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This paper aims to explore how the presence of an audit committee is associated with other corporate governance mechanisms, i.e. board structure, ownership structure and quality of external audit. The present study evaluated whether the presence of the audit committee complements or substitutes other governance mechanisms in Palestinian companies. Moreover, the effect of investment opportunities on the relationship between the formation of the audit committee and the quality of the auditor was addressed.

The association between the formation of the audit committee and other governance variables was modelled as a binary logistic model. The sample comprising 44 firms listed on Palestine exchange for the period between 2013 and 2017, amounting to 220 firm-year observations.

Based on the investigation, the results have indicated that board independence, the distinction between the chairman and chief executive officer function, ownership concentration and audit quality enhance the chance of audit committee formation, implying complementary effect. Contrastingly, board size and board ownership serve as a substitute to audit committee formation. It has also been found that investment opportunities act as an effective moderating factor that strengthens the relationship between audit quality and the formation of the audit committee.

The study provides valuable insight into the interaction between multiple corporate governance mechanisms within the economy of Palestine where the external uncertainty is high and investment opportunities are constrained by the decisions of the occupying authority. The findings may help regulators and policymakers in Palestine alongside those of other countries with similar environmental features to revise and update their corporate governance codes to ensure that the best control can be achieved, subsequently attracting more foreign and domestic investments.

Higher degree of and commitment to voluntary disclosure (VD) and corporate governance (CG) helps contain information asymmetry, leading to lower cost of equity (Ke). This study provides evidence on the nexus among VD, CG, and Ke from a context characterized by extreme political instability.

This study uses all non-bank companies listed with the Palestine Exchange during 2009–2018. The level of VD was estimated by using a checklist of 35 items modified for the context of Palestine. A second checklist with 19 items was used to measure the commitment of the Palestinian companies with CG requirements. Five proxies for Ke were tested: three ex-ante Capital Asset Pricing Model-like proxies and two ex-post realized return proxies.

The findings state that the VD negatively impacted Ke. Interaction effect of CG and VD helps reduce the Ke. As such, for firms with better CG, the increase in VD decreases the Ke more than their standalone effect. For control variables, leverage, size and growth of firms exhibited positive impacts on Ke, whereas quality of auditors found a negative connection.

Managers in similar context, like Palestine, may prefer flexibility of smaller size and adopt conservative growth strategies to cope with adverse events. Firms adopt CG and VD as complementary forces to tackle instability and market expectation.

Studies connecting VD-CG-Ke nexus from similar context are rare. Results of this study forward that emphasis on disclosure and governance practices will help boost the confidence of the investors, reduce the Ke and create an incentive for more investment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the timing behavior and the adjustment toward the target of capital structure interact with each other in the capital structure decisions. Past literature finds that both timing and targeting are significant in determining the leverage ratio which is inconsistent with any standalone framework. This study argues that the preference of the firm for timing behavior or targeting behavior depends on the cost of deviation from the target. Since the cost of deviation from the target is likely to be asymmetric between overleveraged and underleveraged firms, the direction of the deviation from the target leverage is expected to alter the preference toward timing or targeting in the capital structure decision.

This study used the GMM system estimators with the Malaysian data for the period of 1992-2009 to fit a standard partial adjustment model and to estimate the speed of adjustment (SOA) of capital structure.

This study finds that Malaysian firms, on average, adjust their leverage at a slow speed of 12.7 percent annually and this rate increased to 14.2 percent when the timing variable is accounted for. Moreover, the SOA is found to be significantly higher and the timing role is lower for overleveraged firms compared with underleveraged firms. Overleveraged firms seem to find less flexibility to time the market as more pressure is exerted on them to return to the target regardless the timing opportunities because of the higher costs of deviation from the target leverage. Underleveraged firms place lower priority to rebalance toward the target compared with overleveraged firms as the costs of being underleveraged are lower and hence, these firms have more flexibility to time the market.

The findings of this study support that firms consider both targeting and timing in their financing decisions. No standalone theory can interpret the full spectrum of empirical results. The empirical work is based on partial adjustment model of leverage; however, this model has been criticized by inability to distinguish between active adjustment behavior and mechanical mean reversion. This is an avenue for future research.

This study investigates if targeting and timing behaviors are mutually exclusive as theoretically expected or they can coexist. A theoretical explanation and an empirical investigation support the conclusion that firms consider both targeting and timing in their financing decisions. This study provides evidence from Malaysian firms that are characterized by concentrated ownership structure and separation of cash flow rights and control rights of the firm due to pyramid ownership structure. Therefore, it provides evidence on how environmental characteristics may affect the capital structure determinants of the firm.

This study aims to explore the use, effectiveness, motives and obstacles of analytical procedures (APs) used by auditors in Palestine, a context characterised by a pool of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), a limited skill set, poor quality of data, political uncertainty and a community-based business culture.

The study considers the audit market in Palestine using a sequential mixed-methods approach combining a questionnaire survey and a series of in-depth interviews. A total of 129 Big-4 and non-Big-4 auditors were surveyed.

The use of APs is driven by the auditor size (Big-4 vs non-Big-4) and the client size (large vs SMEs). Even though the use of APs has increased over the past decade, audit objectives, know-how, and personal, family and social connections among auditors and clients influence the quality of the audit process.

Small firms take advantage of the lack of audit governance in Palestine. Our findings suggest that the regulators should help bridge the knowledge-sharing programmes between the small and large audit firms to help improve audit quality.

Studies on audit quality, particularly using APs, in the context of politically unstable cases such as Palestine are limited. The study has implications for the use of APs in the case of SMEs to prepare for the technological revolution that will modernise audit procedures and quality soon.

