Search results

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the specific “shareholder's” concept of transparency.

It considers that indirect securities holding systems limit the degree of “post-trading” transparency. The main concern is that an adverse effect of globalized capital markets is that the actual shareholders are not registered in the official registries and registrations are effected in the name of intermediaries acting on their behalf. It further considers that new EU legislative action should be taken to address the legal issues of securities holdings as a key parameter for EU integration.

A new architecture of the securities holding system is proposed in this paper to be adopted at the EU level on the basis of the analyzed direct registration, i.e. registration of all the actual shareholders in the registries. It is considered that this architecture will promote securities holdings transparency for all systems, either direct or indirect, and hence enhance investors' protection and financial confidence in the markets. Focusing on the financial crisis of the recent years, it is worthy of note that a key parameter in solving this crisis problem could be considered not only the imposition of more possible regulatory requirements on all financial players but also the improvement credibility of the markets by making their operation more transparent. Direct registration could be defined as a method of making the markets more transparent in this regard.

In the light of the financial crisis of 2007-2009, this is one of the first studies, which clearly argues that direct registration could be considered the appropriate method of making the financial markets more transparent. Therefore, it calls for the EU legal intervention should therefore be accelerated. By delaying improvement in the efficiency of the available infrastructures mainly by utilizing all the advantages that technology offers, the markets accept the additional cost of higher risk coverage.

Despite the special attention given to consumers by the business and academic literature, the dissatisfaction of Brazilian consumers has increased significantly. This manifest mainly through the initiation of complaints’ procedures against companies at Procon and other civil society consumer protection organizations (CPOs) that began to take over these issues complementarily to governmental action. This paper aims to examine the accomplishments and relevance of these organizations in protecting consumers and in preparation of related public policies.

A qualitative case study was conducted involving an in-depth collection of information about a restricted system, which included multiple sources. The information was obtained through semi-structured interviews conducted with CPOs’ executives and documents from the other participating organizations in the consumer protection field.

The CPOs have been positively evaluated by participants from the consumer protection field, for their effective action in the intermediation of complaints and in proposing laws and regulations on consumer protection. However, this picture is contrasted with the difficulties imposed by the practices of other field logics, such as legal procedures, media priorities and business interests that, however, collaborate in various occasions.

CPOs’ relevance is more easily evaluated through social legitimation such as endorsements and declarations by the media, the public, by the CPOs’ own publicity and so on. As consumers can choose from alternative channels for redress, firms should be updated with the different procedural norms of each.

This paper draws a picture of the work developed by CPOs and indicates a possible assessment of their relevance in a scenario of logics complexity, which can be useful for policy makers.

Hotels are dependent on information and communication technologies (ICTs) for both their internal management and their relationships with customers and the other stakeholders. Therefore, research on ICTs in the hotel sector has kept growing lately. The purpose of this paper is to offer a review of the literature dedicated to ICTs in hotel management by analyzing papers published in seven prestigious journals in the field of Hospitality Management.

The 147 papers analyzed – published over a 27-year period – have been studied according to a variety of criteria such as their research methods, perspective, statistics used, topics covered, technologies and authors and countries.

The conclusions suggest a promising future regarding both ICT applications for hotel management and research in this area.

Concerning limitations, the most important one stems from the selection of works subject to examination because our analysis dealt with papers published in only seven journals, other publication sources have not been considered. Nevertheless, the present paper can prove useful both for researchers and hotel managers because new trends are emerging in both contexts with regard to technologies themselves as well as to some of their uses.

One of the most important contributions made with this work is the preparation of a list with the topics covered by the papers under examination. Moreover, no studies have to date specifically tried to identify the technologies used in hotel management by means of a literature review.

The continuation of globalisation and liberalisation processes has prompted the restructuring of many national and local property markets. The research examines the evolution of Istanbul's retail property market to identify how global and local agents engage with one another to produce a unique “glocalized” outcome.

The morphogenetic approach is adapted and applied to analyse the dynamics of market change. The focus is on the character and behaviour of national and international market actors and how they interact with the wider political economy. The research uses a combination of elite interviews, document analysis and corporate case studies to obtain empirical evidence.

