalization and cost of capital as well. Due to data limitations, this study could not employ different proxies for both, especially for stock market liberalization, for robustness purpose. That limitation further restricted the coverage of Islamic stock markets and time period. Therefore, generalization of the study results for overall Islamic stock markets can be slightly drawn.

The paper provides further understanding regarding the effects of SML on cost of capital, thereby indirectly on the stock market development, in the context of EIC.

The purpose of this study is to compare the impact of religion on the financial performance of conventional and Islamic banks in the framework of stakeholders’ theory.

Few studies have focused on studying the impact of religion on banking performance. Although religion represents an external governance mechanism for financial institutions, by using the generalized method of moments (GMM), this topic constitutes a research opportunity. The already modeled variables are collected from 76 countries located on 5 continents. The data were collected from DATASTREAM, banks’ annual reports, WIKIPEDIA and World Bank. It concerns 210 banks of each type during the period (2010–2020).

The author retained that religion negatively affects the financial performance of both conventional and Islamic banks. More specifically, results showed that religion affected the liquidity and solvency of two bank types. It also affected conventional banks’ profitability and efficiency.

I summarized the theoretical contribution in the integration of a new original governance category to enhance its presence with impacts directly affecting the banks’ financial performance. Empirically, the study can be seen as a compass for all stakeholders to consider environmental, behavioral and doctrinal factors in studying the financial performance evolution and to become more competitive in the banking market.

Although conventional banks located in developed countries are different from those existing in emerging countries and Islamic banks located in developed countries are different from those existing in emerging countries, I carried out a diversified study in the global context. Referring to the comparative literature review between conventional and Islamic banks, the study was the first conditional research that compared the impacts of religion on the financial performance of conventional and Islamic banks.

This paper aims to constitute to the first empirical work that investigated the effects of US unconventional monetary policy shocks on Islamic equities.

The authors used the spread between sovereign (term spread) and corporate (corporate spread) yields as proxies of unconventional monetary policy in times that FED implemented different rounds of large-scale asset purchasing programs.

This paper demonstrates that monetary policy shocks have significant effects on Islamic equities. The analysis showed substantial evidence that the corporate spread innovation was reflected as a positive signal in Islamic equity markets and has a larger impact on Islamic low leverage equities than term spread.

The objective of this paper is to shed some insight into the effects of US unconventional monetary policy on low leverage financial assets. It is hypothesized that during this period, specifically from November 2008, unconventional monetary policy and zero bound interest rates have been implemented in the US economy. However, the strength of effects of this range of policies on Islamic financial products is unidentified.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of Islamic banks (IBs) and macroeconomic variables on economic growth in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain and Bangladesh.

Based on these criteria, 672 observations from 24 IBs in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain and Bangladesh were chosen for further investigation. Time series analysis is a well-known method for determining if model variables are stationary and how long-term relationships function through cointegration analysis. This study uses impulse response function (IRF) and variance decomposition (VD) methodologies to demonstrate how each macroeconomic variable shock influences the short-term dynamic path of all system variables.

Islamic banking promotes economic growth, especially in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain and Bangladesh. The findings of the Islamic banking VDC test have a direct and long-term effect on economic growth.

The literature on this topic can be improved in a number of ways, including by adopting a more robust method to analyze over a longer time frame. By researching specific financing in various areas of the economy, one can gain a deeper understanding of Islamic financing. This will enable the identification of sectors that contribute to economic expansion. Future research should examine combining nations with pure Islam and dual-banking systems to acquire sufficient data.

This paper has practice and research implications. It recommends adopting the nation’s successful experiment with the Islamic banking system as a model for attaining economic growth through Islamic financing. To replicate this successful experiment, government-based decision-makers and monetary policy experts must collaborate to make Islamic money flows simple and rapid through financial channels that enhance economic growth.

The study of the contribution of Islamic banking to economic growth in developing nations, particularly those with the highest total assets (TAs) and total deposits (TDs) in the world, remains of modest value. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically assess the impact of IBs in developing nations, particularly those with the highest TAs and TDs in the world, on economic growth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).

This study aims to investigate factors that drive or deter audit firms (AFs) from disclosing audit quality (AQ) information to stakeholders in Iran. Furthermore, information items that should be contained in their disclosures are examined.

