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The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of firm financial and operational characteristics on the level of forward-looking information disclosure (FLID) by Egyptian-listed non-financial companies. The present research also aims to investigate the moderating role of gender diversity on the board of directors.

The sample incorporates the non-financial companies included in the EGX 100 of the Egyptian Stock Exchange (ESE), whose reports were available during the study period from 2013 to 2018. The final sample comprises 49 companies with 294 observations. Statistical analysis is performed using multiple regression analysis.

This study found a significant positive impact of return on assets, leverage, company size and age on the level FLID, while external audit firm type and industry were found to impact the level of FLID negatively. Further, the board gender diversity (BGD) is found to have a moderating impact as it strengthens the effect of financial and operational characteristics on the level of FLID.

The present study has some implications for Egyptian companies, investors in the Egyptian market and regulators in emerging economies, which include paying more attention to BGD when selecting the board members by companies as well as following up the female representation in all the listed companies by regulators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the moderating role of BGD and its impact on the level of FLID in emerging markets. This extends the disclosure literature as the present study brings new evidence from an emerging market regarding BGD moderating role as early research concentrated on the direct impact of BGD on the level of FLID.

This paper aims to explore whether environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance is positively associated with firm investment efficiency (IE) in emerging economies. It also examines whether board cultural diversity can moderate the ESG–IE relationship.

This paper uses a cross-country sample of listed firms located in seven emerging countries over the 2011–2019 period. The authors use a fixed effect panel regression to empirically test the hypotheses. The authors also use a lagged model and a Heckman’s (1979) two-stage procedure to mitigate potential endogeneity issues. In addition, a two-stage least squares regression analysis was done as an additional robustness check.

This study finds that firms with stronger ESG performance have a higher investment efficiency. Interestingly, this study finds that board cultural diversity negatively moderates the impact of ESG performance on IE for firms operating in settings prone to overinvestment. This result suggests that ESG performance plays a less important role in mitigating managers' tendencies to overinvest when corporate boards have more foreign directors. However, the authors do not find such evidence in firms prone to underinvestment. These findings hold after using an alternative measure of IE and controlling for endogeneity concerns.

This paper adds to the existing body of knowledge in three dimensions. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first cross-country study that investigates the linkage between ESG performance and corporate IE in the context of emerging countries. Second, the authors have enriched the prior literature by examining the moderating effect of board cultural diversity on the positive association between ESG performance and corporate IE. Finally, this study has important implications for policymakers and capital suppliers in emerging countries, which strive to facilitate the efficient allocation of scarce resources.

To achieve sustainable development objectives, managers are encouraged to implement best practices in corporate social and environmental responsibility within their establishments. The main objective of this chapter is to assess the quality of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) communication for Moroccan financial institutions. This chapter is devoted to the content analysis of the annual reports of 14 financial institutions listed in Morocco regarding ESG strategies between 2017 and 2021. The reference assessment tool we used is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards (2016), based on six principles. Each principle contains requirements and guidance on how to apply it. These principles are summarized in the following: Accuracy, Balance, Clarity, Comparability, Reliability, and Timeliness. The sample is composed of 14 financial institutions listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange. After checking the content of the annual reports of listed Moroccan financial institutions, we detected several shortcomings in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting behavior. Companies avoid disclosing information about negative events and performance. We saw this as a bad sign for stakeholders. The results showed a significant gap between the GRI standards and the content of the annual reports. These weaknesses mainly concern accuracy, comparability, and, timeliness, hence the need to carry out corrective measures to improve the quality of ESG practices within Moroccan financial institutions. One of the limitations of this research is its focus on financial institutions. However, it is possible to broaden the scope of the research by assessing the quality of ESG communication for nonfinancial companies.

Patient safety focuses on minimizing risks that might occur to patients during provision of healthcare. The purpose of this study was to explore healthcare practitioners’ attitudes towards patient safety inside different hospital settings in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of healthcare practitioners in main hospitals in Jeddah. Two main hospitals (one governmental and one private) were selected from each region of Jeddah (east, west, north and south), with a total number of eight out of thirty hospitals. Data were collected through the Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire III that was distributed online. The questionnaire used a 5-point scale. Descriptive statistics were used. Comparisons were made by independent t-test and ANOVA. The statistical significance level was set at p < 0.05.

The study included 341 healthcare practitioners of different sexes and specialties in eight major governmental and private hospitals in Jeddah. “Working hours as error cause” subscale had the highest mean score (4.03 ± 0.89), while “Professional incompetence as error cause” had the lowest mean score (3.49 ± 0.97). The total questionnaire had a moderate average score (3.74 ± 0.63). Weak correlations between the average score of the questionnaire and sex, occupation and workplace were found (−0.119, −0.018 and −0.088, respectively).

Hospitals need to develop targeted interventions, including continuing professional development programs, to enhance patient safety culture and practices. Moreover, patient safety training is required at the undergraduate education level, which necessitates health professions education institutions to give more attention to patient safety education in their curricula.

The study contributed to the existing literature on patient safety culture in hospital settings in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The insights generated by the study can inform targeted interventions to enhance patient safety culture in hospitals and improve patient outcomes.

This study aims to investigate the impact of job loss on the mental health of individuals in Tunisia during the COVID-19 crisis.

In this research, the authors use the counterfactual decomposition technique and the potential outcome approach. In the first part, the authors calculated mental health indicators for all individuals included in the sample based on the World Health Organization-5 items. The individuals were then grouped into two subpopulations: the first group included those who had lost their jobs and the second group included individuals whose status in the labor market had remained unchanged. In the second part, the authors used the Blinder and Oaxaca decomposition to explain the mean difference in the mental health scores between the two groups and determine the factors contributing to this difference.