The liberalisation of the Turkish economy heralded the entry of the first international companies into Istanbul's retail property market in the 1990s. International involvement expanded rapidly after 2004, accelerating the process of market re-structuring. However, while the number of global buy-outs increased, the expansion of local property companies–and the establishment of some international/national corporate partnerships–was even more marked. This resulted in a “glocalised” market with a strong and distinctive local culture.

Istanbul has been a major centre of trade for millenia. This is the first substantive analysis of the recent restructuring of the city's retail property market. Previous research on market maturity and market evolution has paid limited attention to the dynamics of change. The paper describes the use of a process-based theoretical framework (morphogenesis) that was explicitly designed to analyse structural shifts in socio-economic conditions through an examination of the characteristics and behaviours of the actors involved.

This study, using systematic literature review (SLR) aims to highlight and summarise current studies on the factors influencing customers’ Islamic home financing (IHF) selection and Islamic banking product preference, which has gained popularity within the banking sector over the past three decades. The SLR could map evolution and research fields, recommend a particular categorisation and determine primary issues to demonstrate current trends, future research directions and theoretical development.

The SLR was performed with a four-step reporting standard for the systematic evidence syntheses review method (research question formulation, systematic searching, quality assessment and data extraction) using 33 screened articles between 2008 and 2020 from two primary databases (Scopus and Web of Science) and one supporting database (Google Scholar).

The resulting factors could be categorised into four primary themes: consumer behaviour, consumer attributes, bank attributes and bank attributes (Islamic). The themes were subsequently divided into 16 sub-themes. Notably, all the factors proved essential for consumers’ evolving preferences and product competitiveness in the market.

This study encountered two limitations based on database selection and research period.

This SLR aimed to offer useful insights into the factors that should be prioritised by financial institutions for marketing approaches by investigating consumer behaviours.

This study pioneered an SLR on the study area for useful insights into the current research limitations and recommendations on future study directions. Specifically, the study method facilitated critical discussions and comparisons to past research outcomes and objectivity with triangulation from distinct perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on Islamic finance vis-à-vis legal and Sharīʿah non-compliance risks in its transactions and judicial dispute resolution in Nigeria. This is with a view to putting forward direction for future studies on the duo of legal and Sharīʿah non-compliance risks and their impact in Islamic finance.

This review is designed as an exploratory study and qualitative methodology is used in examining relevant literature comprising of primary and secondary data while identifying legal risk and Sharīʿah non-compliance risks of Nigeria’s Islamic finance industry. Using the doctrinal approach together with content analysis, relevant Nigerian laws and judicial precedents applicable to Islamic finance practice and related publications were examined in determining the identified risks.

Undeveloped laws, the uncertainty of Sharīʿah governance and enforceability issues are identified as legal gaps for Islamic finance under the Nigerian legal system. The gaps are inimical to and undermine investor confidence in Nigeria’s Islamic finance industry. The review reveals the necessity of tailor-made Sharīʿah-based regulations in addition to corresponding governance and oversight for a legally safe and Sharīʿah-compliant Islamic finance practice. It brings to light the imperative for mitigating the legal and Sharīʿah non-compliance risks associated with Islamic finance operations as crucial for Islamic finance businesses, Islamic finance institutions and their sustainable development.

Based on content analysis, the review is wholly doctrinal and does not involve empirical data. Legal safety and Sharīʿah compliance are not to be compromised in Islamic finance operations. The review would assist relevant regulators and investors in Islamic financial enterprises to understand and determine the impact and potential ramifications of legal safety and Sharīʿah non-compliance on Islamic Finance Institutions.

This study provides an insight into the dimensions and ramifications of legal and Sharīʿah non-compliance risks of Nigeria’s Islamic finance industry. This study is premised on the imperative for research studies whose outcome would inform regulations that strike a balance between establishing Islamic financial institution/business and ensuring legal certainty and Sharīʿah compliance of their operations. This study paves way for this kind of research studies.