The study followed an interpretive approach. In this regard, 21 semi-structured and face-to-face interviews were conducted to explore the viewpoints of audit partners and investment managers. Interviewees were selected by snowball sampling method. The transcripts of audio records were prepared, and a thematic perspective was applied to evaluate transcriptions.

Participants’ interpretations indicate that certain factors, such as signaling to stakeholders, active audit committees and investor demand, promote transparency among Iranian AFs. Nonetheless, this inclination is deterred by some concerns, including poor AQ, lack of financial resources, lack of legal enforcement, fear of raising stakeholders’ expectations, inactive professional associations and contextual factors which should be addressed. Interviewees believe five items should be contained in AFs’ disclosures to enhance transparency.

This study contributes to recognizing factors explaining AFs’ behavior in the context of an Islamic country. Furthermore, the type of disclosure that should be contained can provide good insight for standard setters or oversight bodies.

The semi-structured interviews shed light on the contextual factors that influence transparency within the accountancy profession, either enabling or hindering it. Additionally, it is crucial to consider each country’s unique characteristics when determining the disclosure items in transparency reports.

The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2016 shows Pakistan as among the more corrupt nations in the world with a ranking of 117 among 176 countries surveyed. This situation raises concerns about members of the society and especially about the business communities. This paper aims to examine whether the tendency to corruption is also prevalent amongst business students, the future leaders and executives of business organizations.

The study uses survey questionnaires in the manner of Parsa and Lankford (1999) to examine the ethical levels of business students. It uses Levene’s (1960) tests for equality of variances and the t-test for equality of means to examine whether there are difference in the ethical perceptions between: bachelors (BBA) and graduate (MBA) students; business students who have taken the ethics course and those who have not; and female and male students. The authors also examine the overall ethical perceptions of business students.

The results show that students seem to make a clear distinction in respect of what they consider as acceptable and unacceptable ethical behavior. They would not indulge in behavior that directly falls within the category of stealing, misusing of company’s resources and undertaking actions that are wrong or dishonest, which may stem from their religious indoctrination. However, they would consider as acceptable behavior the overlooking of safety violations, not telling on peers; and fudging of the truth to get the job done. The latter attitude appears to be in line with business objectives of achieving targets irrespective of the means employed and that inform business education. We do not find any differences between the behavior of women and men which may be the outcome of the same religious indoctrination and educational perceptions. While there is a difference in the ethical perceptions between students who have taken the ethics course and those who have not, the course is not able to counter the lack of ethics among business students. There is a need for some stronger measures to inculcate a set of ethical values within students. However, we did find that some of the unethical behavior is diluted at the MBA level in comparison to BBA students.

This study provides new insights into the ethical perceptions of students in an Islamic emerging country. There is a conflict between ethics conveyed through Islamic precepts, and the ethics of business education with a focus on profits/revenues, costs, performance and competition that endorses a Machiavellian attitude of achieving goals at any cost and the love of money (Tang and Chen, 2008). It is the first study to suggest a differentiation in the ethical behavior of business students that exhibit both ethical and unethical behavior. There appears to be a clear segregation between what students deem as acceptable and unacceptable ethical behavior that may result from their personal/religious beliefs, and their business attitudes that strongly informs their ethical behavior. It provides a basis for developing more customized and effective ethics courses in Pakistan and suggests more importantly that ethics needs to be integrated into business concepts imparted in business programs at universities.

The purpose of the current study is to attempt to contribute to the understanding of some socio-cultural factors likely to explain the preference for international products in emerging countries, and more specifically those characterising former colonised countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The chosen approach is exploratory and of a qualitative inductive nature. It was based on a series of semi-structured and unstructured in-depth interviews with Tunisian consumers about their relationship to local and foreign products.

A set of complex and inter-related explanatory factors of the country-of-origin phenomenon emerged through the analysis, notably the complex of the decolonised, acculturation in situ, frustration towards the West and sensitivity to the Western fashion system.

The main limitation of this research is that the interviews were carried out among people living in the three main cities of Tunisia, which are urban settings.

This research proposes a general framework and a set of new constructs that may be used by leaders of businesses, communications agencies or distribution companies. These elements may help them for segmentation, assortment and range decisions, and brand names.

Given the failure of “buy local” campaigns, this research shows the importance to revive Tunisian consumers’ feeling of identification with their local culture and to reconcile them with their own identity. Suggestions are given to reach these objectives.

This research proposes a framework explaining how the country-of-origin effect in emerging countries operates in a different manner from what has been suggested in the studies conducted in Western contexts.