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The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the deeply rooted relationships between corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure as two complementary mechanisms used by companies to reinforce the link with stakeholders and whether the extent of CSR disclosures made by Palestinian non-financial-listed companies during the period from 2013 to 2016 is associated with CG practices.

Content analysis technique was used to extract and measure CSR information from annual reports of 33 companies listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange (PEX). Therefore, CSR disclosure index was constructed using 32 items divided into four categories as a measure of the extent of CSR disclosure in the firm’s annual reports. OLS regression was performed to test the association between CG and the extent of CSR disclosure in this longitudinal study.

Panel data reveal that the level of CSR reporting has slightly increased over the study period. Further, the results also show that the level of CSR disclosure is positively and significantly affected by board size and independence, while gender diversity has a positive but statistically insignificant influence. Additionally, CEO duality is negatively and significantly correlated with CSR disclosures.

The study designs are limited to the Palestinian non-financial-listed firms. Furthermore, the generalisation of the findings might be restricted solely to the listed companies working in similar socioeconomic status.

The findings of this study can draw policy-makers’ attention in developing countries, particularly in the Arab world, to meet the increasing need for updating the regulatory and institutional framework in the vein of CG reform and the related regulatory policies to promote the efficiency of CSR practices.

More efforts should be made to strengthen the awareness of the Palestinian listed companies of the advantages of CSR reporting on social reality. Thus, from a management perspective, companies have to take equally into account the financial and social outcomes of CSR activities.

Empirical evidence on the nexus between CG and CSR disclosure from countries affected by socio-political instability is extremely limited. This study bridges this research gap and contributes theoretically and practically to the CSR literature by providing empirical evidence from a developing country with a unique business environment.

This study aims to investigate the impact of institutional fragility on the innovation investments of enterprises by analyzing the moderating effect of government subsidies and the integration of industry and finance.

Multiple regression analysis was used on 10,838 samples of 2,356 listed companies in China for the period 2007–2017, to empirically test the influence of institutional fragility on innovation investment. Moreover, Heckman’s two-stage approach was used for the robustness of the regression results.

The results show that the relationship between institutional fragility and innovation investment is an inverted U-shaped; government subsidies negatively moderate the relationship between institutional fragility and innovation investment, while the integration of industry and finance positively moderates them. Further analysis shows that the relationship between institutional fragility and innovation investment is more significant for high-tech enterprises. Similarly, the relationship between institutional fragility and innovation output also presents an inverted U-shape, which mainly affects enterprises’ breakthrough innovation output, but has no substantial impact on the incremental innovation output.

The conclusions provide new ideas for guiding the government’s reform, promoting the integration of industry and finance and promoting enterprise innovation.

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of the questions and answers (Q&A) between investors and enterprises from the China stock exchange investor interactive platforms on the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises.

To show how the interaction influences the TFP of enterprises, the authors select Q&A records from the interactive platforms related to production, R&D and technology through the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model and choose A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 in China as a sample. To treat the data and test the proposed hypothesis, the authors applied OLS regression and endogeneity testing methods, such as the entropy balance test, Heckman two-stage model and the two-stage least squares regression.

This paper finds that interaction between investors and enterprises is positively correlated with TFP, and that improvements in content length and the timeliness of response can promote TFP. Interactive behavior mainly improves the TFP of enterprises by alleviating financing constraints and encouraging enterprises to increase R&D investment. This positive effect is more pronounced in companies with higher agency costs, non-high-tech companies and companies not supported by industrial policy.

The novelty of the research stands in the application of Python's LDA topic model to screen out Q&A records that are directly related to TFP, such as production, R&D, technology, etc., and measures the degree of information interaction between investors and enterprises from multiple dimensions, such as interaction frequency, content length and the timeliness of response.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board secretaries’ characteristics on annual report readability using an original method that evaluates the readability of Chinese characters.

