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This paper aims to explore the extent of corporate social responsibility disclosure (hereafter CSRD) in Jordan and also examine whether ownership structure, board of directors and audit committee characteristics influence CSRD.

The extent of CSRD is measured by constructing a CSRD index for industrial firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2021. Panel regression analysis is used to examine the potential effect of ownership structure, board of directors and audit committee on the level of CSRD.

This study provides empirical evidence that diverse groups of shareholders have different effects on CSR engagement, and board characteristics (board size, board independence and gender diversity) play a vital role in increasing voluntary disclosure, including CSR information. There is no evidence to support that CSRD is influenced by audit committee characteristics.

This study recommends that corporate regulators and policymakers can improve CSRD practices by expanding the scope of existing disclosure requirements related to CSR and developing a structured CSRD index to measure the degree of CSRD practices for comparative purposes. Encourage firms to actively participate in social responsibility programs by granting tax incentives and government facilities to firms with the best CSR reports. Policymakers should introduce initiatives that support female’s representation on board. Finally, firms should restructure their boards by increasing board size and the percentage of independent directors to enhance their effectiveness to support CSRD.

This paper contributes further insights into the literature on CSRD practices and disclosure by analyzing data from developing market contexts.

The aim of this study is to explore employees’ perceptions of the role of human resources (HR) departments in Jordanian organisations and the reasons behind these perceptions.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 employees who work at different organisations in various industrial sectors in Jordan.

Employees perceive HR roles as: providing transactional services (traditional); working as business partners to facilitate other departments’ roles (limited). Perceptions of HR professionals and the role of HR departments were generally negative, due to: societal-cultural norms and stereotypes of HR departments and HR professionals; the role of Wasta (a localised form of favouritism) in affecting HR practices; employees’ personal experiences with HR departments and HR professionals at their workplace; and the non-availability of human resources management (HRM) degrees in Jordan.

Limited research has explored varying perceptions about HR departments and their impacts on business contexts in emerging markets, including Jordan. This research is unique as it identifies the reasons behind common misconceptions of HR roles in Jordanian organisations. It extends beyond existing literature by integrating employees’ perceptions of the role of the HR departments to understand the consequences for HR practices’ operational effectiveness. It also pioneers consideration of societal culture in shaping these perceptions, which helps us build theories for future testing and generalisation purposes in other contexts with cultural commonalities. This study also highlights the current state of HRM development in Jordan, which helps in setting the agenda for future research in the country and the Middle East and North Africa region.

Employees play a vital role in the success of a corporation. While boards of directors are created to protect shareholders’ interests, it is unclear if these directors also ensure employee welfare. In this vein, our paper examines the relationship between board leadership structure and employee well-being.

The authors employ several analysis techniques, including univariate analysis, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, two-stage least squares (2SLS) regressions, propensity score matching methodology, the Heckman Selection model and difference-in-differences analysis. The sample comprises USA public firms for the period 1998–2018.

Our findings indicate that having an independent chairperson can significantly benefit the welfare of employees, especially for firms with overly powerful chief executive officers (CEOs) and during times of financial distress.

Independent leadership structure is one of the crucial board characteristics that have not been examined to explain employee welfare at firms. We find that an independent chairperson can mitigate the negative effect of overly powerful CEOs on employee benefits. Importantly, independent chairpersons are beneficial for employees in difficult times and when CEOs are busy with daily activities.

This study aims to propose and empirically examine the simultaneous complementary mediating role of bank branch collective human capital and justice climate between implemented high-performance work system (HPWS) and bank branch performance in the banking sector.

Data were collected at three different intervals of time between March 2022 to July 2022 from a final sample of 323 branch managers and 1,369 employees of commercial banks operating in Pakistan. Partial least square structural equation modeling was used to test the theoretical model proposed by this study.

Study results revealed that collective human capital and justice climate simultaneously mediate the relationship between implemented HPWS and branch performance.

The study contributes to the strategic HRM theory by proposing the complementary mediating roles of human capital and organizational justice to reap the benefits of implementing HPWS for improving branch-level performance. The managers should focus on developing and exploiting the knowledge, skills and experiences (human capital) of branch employees and improve their collective perceptions of justice to reap the benefits of HPWS for enhancing branch-level performance.

Drawing upon the resource-based view of the firm and organizational justice theory, this novel study examines the simultaneous and complementary mediating effects of collective human capital and justice climate between implemented HPWS and branch performance relationships at the branch-level analysis.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is viewed as a differentiating strategy that wins over stakeholders’ confidence. Due to the potential strategic and positive effects on businesses, the study of CSR and its relationship to competitiveness has gained relevance. While studies have examined the impact of CSR activities on firm competitiveness, the findings so far remain contradictory. Further research on the underlying processes/mechanisms that explain how CSR contributes to competitiveness remains scarce. Accordingly, this study aims to look into the link between CSR and competitiveness with a focus on Asian business and management studies.

By using a bibliometric approach, this paper aims to provide a review of the state-of-the-art research on the linkage between CSR and competitiveness in Asian context. The sample for this research included all 538 studies from the period of 2001–2023 in the Scopus database. A bibliometric study included both co-occurrence and co-citation analysis.

The study’s findings made significant contributions by identifying seven distinct clusters of co-occurrences. Using co-citation, three journals-based co-citation clusters and another three authors-based co-citation clusters are identified. The findings show how processes/mechanisms such as – accountability, multi-stakeholder dialogue/engagement, resource generation, emphasizing sustainable development goals and emerging markets, redefining strategy, cultivating value/vision and CSR leadership – are increasing in importance.