The empirical results identified symptoms of depressed mood, decreased energy and loss of interest in several individuals. Based on these three symptoms, the authors were able to classify individuals into three types of depression: mild, moderate and severe. In addition, it appeared that job loss had significantly contributed to the worsening mental health of the individuals.

Although the psychological impact of the COVID-19 outbreak among health-care professionals has been the subject of other studies in health literature on Tunisia, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research has addressed the impact of job loss on the mental health of Tunisian workers. Thus, this study fills this gap in the literature.

This paper aims to investigate the efficiency and performance of the Islamic banking industry amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors used a two-stage data envelopment analysis to first estimate the efficiency of 78 Islamic banks (IBs) across 15 countries for the 2005–2020 period (a total of 782 bank-year observations) and then to examine their determinants, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors found that the Islamic banking industry performed at a moderate level during the 2005–2020 period, providing evidence that IBs are resilient to the financial shocks created by COVID-19. The authors also found that bank-level characteristics (such as bank size) and country-level characteristics (such as inflation) can contribute to the bank’s operational efficiency.

The results of this study suggested that banking management and government macroeconomic policy, especially in terms of precautions and continuous support, are important for IBs to improve their performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the efficiency and performance of IBs amid COVID-19.

The United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDGs) put together a global framework in an attempt to address environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns. Measuring a company’s contribution to the SDGs relies heavily on ESG reporting. This paper aims to examine the impact of ESG reporting on the corporate profitability of listed companies in Thailand over the period of 2019–2021.

Using 147 listed firms in the ESG group, content analysis was used to quantify the ESG reporting (within 11 themes), while corporate profitability was measured by return on asset and return on equity. Descriptive analysis, correlation matrix and panel regression are used to analyze the data of this study.

Consistent with the legitimacy, stakeholder and signaling theories, the authors found a statistically significant and positive impact of ESG reporting on corporate profitability in Thailand.

The findings highlight the importance of incorporating ESG considerations into companies’ reporting and decision-making processes, as these can enhance firm profitability and performance, attract stakeholders, improve their competitive advantage and step toward sustainability.

This study aims to examine whether and how gender diversity on corporate boards is associated with voluntary nonfinancial disclosures, particularly water disclosures.

This study uses corporate water information disclosure data from Chinese listed firms between 2010 and 2018 to conduct regression analyses to examine the association between female directors and water information disclosure.

Empirical results show that female directors have a significantly positive association with corporate water information disclosure. Additionally, internal industry water sensitivity of firms moderates this significant relationship.

This study determined that female directors can promote not only water disclosure but also positive corporate water performance, reflecting the consistency of words and deeds of female directors in voluntary nonfinancial disclosures.

Stock market performance is paramount to every country, as it signifies economic growth, business performance, wealth maximization, savings deployment and consumer confidence. This study investigates the disparities in the market performance of listed firms in Romania. This study also examines whether the COVID-19 crisis affected market performance.

The data were collected from 69 firms listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE) from 2018 to 2022, belonging to 11 sectors. This study used several methods to achieve its objectives. Difference tests were considered to analyze the performance of Romanian companies before and during the COVID-19 crisis, as well as across sectors. Regression analysis was also conducted to estimate the effect of the COVID-19 crisis and classification type on Romanian companies' performance. Additional analyses were performed to verify the findings of the present study.

The study’s findings indicate a clear difference in market performance between the pre-crisis and crisis periods. The COVID-19 pandemic had an adverse and significant impact on market performance. However, after the market contraction in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the stock market outperformed the pre-pandemic capitalization levels and the regional and global indices evolution. Furthermore, there was a difference in market performance across sectors. In particular, the communication services sector has specifically demonstrated accelerated growth.

This research examines the variation in the market performance of companies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and across different sectors. It also provides evidence of the potential impact of COVID-19 on firms' market performance. This research contributes to a better understanding of how sectors perform during times of crisis.

This study aims to examine whether a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) transparency (reflected in two separate dimensions of social transparency and environmental transparency) affects a company’s dependence on expensive trade credit (TC) financing.

The authors use a panel of S&P 500 index companies between 2012 and 2019 and ordinary least squares estimators. Transparency ratings represented by Bloomberg scores capture both the quantity and quality of verified CSR practice information.

CSR transparency (CSRT) is negatively associated with a firm’s dependence on expensive TC financing. This study’s results continue to hold after a battery of robustness tests like substitute proxies for TC, use of two-stage least squares regression, industry-adjusted dependent variable, generalized linear model and bootstrapping approach. This association is stronger among companies with higher information asymmetry (IASY) and lower quality regarding governance and financial reporting. Further investigation indicates that potential channels through which CSRT mitigates a company’s reliance on TC financing are the cost of debt (CoD) and stock liquidity. This study’s findings suggest that transparent companies have a lower CoD and higher stock liquidity. This helps these companies to be more financially flexible and eventually less dependent on expensive TC financing.

By combining two separate research lines of TC and CSR, this study adds to both works of literature as it is the first (to the best of the authors’ knowledge) to present evidence of the effect of CSRT proxied by Bloomberg scores on a company’s reliance on TC (a real economic decision and financial policy). Additionally, this study documents the moderating effects of financial reporting quality, IASY and corporate governance on the relationship between CSRT and TC financing. In conclusion, this study provides empirical evidence regarding the potential mechanisms of CoD and stock liquidity, through which CSRT influences a company’s reliance on TC financing.