The authors manually collect board secretaries’ characteristics from the China Securities Market and Accounting Research database and obtain annual reports from the China Information website. Ordinary least square regression is applied to evaluate the impact, and then robustness tests and additional regression analyses are conducted.

Board secretaries’ legal-professional expertise, international expertise and role duality improve annual report readability. However, their political connections are negatively associated with it. The effect of expertise (role duality) is more pronounced for firms with lower ex ante litigation risk (board secretaries with equity holdings). Furthermore, higher readability increases the compensation of board secretaries, whereas lower readability increases their turnover. Finally, annual report readability is positively related to firm performance.

The authors only investigate listed firms in China from 2007 to 2017 because of the difficulties of obtaining data and text mining.

The authors provide managerial insights for regulators aiming to establish an effective governance mechanism with Chinese characteristics. First, certain requirements for board secretaries’ expertise can improve annual report readability. Further, firms can consider appointing board members or senior executives as board secretaries to enhance disclosure quality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to verify the effect of board secretaries’ characteristics on disclosure quality, especially annual report readability. Moreover, this study proposes a novel measure of annual report readability for Chinese texts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether oil price risk is a significant determinant of stock returns.

Using monthly data on a sample of Islamic stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchanges and National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations System (NASDAQ) over the period from January 1990 to December 2017, the study examines whether oil price risk is a significant determinant of stock returns using Fama–French–Carhart’s four-factor asset pricing model amplified with Brent oil price factor.

The results from the cross-sectional regression analysis indicate that the extent of the exposure is significantly positive using a full sample period. Moreover, results from size and momentum factors are highly significant whereas book-to-market has no significant impact on Islamic stock returns.

The results support the concept for diversification in equity investment and are thus important for investors, analysts and policymakers.

This study is the first of its kind to establish whether oil price risk is a factor that can determine returns of Islamic listed stocks using the most developed stock market in the world (New York Stock Exchanges and NASDAQ).

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of board diversity (e.g. education, gender, nationality and royal family members) on voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure for a sample of banks listed in the Arabian Gulf Council countries.

The authors use the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines to construct the CSR disclosure index. The empirical analysis is based on the data of banks listed in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries over the period 2011–2019. To tackle the potential issue of endogeneity, the authors apply the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation approach to investigate the relationship between board diversity and CSR disclosure index.

The findings of the analysis show that there is a significant relationship between board diversity and the level of voluntary CSR disclosure. Specifically, the authors find that diversity captured by the education level, nationality and the presence of royal family members on board is positively associated with the level of voluntary CSR disclosure while diversity captured by the gender of board members is negatively associated with the level of voluntary CSR disclosure.

The regulators, policymakers, stakeholders and the board of directors become aware of the diversity mechanisms that must be used to promote CSR practices in the banking sector of Arabian Gulf countries.

The authors extend the existing literature by providing empirical evidence on the association between board diversity and voluntary CSR disclosure practices of banks operating in the Arabian Gulf countries. This study also highlights that board gender diversity may have a different impact on voluntary CSR disclosure between developed countries and developing countries. This paper also provides preliminary evidence on the importance of education level, the presence of foreign and royal directors on board to influence CSR practices of banks operating in the Arabian Gulf countries.

The generation of new ventures within established companies, also known as corporate entrepreneurship (CE), is a process influenced by a set of individual and organizational factors. This paper aims to focus on creativity and human resource management enablers of CE, with the purpose to define an integrative framework and draw a set of related research propositions.

The paper relies on a multidisciplinary literature review in the fields of CE, creativity and organizational innovation.

The effectiveness of CE depends on a set of individual factors, distinguished into professional and psychological characteristics, and organizational factors, which include the system of values of the organization and the management practices applied in the same.

From a theoretical point of view, the paper develops an integrative framework of conditions that impact on CE and outlines a set of propositions and alternative research methods to test.

From a practitioner perspective, the study provides managers with a comprehensive set of factors enabling CE by leveraging the creativity of individuals and make it flourish through consistent human resource management practices.

