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The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of Islamic banks (IBs) product and services disclosure (PSD).

A computer-based content analysis is run upon the annual reports for a sample of 78 IBs operating in 11 countries from 2004 to 2012 to find the number of product and services statements. The levels and trends of PSD are identified. A regression analysis to identify the factors affecting PSD in IBs is also used.

The findings suggest that there has been a significant improvement of PSD over time. The results show a positive association between PSD and Shariah board size, board size, chief executive officer (CEO) tenure, duality in position, blockholders and investment account holders. However, they show a negative association between PSD and institutional ownership. In addition, it appears that board independence does not affect significantly banks’ PSD. It is also found that the bank performance, bank age, leverage, listing, adoption of international financial reporting standards, adoption of Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions and country transparency index have a positive effect on the PSD.

This study offers an original contribution to corporate disclosure literature by being the first to develop and investigate PSD for a large sample of IBs during a long period of time. It links P&S with bank corporate governance characteristics. The findings have many important policy implications. More specifically, this paper encourages regulators in the studied countries to improve corporate governance mechanisms in their Islamic banking systems through the optimization of ownership structure, CEO’s characteristics and the board’s characteristics, to promote PSD. Moreover, the findings support the theoretical predictions of the generalized agency theory. This study’s empirical evidence enhances the understanding of the corporate social responsibility disclosure environment in general and the PSD environment in particular for IBs. This study is the first one that measures PSD in the annual reports for a large cross-countries sample of IBs during a long period of time. It is also the first one that links PSD with IBs corporate governance mechanisms.

This study aims to investigate the extent and trends of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and to analyze the determinants of the listed banks’ annual reports and websites in an emergent capital market, namely, Tunisia.

The authors examine the level of CSR disclosure by means of a manual content analysis where the sentence is used as the unit of the analysis. They use Branco and Rodrigues’ (2006 and 2008) index which includes 23 items. They focus on the annual reports of 11 Tunisian listed banks during the period from 2007 to 2012 and the information presented on their websites in December 2013. They use, also, regression analysis to identify the determinants of CSR disclosure used by Tunisian listed banks.

The results of the investigation show that Tunisian listed banks disclose CSR information primarily in a narrative form. Human resources are the main focus in the annual reports, whereas, on the websites, community involvement is the most widespread theme. With regard to the determinants, it appears that bank age, financial performance and state shareholding are the main factors that impact CSR disclosure in the Tunisian listed banks’ annual reports. Furthermore, this study finds a positive (negative) relationship between leverage (financial performance) and CSR disclosure in the banks’ websites. In this regard, the results show different determinants of CSR disclosure for the two supports. Moreover, bank size, foreign shareholding and the type of auditor are unrelated to the listed banks’ CSR disclosure either in their annual reports or on their websites.

The sample size is small; however, it consists of all the relevant Tunisian banks. Also, this study is subject to the limitations of using manual content analysis.

This study enables highlights the importance of CSR disclosure and its determinants for the Tunisian banks’ stakeholders (such as regulators, investors and managers).

The authors contribute to the scarce literature on CSR disclosure in financial institutions. It is the first study to investigate Tunisian listed banks’ CSR disclosure. It is a first attempt to show, also, how banks’ characteristics and banks’ ownership structures impact on their CSR disclosure in their annual reports and on their websites.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of companies’ political connections (PCs) on their financial and stock performance, as well as on their market values.

A sample of non-financial companies listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange (TSE) between 2012 and 2014 was used. The accounting and financial data of these companies were obtained from their financial statements, whereas data on PCs of their officers and directors were collected manually from various sources. Correlation and multivariate regression analyses were performed to test the hypothesis of this research.

The results showed that PCs improve companies’ performance and value. These results could be explained, on the one hand, by the benefits and favors that companies can get from their political ties and, on the other hand, by investors’ tendency to invest in politically connected companies to benefit from these advantages.

The limited number of non-financial companies listed on the TSE is a limit for this research.

The results show that investment in companies which are politically inter-connected may be beneficial for investors, and especially for small minority shareholders.

The results confirm that political links are essential for business success in emerging economies, such as Tunisia. However, the positive link between politics and business might highlight the issue of corruption after the revolution.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of PCs on the performance and value of Tunisian companies after the 2011 revolution.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic and comprehensive review of the existing literature on the determinants of firms reporting practices.

Following a systematic method, the sample literature of 135 studies was collected from the Scopus database. These studies were evaluated in terms of the theoretical lenses applied in the literature, yearly trend, regional distribution, research settings and prior studies finding to provide some recommendations for further research.

The investigation revealed that the literature was more interested in the agency theory in investigating the drivers of voluntary reporting such as company size, age, leverage, liquidity, profitability, corporate governance and ownership structure. Although firm-specific determinants were the most examined in the previous studies, however, the result is still inconclusive. Also, limited work was found on the country-related factors, while internal audit impact has yet to be explored.

Being the first of its kind, this research provides a comprehensive review of the current research landscape on the drivers of environmental or social disclosure and highlights several interesting opportunities for future research.