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This study aims to examine whether, and which type of, busy audit committee (AC) directors affect the quality and quantity of forward-looking disclosure (FLD).

The authors use content analysis to measure the quality and quantity of FLD. The authors use a sample of Omani financial institutions listed on the Muscat Securities Market for the period 2014–2018.

The authors find that overlapped AC chairs and total overlapped AC directors negatively (positively) affect disclosure quantity (quality). The authors also find that overlapped AC directors with financial expertise and those with multiple directorships positively affect disclosure quantity and quality.

This study offers new insights to policymakers (and managers) as it informs them about the benefits of overlapping AC directorship. It suggests that corporate governance codes should not limit overlapped AC direcotorship.

This study aims to examine the impact of a firm’s financial performance on forward-looking disclosure (FLD) tone and assess whether managers are engaging in impression management or providing truthful explanations when their companies have good or poor performance.

This study used the content analysis method to measure the tone of FLD in the chairman’s statements of Omani financial institutions for the period 2014–2018. Regression analysis is then used to test the research hypotheses.

The authors found that good-performing firms are disclosing more good news, whereas poor-performing firms disclose more bad news. The results provided evidence that managers in Oman are providing truthful explanations in their narratives.

This study offered interesting policy and practical implications for policymakers, managers and stakeholders. This paper provided insights to policymakers regarding the FLD tone practices used in the chairman’s reports in Oman. Policymakers should be aware of the importance of the chairman’s reports in the eye of multiple stakeholders and, therefore, need to set guidelines on the type and quality of non-financial voluntary information that should be disclosed in such reports in the context of emerging economies. For academics, evidence has been provided by this study’s results regarding the impact of corporate performance on disclosure tone.

This study offered a novel contribution to disclosure studies by being the first to examine the performance-disclosure narrative tone relation, in the context of Oman.

This article summarizes a study that identified and described federal information inventory/locator systems. Such locator systems provide an important means of accessing a range of government information not previously available to the public or other government officials. Overall, the study's goal was to improve access to and use of U.S. government information. The study produced a final report describing study efforts, identifying issues and conclusions, and recommending the design of an networked‐based government‐wide information inventory/locator system (GIILS) (Volume I), the Federal Locator Database (FLD) — a machine‐readable database of descriptive information on some 250 federal databases, of which fifty‐three met the study's criteria as a locator, and a user's guide to that database (Volume II includes a machine‐readable version of the database and the user guide and codebook). The study recommends that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget develop a policy framework requiring agencies to design and maintain machine‐readable locators, meeting certain requirements and standards and that these be accessible over the Internet/NREN.

The purpose of this paper is to check and fill the gap between the existing fire safety regulations for newly built tall buildings in Bulgaria and those in areas with rapid economic growth in the Asia-Oceania regions like the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Mainland China, by making comparative analysis and identifying good practices. The main focus is on the development of fire safety designs, facilities and management, which shall be recognized as essential parts of facility management in tall buildings.

Bulgarian regulations are analyzed and then compared with those in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Mainland China. In addition, the scientific aspect of fire load density in the fire codes is discussed. The possibility of implementing a fire engineering approach to supplement prescriptive codes is outlined. The essential roles of fire safety management and fire safety culture are presented.

Key points and recommendations that are worthy for discussion about incorporation in the Bulgarian tall buildings fire safety requirements are upgraded requirements for fire load density, detection and sprinkler systems in tall residential buildings, refuge floors, ventilation/air conditioning control systems, full-scale burning tests and fire engineering approach. The importance of fire safety management is emphasized as a main, key component in facility management.

The research is the first study focusing on implementation of additional and specific fire safety regulations for tall buildings in Bulgaria.

This study aims to present an integrated approach based on resilience engineering (RE) for layout optimization of a maintenance workshop in a large transmission unit.

Moreover, optimum facility layout design (FLD) is identified by RE, fuzzy simulation and fuzzy data envelopment analysis.

RE is considered in context of flexibility and redundancy. Results indicated that U-Shaped layout with flexible facilities increases the efficiency of the maintenance workshop.

This is the first study that considers RE for optimization of FLD in a gas transmission unit. RE significantly increases safety features of hazardous systems such as a gas transmission unit.

This paper takes an institutional approach to identify cognitive, normative, and regulatory factors affecting women’s business leadership in an under-studied traditional society. The purpose of this paper is to assess how such forces work to create a case of female leadership deficit (FLD) in Lebanon.

The authors analyze interview data to identify themes linking women’s leadership with societal institutional forces. The qualitative analysis provides an understanding at the societal level of analysis which is only partially tempered through organizational structures.