Overall, the authors argue that CSR-led competitiveness is indeed one of the key drivers for improved sustainability performance of a firm.

Based on findings, a conceptual framework has been proposed highlighting different processes and mechanisms that influence the CSR-led competitiveness – outcomes relationship.

Skewed pricing is a typical tactic used by tenderers in unit price projects to gain additional advantages at the expense of the owner or other competing tenderers. This paper aims to describe the development of a model for detecting skewed pricing in competitive tendering for unit price contracts.

The model evaluates how much the offered unit rates for work items deviate from the reasonable rate identified from the item’s submitted unit rates. Item rate deviations are integrated into a total deviation score for each submitted tender based on the relative weight of the work item to the total project amount. The model allows for assigning higher weights to work items that are more prone to skewed pricing, such as those that are performed early and those that are expected to experience quantity fluctuations.

The paper presents a detection model that uses only the submitted prices of the competing tenderers to perform the needed calculations, which reduces subjectivity in identifying skewed tenders. Two examples are given to demonstrate how the model may be used to detect skewed tenders.

The model supports tendering officials in the challenging task of identifying skewed tenders, which is required by rules and regulations governing public procurement. The model’s ease of use is expected to make it more widely used as a decision-support tool during the tender evaluation stage of real-world projects.

This study aims to explore the effects of cat-assisted therapy (Ca-AT) on a patient in their homes, specifically investigating the effects on patient’s memory, behavioral pathology and ability to perform activities of daily living, independently.

A case study design was used in patient’s homes using three measuring scales, namely, Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Barthel index (BI) and Behavioral Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) Rating Scale.

The MMSE and BI mean scores were increased, whereas the Behavioral Pathology mean score was decreased. Patient negative behaviors were improved specifically, aggressiveness, anxieties, phobias, and caregiver burden was decreased.

Patients with AD could significantly benefit from Ca-AT in their own homes, and it could decrease caregiving burden.

Ca-AT is a newly developed type of animal-assisted therapy that uses cats to treat patients, especially elderly people with AD, in their homes.

Incipient detection of pavement deterioration (such as crack identification) is critical to optimizing road maintenance because it enables preventative steps to be implemented to mitigate damage and possible failure. Traditional visual inspection has been largely superseded by semi-automatic/automatic procedures given significant advancements in image processing. Therefore, there is a need to develop automated tools to detect and classify cracks.

The literature review is employed to evaluate existing attempts to use Hough transform algorithm and highlight issues that should be improved. Then, developing a simple low-cost crack detection method based on the Hough transform algorithm for pavement crack detection and classification.

Analysis results reveal that model accuracy reaches 92.14% for vertical cracks, 93.03% for diagonal cracks and 95.61% for horizontal cracks. The time lapse for detecting the crack type for one image is circa 0.98 s for vertical cracks, 0.79 s for horizontal cracks and 0.83 s for diagonal cracks. Ensuing discourse serves to illustrate the inherent potential of a simple low-cost image processing method in automated pavement crack detection. Moreover, this method provides direct guidance for long-term pavement optimal maintenance decisions.

The outcome of this research can help highway agencies to detect and classify cracks accurately for a very long highway without a need for manual inspection, which can significantly minimize cost.

Hough transform algorithm was tested in terms of detect and classify a large dataset of highway images, and the accuracy reaches 92.14%, which can be considered as a very accurate percentage regarding automated cracks and distresses classification.

This study aims to reveal the impact of e-learning on accounting education amid COVID-19 in Jordanian universities from the viewpoint of faculty members.

The questionnaire is used as a study instrument distributed to faculty members at the Accounting Departments of the Jordanian public and private universities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google Forms has been used to distribute 117 questionnaires that have been analyzed via the partial least squares-smart program.

The results show a negative impact of learning difficulties on accounting education, a negative impact on the personal skills of faculty members on the digitization of accounting education, no impact on the personal skills of faculty members, a positive impact on training courses, the use of technology on accounting education and the digitization of accounting education, as well as a positive impact on the skills of faculty members on the digitization of accounting education.

These results are significant in determining the adequacy of online learning for accounting education at the Accounting Departments of Jordanian public and private universities from the viewpoint of faculty members amid COVID-19.

This study highlights the impact of the e-learning system imposed amid COVID-19 on accounting education, teaching efficiency and the future of accounting education.

The paper aims to investigate the practices facilitating the transformation of healthcare services, understanding the resulting outcomes in terms of well-being and uplifting changes. a systematic literature review (SLR) focusing on analyzing the healthcare sector under the transformative service research (TSR) theoretical domain is conducted to achieve this goal.

Employing a structured SLR developed based on the PRISMA protocol (Pickering and Byrne, 2014; Pickering et al., 2015) and using Scopus and WoS databases, the study identifies and analyzes 49 papers published between 2021 and 2022. Content analysis is used to classify and analyze the papers.

The SLR reveals four transformative practices (how) within the healthcare sector under the TSR domain, each linked to specific well-being outcomes (what). The analysis shows that both practices and outcomes are mainly patient-related. An integrative framework for transformative healthcare service is presented and critically examined to identify research gaps and define the trajectory for the future development of TSR in healthcare. In addition, managerial implications are provided to guide practitioners.

This research is among the first to analyze TSR literature in the context of healthcare. The study critically examines the TSR’s impact on the sector’s transformation, providing insights for future research and offering a roadmap for healthcare practitioners to facilitate uplifting changes.