The findings and discussions provide a guide for regulators and researchers on the identification and mitigation of legal and Sharīʿah non-compliance risks in Islamic finance via a literature review. This study, the first of its kind in Nigeria, advances the idea that research into legal and Sharīʿah non-compliance risks of Islamic financial entities is key to mitigating the risks and fostering the entities and their businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the vital importance of dispute management in cases of both near and outright sukuk defaults. With the case studies, this study examines the vital importance of dispute management in cases of both near and outright sukuk defaults. With a number of case studies, the study shows how debt restructuring can play a significant role as a dispute management procedure recognized in Islamic law.

The study uses the case study methodology to determine the impact of debt restructuring in instances of near and outright sukuk default and the process taken to reach a win-win settlement among the parties. Due to some sensitive financial information, the study has fully anonymized the sukuk companies examined.

The paper finds that for a more sustainable and stable and resilient Islamic finance industry, the role of law through dispute management cannot be ruled out, as appropriate dispute management mechanism facilitates the underlying contracts.

This study limits its focus to near and outright sukuk defaults and the need to come up with Shari’ah-based mechanisms for dispute management when things seem to have fallen apart.

The study proposes an integrated regulatory-cum-remedial framework which may serve as sustainable mechanism for handling circumstances involving near and outright sukuk defaults with a view to protecting the rights of all the stakeholders.

Though few studies have been conducted on sukuk defaults in cross-border transactions, there has not been much focus on dispute management of cases involving such defaults. This study seeks to fill such an important gap, which has the potential of streamlining dispute management practices in the sukuk industry.

Despite the rapid growth and internationalisation of services and financial services in particular, managers realise that to successfully leverage service quality as a global competitive tool, they first need to correctly identify the antecedents of what the international consumer perceives as service quality. This paper aims to examine the differences: in perceptions of service quality; and in the ranking of quality dimension between the bank customers of five Balkan countries: Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, FYROM and Serbia.

Bahia and Nantel proposed a specific scale for measuring perceived service quality in retail banking consisting of six dimensions of service quality: effectiveness and assurance; access; price; tangibles; service portfolio; and reliability. This instrument was used for collecting data in the context of banking services from the five Balkan countries. T‐test and factor analysis were employed to answer the research questions.

The results suggest that Greek customers perceived receiving the highest level of service quality. Differences and similarities between the countries were also reported related to the degree of importance attached to the BSQ dimensions of service quality.

The results have significant implications for banks in developing operational, marketing and human resource strategies in the Balkan context.

The international bank managers need to understand the value of environmental differences between countries in terms of economic development, political situation, socio‐cultural system and the level of sector maturity. Accordingly they can emphasise the various dimensions of service quality differently and in addition focus on commonalities to introduce quality initiatives in the Balkans.

Drawing from the fact that institutions act as incentives and disincentives to human behaviour in financial markets, the purpose of this study is to examine the moderating role of institutional pillars in the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The study used cross-sectional research design and data were collected from the poor residing in rural Uganda. Statistical package for social sciences was used to analyse the data. Descriptive statistics, correlations and regression analyses were generated. Besides, ModGraph excel programme was adopted to graphically explain the moderating role of institutional pillars in the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The results revealed that institutional pillars of regulative (formal rules), normative (informal norms) and cultural cognitive (cognition) significantly moderate the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor. Furthermore, the results also indicated that financial intermediation and institutional pillars have significant effects on financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The study focuses on only cross-sectional design, thus, leaving out longitudinal study. Future research using longitudinal data that explore behaviours of the poor over time could be useful. In addition, only quantitative data were used to measure variables under study and use of qualitative data were ignored. Thus, further studies using qualitative data are feasible.

Policymakers and advocates of financial inclusion in a developing country such as Uganda should adopt institutional pillars (regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive) in promoting financial intermediation in rural areas. The institutional pillars working in combination set the “rule of the game” or “humanly devise constraints” that guide economic exchange by promoting and limiting certain actions of actors in underdeveloped financial market as stipulated by North (1990) and Scott (1995).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to examine the moderating role of institutional pillars under the theory of institutions in the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor in a developing country setting. Indeed, institutions guide contract enforceability and information sharing in human interaction to lower transaction cost in the financial markets. This is missing in literature and theory of financial intermediation in promoting financial inclusion, especially in rural Uganda.