Misalignments among cognitive, normative, and regulative pillars inhibit real change. Organizational structures are not highly salient as the most important factors affecting women’s leadership. Rather, patriarchal structures, explicit favoring of males over females, and assignment of women to nurturing roles within the private sphere of the family are the major limiting factors impeding women’s ascension to leadership.

A promise of the institutional approach is enhancing the capacity to make meaningful comparisons between societies. This opens the door to uncovering whether documentable changes in regulations, cognitions, values, and norms regarding women in business leadership, will lead to observable changes in the size of FLD.

This study presents a case of institutional pluralism where a positive force in one direction (regulatory) is sometimes opposed by other forces (cognitive and normative) limiting meaningful change. This study helps to explain why societies differ in the size of the FLD and to identify factors that predict within societal changes in the size of this deficit over time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate governance on voluntary disclosure of different types of information in annual reports of Malaysian listed firms.

A linear regression model is used to test the association between the level of voluntary disclosure of five key information categories and corporate governance. The sample consists of 100 firms over three different socio‐economic periods: 1996, 2001 and 2006.

There are significant increases in all the key information categories with better communication most pronounced between 1996 and 2001, and a noticeably lower level of communication growth between 2001 and 2006. The strength of a firm's corporate governance structure clearly influences the voluntary disclosure of information relating to corporate and strategic directions, directors and senior management, financial and capital markets, forward‐looking projections and corporate social responsibility in 2001 and 2006.

The use of a governance index to arrive at an overall corporate governance score has the potential to mask major underlying relationships of individual governance attributes. The use of the self‐constructed disclosure indices may also omit certain information items that are employed in other prior studies. Moreover, the different categories of disclosures are solely constructed on the information disclosed in the annual reports without considering the alternative avenues.

The results will assist regulators and policy‐makers to better understand the impact of corporate governance on the voluntary disclosure of different types of corporate information in Malaysia.

This study generates evidence of the changing scene of management voluntary disclosure practices embedded in the corporate governance framework in a developing country with an emerging capital market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the void coalescence and corrosion behaviour of titanium Grade 4 sheets during single point incremental forming (SPIF) process with various spindle rotational speeds. The development of corrosion pits in 3.5 (%) NaCl solution has also been studied during SPIF process.

In this current research work, the void coalescence analysis and corrosion behaviour of titanium Grade 4 specimens were studied. A potentio-dynamic polarization (PDP) study was conducted to investigate the corrosion behaviour of titanium Grade 4 processed samples with various spindle speeds in 3.5 (%) NaCl solution. The scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope analysis was carried out to study the fracture behaviour and corrosion morphology of processed samples.

The titanium Grade 4 sheets obtained better formability and corrosion resistance by increasing the CNC spindle rotational speeds. In fact that, the significant plastic deformation affects the corrosion rate with various spindle speeds were recorded.

The spindle rotational speeds and vertical step depths increases then the titanium Grade 4 sheets showed better formability, void coalescence and corrosion behaviour as the same is evidenced in forming limit diagram and PDP curves.

This paper aims to examine the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on forward-looking corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure (FCSRD).

The authors use the manual content analysis to measure FCSRD for a sample of 94 companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2016. Data on companies' FCSRD are manually collected from annual reports. The authors also use regression analyses to test the research hypotheses.

The authors find that board size positively affects FCSRD, while CEO duality and family ownership negatively impact FCSRD.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first evidence of how governance mechanisms affect FCSR information in corporate annual reports in a developing country.

Counterfeiting is a menace in the emerging markets and many successful brands are falling prey to it. Counterfeit brands not only deceive consumers but also fuel a demand for lower priced replicas, both of which can devalue the bona-fide brand. But can consumers accurately identify a counterfeit logo? This paper aims to explore this question and examines the accuracy and speed with which a consumer can identify a counterfeit (vs original) logo.

Seven popular brand logos were altered by transposing and substituting the first and last letters of the logotypes. Consumers then classified the logos as counterfeit (vs original) across two experiments.

Participants were faster and more accurate in identifying a counterfeit logo when the first letter (vs last letter) of a logotype was manipulated, thus revealing last letter manipulations of a brand’s logotype to be more deceptive.

This paper comments only on the manipulation of logotypes but not of logo symbols. Similarly, findings may not be generalizable across languages which are read from right to left.

Counterfeit trade is already a multibillion dollar industry. Understanding the key perceptual differentiators between a counterfeit (vs original) logo can be insightful for both consumers and firms alike.

Research available on objective measures of similarities (vs dissimilarities) between counterfeit (vs original) brand logos is limited. This paper contributes by examining the ability of consumers to discriminate between counterfeit (vs original) logos at different levels of visual similarity.