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This paper aims to examine the factors influencing the extent of information disclosed on the companies’ websites in the Middle East region.

This study uses multiple regression models to examine the impact of some companies’ characteristics (company size, leverage, profitability, size of the audit firm, ownership concentration) on the extent of online disclosure. The study was conducted on 170 listed companies in seven countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey). The website content was analyzed during the period from September 2015 to December 2015.

The results reveal that the most important factors influencing the level of Web-based disclosure are company size, leverage and the size of the audit firm.

The results of the study will help regulators to formulate policies about Web-based disclosure as they offer insights into the characteristics of those companies which do and do not meet investors’ demands for online information. Thereby, the regulators might expect that the Middle East companies engage in the online reporting to be larger, have higher debt levels and audited by a big-four audit firm.

This study, added to the existing literature by analyzing seven countries in the Middle East region, allows having a clearer idea on the online disclosure in this region as a whole, which has not been examined before. In this paper, to assess the information’s disclosure on the website, the study has been interested in all of the information presented on the websites: financial and non-financial information.

The prime objective of this study is to offer fruitful implications about allocation and directing foreign direct investment (FDI) to gain maximum economic advantage. The study offers innovative findings by contributing to a new angle.

The study used the annual data of 24 countries, for the period of 1995–2016 and employed quantile regression and GMM as main estimation techniques. For robustness of empirical findings and to check income effect, the study divided the countries as high income, low-income panels.

Overall, the findings reported very interesting and surprising results as regional analysis. The results show the sensitivity of FDI for Middle East and high-income group of countries, inferring that there might several other factors due to which FDI is adversely affecting growth and these countries need to reform institutional quality.

The paper is restricted for 24 countries of Asia and Middle East, based on the data availability.

The high-income countries should put more efforts to attract funds. The Asian and Middle East countries countries can update trade regulations to encourage entrepreneurs and reduce trade tariffs.

The present study investigated the role of FDI for economic growth in the context of Belt and Road Initiative countries of Middle East and Asian regions. The paper reviewed the past literature and identified regional analysis as a research gap to focus on Belt and Road Initiative in Asia and Middle East region.

The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2008. The IBO published a strategic plan in 2004 calling for a shift towards directed growth of the three IB programmes, and greater access. The purpose of this paper is to show how the Middle East region offers a microcosm of the huge challenge facing the IBO in meeting its desired aims.

This paper presents the current situation regarding the IB in the Middle East region as defined by the International Air Transport Association standards organization. This involves a total of 16 countries.

The Middle East involves a relatively small area of IB activity in relation to the total number of “international schools” in the region. There is currently 48 schools offering 60 programmes, and comprising 2 percent of IB schools worldwide. Dubai in particular has seemingly much potential for future growth. No school offers the continuum of IB programmes.

This paper offers a regional insight into the challenge facing the IB in meeting its desired goals. It will allow for the success of the IB strategic plan to be assessed more fully in the year 2014.

The nature and development of the IB in the Middle East has received very little attention by the scholarly community in spite of 40 years of involvement. This is the first paper to offer a resource for evaluating the future success of the IB strategic plan.

Interest in creating high performance organizations (HPOs) has been growing in the Middle East and Middle Eastern managers have been looking into practices that will help them elevate organizational performance. Unfortunately there is a shortage of HPO studies conducted in the Middle East which could help these managers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of the recently developed HPO Framework in a Middle Eastern context, namely at Palestine Polytechnic University (PPU). The goal of the study was to evaluate whether this framework could be applied in the Middle Eastern context and thus help improve performance of Middle Eastern organizations.

A workshop was conducted with management and staff of the university at PPU's premises in Hebron. During the workshop, management, staff and teachers filled in the HPO questionnaire, which gauges the current HPO status of an organization. The resulting HPO score of PPU, and the comparison with the scores of other Middle‐Eastern organizations in the database of the researchers, were discussed during a workshop with representatives of PPU and initial improvements were established and put down in an action plan.

With an average HPO score of 6.8, PPU was an average scoring organization that performed more or less the same as the other Middle‐East organizations. However, two main issues for PPU emerged that had to be addressed in order to transform the university in an HPO. The first issue was that PPU's performance management process had to be improved, as not everything that mattered to PPU's performance was communicated to everybody adequately enough. The second issue was that the performance‐driven behavior of PPU's people had to be strengthened, as the decision‐making and action‐taking processes took too long and people were nor resilient and flexible enough to deal quickly with changing conditions.

Practically, the research findings could help managers of Middle Eastern organizations to achieve sustainable high performance in their organizations.

