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The accreditation process of academic programs is being used more to recognize program quality and identify areas for improvement based on rigorous standards. This study aims to use the standards of the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) as a theoretical and analytical framework to examine the effectiveness and areas for improvement of the teacher education program at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman.

A multiple case-study design is used to investigate the cases of 16 novice program completers. Data is collected using nonparticipant observation and semistructured interviews with 48 key stakeholders: program completers, their educational supervisors and school principals.

Results show that, overall, the program is effective in preparing future teachers to enter the teaching profession, especially in the subject and pedagogical content knowledge, and that stakeholders are generally satisfied with the program. However, about a third believe the program lacks relevance to the responsibilities teachers face on the job and some “technical” skills needed in practice.

First, the findings are limited by the small number of completers’ cases from one teacher education program. Therefore, the authors recommend that future studies should include larger samples of novice teachers graduating from different teacher education programs. Second, the study is limited by focusing only on stakeholders’ perspectives, and teacher observation through CAEP informed categories related to standards 1, 4 and 5. So future research can tell more to the story by uncovering other CAEP standards to provide a more comprehensive view.

The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the existing pool of knowledge on the utility of using international accreditation frameworks, not only as a means to measure the effectiveness of teacher education programs but also to develop such programs according to an internationally recognized set of quality standards. The results may also contribute to the discourse on whether the Madonlization of CAEP standards is a useless business for Arabic-speaking countries.

As elsewhere in the Arab region, education has been placed at the core of the Oman 2040 vision, which prioritizes the improvement of educational outcomes as Oman’s gateway to becoming a developed country. Therefore, it has become clear that teacher education programs need to be subject to scrutiny to ensure that they produce highly qualified teachers. While reform initiatives have raised concerns about the quality of teacher performance in Omani schools, little attention has been given to the effectiveness of teacher education programs in the country.

These results are discussed through three main themes related to the role of teacher preparation programs in the Arab region from a standards-based perspective: they need to be viewed as a rite of passage for all teachers to provide them with only the threshold competence to commence the professional teaching performance, there is a need for more authentic and safe learning experiences in these programs, and finally, there is a need for continuous adjustment of courses in these programs to perfect the “potion” that makes them more effective and relevant.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of Maqasid Al-Shariah corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of public listed companies of Shariah-compliant companies in Malaysia.

Content analysis was used to construct the Maqasid Al-Shariah CSR disclosure index. Furthermore, the study used a checklist that covered four themes of CSR, namely environment, community involvement, human resource and product, and five elements of Maqasid Al-Shariah, namely, faith, human self, intellect, posterity and wealth.

The findings of the study show that the level of Maqasid Al-Shariah CSR disclosure index is generally low. The study found that Shariah-compliant companies revealed more community-related theme and an intellect element in their annual reports for the year of the survey.

This paper is one of few papers that has developed the Maqasid Al-Shariah CSR disclosure index that used the aforementioned four themes of CSR and five Maqasid Al-Shariah elements.

This study aims to investigate the impact of ownership structure and board characteristics on dividend policy in the listed Turkish firms between 2013 and 2019.

This study uses the probability of paying dividends, dividend payout ratio and dividend yield measures. The suitable regression procedures (logit, probit and Tobit models) are used to examine the research hypotheses by focusing on a panel data set drawn from the Borsa Istanbul (BIST) 100 index, excluding financial and utility firms.

The empirical findings indicate that institutional and concentrated ownerships are significant and positively associated with dividend payouts, whereas family ownership does not influence dividend policy. On the other end, board size is positive, while chief executive officer duality is negatively related to dividend policy. Additionally, the female directors and board independence are insignificant in influencing firms to pay high dividends.

Future researchers can validate this paper’s findings by considering the stock dividends as well. Additionally, future researchers may investigate the relationship between these constructs by extending the sample size of firms listed on BIST or in other emerging markets.

This study’s findings may serve policymakers, regulators, investors and academic researchers to get valuable guidance from relevant literature. The Turkish firms may improve dividend policy by implementing the regulatory framework introduced by the Capital Markets Law in 2012 for effective monitoring and protecting the minority shareholders’ rights. The controlling shareholders may alleviate principal-principal conflicts by ensuring the independence of directors and increasing the number of female directors according to the critical mass of at least 30% of board members.