The value of the paper stays in the integration of individual-related and organizational-related determinants of entrepreneurial performance.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among a set of human resources management (HRM) practices, entrepreneurial traits (ET) and corporate entrepreneurship (CE) in an emerging market such as the Egyptian one.

This research is explanatory in nature where it explains the causal relationships between the variables. Data was collected from 230 human resources (HR) managers and professional serving in top Egyptian financial institutions. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling with relevant goodness-of-fit statistics.

The results of this study indicate that HRM practices have significant impact on the development of ET of personnel currently operating in the Egyptian financial institutions. Besides, the results confirm the effect of HRM practices on ET, which in turn have significant impact on CE.

This research provides an appropriate direction for HR managers on how to best design HR programs directed toward the development of strong CE orientation. It also highlights the core ET needed to enhance CE in emerging economies. The validated hypothetical relationships of this model serve as the baseline for those managers to plan, execute and measure the consequences of those HRM programs.

Although HRM is widely considered as a critical driving force for CE, there is a remarkable scarcity of empirical research examining the role of ET. The conceptual model tested in this research typically deepens both HRM scholars and managers’ understanding of how they can best connect HRM practices to ET and CE in emerging economies. The findings of this study open the door for a new venue of research in the HRM area of study, particularly in emerging markets that search for a fast-growing rate of economic prosperity. The findings of this study lend support for HRM as an antecedent to CE rather than vice versa.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value relevance of Research and development (R&D) and free cash flow (FCF) in an efficient investment setup. Most importantly, this paper examines whether the value relevance of R&D and FCF is associated with life cycle stages. Furthermore, this paper reports whether the market response to R&D and FCF is different in competitive market as compared to the concentrated market.

The analysis is based on the Ohlson (1995) model for the determination of value relevance of earnings and book value. Capitalized R&D and FCF data comprising of the Chinese A-listed firms from the year 2008 to 2016 are selected for this study. Following Anthony and Ramesh (1992), the authors divided the firm life cycle into different stages. HHI index is used to measure the product market competition.

The main result shows that R&D and FCF are value relevant in Chinese A-listed firms. The impact of R&D and FCF on the value relevance of earnings and book value is also positive and significant. The findings of the effect of R&D and FCF on the value relevance of accounting information signify that the information content (R²=0.46) of the mature stage is higher than that of the growth and stagnant stage. The explanatory power measured by R² value for competitive industries (0.47) is much higher than the concentrated industries (0.33).

Despite taking into account all the possible available variables, there are few limitations of the study. This study only studies the effect of EPS, BPS, R&D and FCF on the value relevance of accounting information. Other determinant such as size, growth, leverage and firm age is ignored. Since the R&D expenditure is discretionary, therefore the findings cannot be generalized to all the sectors. A sector wise comparative study can be done in future, to understand the differences in the information contents of R&D and FCF. Also, the tax effect of R&D is ignored in this study. For future call, the value relevance of tax effect on R&D can be explored.

The investors can now determine the present value of all the future cash flows of investing activities. The results of the study are significant for the Chinese investors who should incorporate the R&D and FCF along with investment efficiency. The investors should keep in mind the life cycle stage while investing in a certain stock. The competitive markets have more information content than the concentrated markets. The corporate managers can benefit from this study while issuing new shares. The market responds positively to the stock having investment efficient R&D and FCF investment. For the policy implication perspective, the security market regulator should devise the effective pro-effective product market regulations.

The contribution of this study is manifold. First, according to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that incorporates investment efficiency with R&D and FCF and explores its effect on the value relevance of accounting information. Second, the impact of R&D on the value relevance is studied by numerous researchers (Lev and Sougiannis, 1996; Han and Manry, 2004). Similarly, FCF-agency cost effect has also been investigated by (Rahman and Mohd-Saleh, 2008; Chen et al., 2012) but the value relevance of R&D and FCF during different life cycle stages still needs to be answered. Finally, this study also tries to answers the question if the market response to R&D and FCF is different in a competitive market as compared to the concentrated market.