The research described in this paper constitutes one of the first studies into the determining factors of sustainable high performance in the Middle East and as such, it adds to the strategic management literature by showing that the HPO concept can be applied in the Middle East to evaluate the high performance status of Middle Eastern organizations.

The recent political crisis in the Middle East, coupled with several banking failures, have raised concerns about the safety of this region's banks among potential customers and investors in the international market. This paper presents an analysis of the safety of Middle Eastern banks, using capital strength as a measure of safety. A comparison of the capital strength of Middle Eastern banks with a sample of the world's largest banks and the largest U.S. banks (based on capital) is conducted for the period 1988 to 1992. The results of this study indicate that Middle Eastern banks possess significantly higher capital to assets ratios than both world and U.S. banks, and very few Middle Eastern banks failed to meet the Basel minimum capital ratio during this period.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and discuss the viability of Islamic crowdfunding (ICF) as an alternative form of financing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Middle Eastern and Islamic business environment. This study raised essential questions: what is the perception of ICF in the Middle East? Does the Middle East region really need an Islamic crowdfunding model to support SMEs? Is it possible to create a crowdfunding platform complaint with Sharia? What are the requirements for developing an Islamic crowdfunding model?

The methodology followed to answer these questions is a qualitative research design depends on in-depth interviews, literature review, historical analysis and critical discussion. Data analysis was conducted using NVivo to analyze 25 in-depth interviews with Islamic scholars, Sharia board members and Islamic finance experts from different Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Iraq, UAE and Bahrain. In addition, more than 115 transcriptions, memos and research articles were used.

The study provides a new Islamic Sharīʿah-compliant crowdfunding model as the main outcome of this study. In addition, the content analysis revealed four main themes to be the essential pillars to develop the ICF model. These provisions of Islamic Sharia are: Project Idea (Halal) (28.5%), Funding Goal (36%), Return and Risk (14%) and Funding Commitments (21.5%). The findings also revealed that the four types of crowdfunding (reward-based crowdfunding, donation-based crowdfunding, loan-based crowdfunding and equity-based crowdfunding) are legal and supported by evidence from Quran and Sunnah.

Despite the critical development in Islamic finance and the expanding number of young Muslims slanting digital Islamic services, empirical studies exploring this issue in the Middle East is still inadequate. Further, ICF has increased attention and there is an urgent need for financing new SMEs in the Middle East.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the main contract principles which govern the international arbitration contract with special emphasis to examine contract principle found of the Middle East, how international principles of contract are perceived in the region, and whether there are any dominant contract principles.

A general exploratory research procedure used to give a better grasp of various aspects of socio‐legal approaches. The paper seeks to create knowledge that can be used to retrieve some pressing social and organisational understanding in the said region. The first part of the paper examines the role of ethics and tradition in understanding Middle Eastern contract principles. The second part examines the impact of Islamic Law on commercial contract principles. The third section analyses the regional perception of international contract principles. Finally, the paper addresses some contemporary issues of international contracts in the Middle East.

The paper showed that the legal perceptions of international contract principles reflect regional legal thinking which has been influenced by a mixed understanding of regional traditions, Islamic contract law principles as well as Western contract principles when these principles match regional legal culture. Overall, it showed that still under such mixed understanding, there are strong regional legal traditions and these are found in Islamic contract principles and affects commercial contract experiences. In general, a significant difference still exists between modern international contract principles and those in the Middle East.

The paper generates a knowledge that mixed understanding in regard to international contract arbitration principles due historical and cultural reasoning. Arab States does not share common understanding of international contract principles. Thus, it is very superfluous to propose the argument that there is sole Middle Eastern regional perception which dominates every Arab State. Therefore, special understandings and considerations should be given to every international arbitration contract from certain Arab State entity to another.

The paper provides a clear understanding of the guidelines for international commercial arbitration contract in the Middle East. Legal culture should be taken into consideration if a successful contract implementation has to be achieved.

Tourism in the Middle East is distinct and diverse, as are its associated challenges. The purpose of this paper is to examine the various opportunities and constraints facing the Middle East region in developing and promoting its tourism.

Content analysis of the current literature was conducted, and industry white papers and government portals were consulted to identify the historical relevance, current proceedings and future scope of tourism in the Middle East.

Given the diverse attractions, history, heritage and cuisine, the scope and potential to develop tourism in the Middle East region is enormous. However, political turmoil in the past and its stereotypical image emerged as the major constraints. Acknowledging the significance of the tourism sector, the governments of the region are trying hard to improve international arrivals and revenues.

Despite a steep growth in international arrivals, tourism in the Middle East has not been adequately addressed in academia. This paper highlights the region’s tourism-related background, issues and constraints, thus, addressing a critical gap in the literature.