This study contributes to agency theory and signaling theory by considering ownership structure and board attributes among Turkish firms related to dividend payments.

The present study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance proxies by ownership structure and firm-specific characteristics, i.e. firm size, leverage, growth opportunities, previous year dividend, firm risk, profitability, and liquidity on dividend behavior of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) listed firms.

Final sample of the study consists of 140 PSX-listed firms. The study covers a period of six years, starting from 2015 to 2020. Dividend payout dummy, dividend payout ratio, and dividend yield were used to assess the dividend behavior of the sample firms. The appropriate regression procedures (logistic, probit, ordinary least square (OLS), and fixed effect regression) are used to test the study hypothesis. To check the robustness of the result, a system GMM estimation technique is also used in the present study.

The study reveals that institutional ownership, foreign ownership, and individual ownership have a significant positive whereas managerial ownership has a significant negative impact on the dividend decision of sample firms. Among firm-specific characteristics, it was found that liquidity, profitability, and the previous year's dividend were significantly positive, while growth opportunities were significantly inversely associated with dividend payout decisions of PSX-listed firms.

This study sheds light on the relationship between dividend policy, ownership structure, and firm-specific factors in the context of an emerging market like Pakistan. The study's findings have important implications for managers, minority shareholders, lawmakers, and investors looking for guidance on the dividend policy of publicly-traded non-financial firms.

The literature lacks studies that together analyze the ownership characteristics and firm-specific variables on dividend decisions, particularly in the context of developing economies. The current study aims to fill this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the conduct of the audit committee (AC) in terms of its oversight role of audit quality in the UK.

This study uses semi-structured interviews with 11 AC members and 11 audit partners.

The findings show that the conduct of the AC in relation to audit quality involves the assessment of the contents of the reports prepared by the external auditors for the AC. Furthermore, the oversight of audit quality by the AC involves a thorough assessment of the presentation of the external auditors during the interaction and communication between the two parties. This illustrates the AC’s role as an effective monitoring mechanism when overseeing the audit quality. However, the conduct of the AC in overseeing four major areas (independence, appointment, remuneration and effectiveness of audit process) related to audit quality, as recommended by the UK Code of Corporate Governance, provides mixed results. The findings highlight the ceremonial role of the AC in those areas, which demonstrates the limited supporting role of the AC in enhancing audit quality. Furthermore, it is suggested that the effectiveness of the oversight role is influenced by the quality of the chairman of the AC and the quality of the relationship between the AC and the external auditors.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing additional insights into the conduct of the AC in overseeing audit quality as well as additional evidence concerning the role and effect of the AC in relation to audit quality as prescribed by the UK Code of Corporate Governance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of audit committee (AC) characteristics, such as AC size, AC independence and gender diversity on firm risk in the context of an emerging market.

The sample data includes 102 nonfinancial Pakistan Stock Exchange listed firms from 2004 to 2018. Firm risk is measured through three proxies, namely, idiosyncratic risk, total risk and capital expenditure. Along with this, profitability, leverage, market-to-book ratio, firm age, net property plant and equipment (NPPE) and surplus cash are used as control variables. The Housman test is used to select the best model from the fixed-effect model and the random effect model to conclude the findings.

According to the study's findings, AC characteristics have a negative and significant relationship with idiosyncratic risk. In addition, a gender-diverse AC has a significant negative relationship with capital expenditure. In connection with total risk, AC characteristics fail to shows any significant relationship. Among the control variables, the results show that profitability stand for return on asset (ROA) and NPPE have a significant negative relationship, whereas market-to-book value has a significant positive relationship with both idiosyncratic and total risk.

The study's findings offer policymakers, managers and investors guidance. This study will provide new insights to the Pakistani Government, stock market, companies and accounting and auditing regulators in terms of understanding the determinants influencing risk management activities. Furthermore, this study will assist financial institutions in making credit decisions. In addition, this study provides policymakers, such as the stand for Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), with guidelines for developing policies that strengthen the board governance mechanism.

This study investigates the impact of AC characteristics on corporate risk, which is rarely discussed in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to report a case study in which artificial neural network (ANN) has been used for performing fuzzy logic based leanness assessment.