Existing theories on the determining factors of corporate investment decisions raise the importance of financial market imperfections in explaining investment behavior. Many factors have been proposed as drivers of investment, mainly in developed economies, while emerging countries have almost been neglected. The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of financing constraints on the investment behavior of a small context, namely, Jordan, with an imperfect environment.

This study considers panel data regressions from the industrial companies traded at the Amman Stock Exchange with a total of 1,058 firm-year observations.

The results are able to demonstrate that business size, tangibility, market-to-book ratio, profitability, financial slack and leverage are major drivers of investment choices. The results support the importance of information asymmetry in explaining the investment behavior of firms. Nonetheless, the Q-theory is in place, as is firm agility.

Policies to reduce information asymmetry are immediately needed to help firms increase investments by providing them with access to training, technology and market information. They also should enhance the firms’ opportunities for growth. Moreover, they should make it easier for businesses to access financial slack, such as by improving access to credit and financial institutions. They also can work to improve the financial infrastructure to meet the financing needs of businesses. Finally, smaller businesses should be assisted by improving their ability to invest and grow.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies, if any, to investigate this issue in a distinct environment. Despite the unique characteristics of Jordan, the findings are applicable to other countries that experience comparable political and economic circumstances because Jordan has traits common to many emerging nations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate customer‐centric corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Islamic banks of Bangladesh, Malaysia and the Arabian Gulf Region. The new framework is found from the incomplete link between managerial motivation and their actual involvement with CSR activities.

The study uses annual reports of 16 Islamic banks from three regions. Using content analysis method, the study produces an ethical identity index on eight dimensions. The average index scores are ranked to get a view of the importance given by Islamic banks to the path of social responsibility.

In this study, the customer‐centric CSR framework assumes that there are two layers of CSR involvement in Islamic banks. The upper layer assures the commitment towards Allah (SWT) by operating under Islamic Shari'ah. The bottom layer ensures the commitment towards customers, employees and society. The reports of Islamic banks show that the selected banks are too customer centric and efficiency driven. However, that efficiency is targeted at the cost of sacrificing Shari'ah norms. Their commitments to basic Islamic rules fall far behind the average.

The study uses content analysis of the annual report to identify CSR involvement of the Islamic banks. There are various issues related to CSR and corporate management that are not reported in annual reports. Moreover, disclosure norms and regulation also have an influence on reporting standards. Thus, this study is limited to what is found in the reports only.

The study contributes to the existing literature on customer‐centric CSR and customer‐centric marketing. There is evidence that the findings from this study are consistent with other studies. Islamic banks are becoming customer centric because of the competition from conventional banks. However, they must not forget the very essence of the establishment of these banks which is the spiritual freedom based upon sole submission to Allah (SWT).

This chapter investigates the presence of a difference in the systemic risk level between Islamic and conventional banks in Bangladesh. The authors compare systemic resilience of three types of banks: fully fledged Islamic banks, purely conventional banks (CB), and CB with Islamic windows. The authors use the market-based systemic risk measures of marginal expected shortfall and systemic risk to identify which type is more vulnerable to a systemic event. The authors also use ΔCoVaR to identify which type contributes more to a systemic event. Using a sample of observations on 27 publicly traded banks operating over the 2005–2014 period, the authors find that CB is the least resilient sector to a systemic event, and is the one that has the highest contribution to systemic risk during crisis times.

The authors measure the impact of culture on Sharia; Social and Financial Disclosure (SSFD) of Islamic Banks (IBs) around the world.

Content analysis is used to measure levels of disclosure for a sample of 136 IBs of 25 countries for years 2013 and 2014. Different cultural measures are used. These include secrecy/transparency as suggested by Gray (1988) and Hofstede (1980, 1983, 2001, 2010)’s culture dimensions which include: Power Distance; Individualism; Masculinity; Uncertainty Avoidance; Long-Term Ordination and Indulgence. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression is used to test the research hypotheses.

After controlling bank-specific, corporate governance and country characteristics, the authors found that Hofstede’s culture dimensions have a significant impact on SSFD. They also found that Gray's transparency dimension positively influence levels of sharia, social and aggregated disclosure. Therefore, they conclude that culture influences levels of disclosure in IBs.

This study has policy implications for managers and regulators of Islamic banking industry.

This study is the first to use both Gray and Hofstede models in the context of IBs around the world. It also the first to explore the impact of culture on three different disclosure levels for IBs.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance and other related factors on the risk-taking of Islamic banks. Risk-taking is defined according to credit risk, liquidity risk and operational risk.

The study uses the two step system generalized method of moment (2SYS-GMM) estimation technique by using a panel data set of 129 Islamic banks (IBs) from 29 countries in the Middle East, South Asia and the Southeast Asia regions covering from 2008 to 2017. Governance variables incorporated include board size, board independence, chief executive officer (CEO) power, Shariah board and audit committee, as well as other control variables.

This study provides evidence that board size and Shariah board are positively and significantly related to credit and liquidity risk. Board independence and CEO power are negative and significantly associated with credit and liquidity risk, but the audit committee has a mixed relationship with bank risk. Male CEOs take more risk compared to the female and more board meeting has an inverse relationship with Islamic banks risk. Bank size, however, does not influence the level of risk in Islamic banks, but leverage has an inverse relationship with bank risk.

The present study sheds light on the risk-taking behaviour of the board of IBs, particularly the board independence and CEO power reducing the level of risk in IBs thereby contributing to the agency theory. Therefore, regulators and policymakers can use the findings of this study to strengthen the internal corporate governance mechanism to protect IBs at a time of financial distress. Moreover, it increases the trust of the shareholders and stakeholders in the effectiveness of governance reforms that have been pursued to reap long-term benefits.

To the best of the knowledge, this research is preliminary in examining the board behaviour on risk-taking of IBs from four different regions. The results are robust and suggest that the board of directors mitigate the level of risk in IBs.