Leanness is the measure of lean manufacturing practice. Fuzzy logic has been used for the calculation of leanness. To improve the effectiveness of computation, ANN tool has been used in this study. The network has been modeled, trained and simulated using the MATLAB software.

The disadvantages associated with the scoring method has been overcome by the deployment of fuzzy logic. The problem associated with manual computation has been overcome by the application of ANN. The simulated model has been validated by measuring the leanness level of the case organization.

The case study has been carried out in a single electronic switches manufacturing organization. In the fuzzy logic approach, triangular fuzzy numbers are being used in the present study.

The paper reports a case study conducted in an Indian transformers manufacturing organisation. Hence, the results derived from the study are validated in a real time manufacturing environment.

The idea of applying ANN for fuzzy logic based leanness assessment is the original contribution of the authors.

This study aims to investigate the impact of dividend policy on a firm’s participation in corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related activities in the context of Pakistani firms. Furthermore, the role of the board governance mechanism in dividend policy-CSR is investigated.

The study’s sample consists of 115 nonfinancial Pakistan Stock Exchange-listed firms from 2010 to 2021. A multidimensional financial method is used to assess the firm’s CSR engagement, and dividend policy is assessed using the dividend payout ratio and dividend yield. The authors used the fixed effect model and the random effect model to fulfill the study’s objectives. Furthermore, the system-generalized method of moment estimation technique is used to test the robustness of the result. In addition, the authors perform reverse causality analysis and investigate the effect of financial constraints on the dividend policy–CSR relationship.

The authors find that dividend policy has a significant positive impact on CSR. The authors also find that dividend policy is significantly positively associated with components of CSR, i.e. donation, employee welfare and research and development. Furthermore, the authors find that the board governance mechanism strengthens this positive relationship between dividend policy and CSR.

The government and authorities must mandate or at least encourage enterprises to pay dividends as doing so not only keeps shareholders happy but also encourages firms to make CSR initiatives to balance stakeholders. Furthermore, the regulator should take steps to strengthen the board governance structure as it strengthens the positive dividend policy–CSR relationship.

Although little previous research has focused on the CSR-dividend policy link, the authors believe that this is the first study to look at the influence of dividend policy on CSR and the moderating impact of board governance mechanisms in an emerging country, namely, Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a survey undertaken to identify and rank factors that are responsible for delay in the schedule of strategic industrial projects in Iran.

The survey covered 40 factors identified by previous literature and modified by 20 project professionals to fit the Iranian industrial culture. These factors were grouped into six major categories. For each category, the Shannon entropy weighting technique was applied.

The analysis of the 64 returned out of 87 randomly distributed questionnaires revealed that “sanctions” from political group, “cash flow problems” from financial group, “equipment availability and failure” from technical group, “project manager competence” from managerial group, “material procurement” from procurement group and “unqualified workforce” from human resource group were ranked as the highest contributing factors.

The findings of this study are of practical use for project professionals and experts seeking to improve the schedule performance of industrial projects.

Sustainability is essential to the ongoing operations of banks, though it is much less clear how Islamic corporate governance (ICG) promotes economic sustainability (ES) and thereby prevents bankruptcy. To explore the unexplored, this study aims to examine the efficacy of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and enhancing the ES of Islamic banks operating in Pakistan.

The current study measures ES through Altman's Z-score to analyze the level of the industry's stability and consequently examines the effect of ICG on the ES of Islamic banks in Pakistan for the post-financial-crises period. Using the country-level data, this study utilized a fixed-effect model and two-stage least squares (2SLS) techniques on balanced panel data spanning from 2009 to 2020 to provide empirical evidence.

The empirical results unveiled that board size and meetings have a significant positive influence on the ES while managerial ownership demonstrated an unfavorable effect on ES. Interestingly, the insignificant effect of women directors became significant with the inclusion of controlled variables. Overall, the findings indicate that ICG is an efficient tool for promoting ES in Islamic banks and preventing them from the negative effects of emerging crises.

The findings provide concrete insights for policymakers, regulators and other concerned stakeholders to execute a sturdy corporate governance system that not only oversees the economic, social and ethical aspects but also provides measures to alleviate the impacts of potential risks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining the role of ICG in alleviating bankruptcy risk is an informative and useful endeavor for all social actors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first efforts to provide evidence-based insights on the role of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and offers a potential research direction for ES.