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The most crucial challenge facing Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) is the full compliance of their activities with shari'ah principles. The complexity of IFIs requires Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK, Indonesian Financial Services Authority) to adopt a good shari'ah governance framework to address shari'ah risks of Islamic banking and financial institutions (IBFIs). However, the current shari'ah governance structure in Indonesia is far from ideal compared to the international best practice. This chapter proposes a new shari'ah governance framework by involving shari'ah supervisory board authority (Otoritas Dewan Pengawas Syariah) under the commissioners of OJK to oversight, regulate, and supervise the shari'ah matters for IBFIs in Indonesia. The chapter discusses the challenges in adopting this new framework. The chapter concludes that the current shortcomings of the proper shari'ah governance framework for shari'ah supervision and regulation requires a new shari'ah board authority under the commissioners of OJK who has full authority over shari'ah matters.

I study the determinants of conventional leverage in a sample of publicly listed corporations based in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, for a period spanning from 2005 up to end of 2014, and investigate whether those determinants can also explain the utilization of Sukuk by the same corporations in their capital structures. Evidence related to the determinants of conventional leverage is consistent with results from prior studies conducted on corporations based in developed and developing countries. Firm’s size, profitability, tangibility, age, and tendency to pay dividends are significant determinants of conventional leverage. However, not all those factors significantly explain the utilization of Sukuk as a financing vehicle. The size of the firm remains to be the most significant factor, in addition to the conformance of those corporations with respect to Shari’a principles measured by their utilization of other Islamic investments and financing instruments. Overall, I conclude that models used to predict conventional leverage are not capable of fully explaining the determinants of Sukuk issuances.

The unique characteristic of Islamic bank leads in governance and disclosure. Using stakeholder, signaling, and market discipline theory, governance and adequate disclosure may increase bank soundness. This study aims to investigate the relationship of sharia disclosure and Sharia Supervisory Board in influencing Islamic bank soundness in the different regulatory framework of the country. Using purposive sampling, the research covered 84 Islamic banks in 16 countries during the period 2013–2015 with lag data of Islamic bank soundness. The result shows sharia disclosure influences on Islamic bank soundness for management efficiency, capital adequacy ratio, asset quality, and liquidity. The results also show that sharia disclosure mediates the indirect effect of SSB on Islamic bank soundness. The regulatory framework (sharia accounting standard and SSB regulation) shows moderating effect of regulation framework proved on the association of sharia disclosure with management efficiency, capital, and liquidity. The effect is indirectly depending on the regulatory framework for proxy management efficiency, capital, and liquidity. The implication of the research suggests that sharia disclosure could increase the market discipline mechanism of Islamic bank stream. The Islamic bank can increase the transparency using sharia disclosure as a branding for increasing public trust, even though in the deficient Islamic bank regulation countries.

This study investigates an approach for business management based on social rationality, which is attained through a proper balance between profits from economic exchange and benefits from social exchange.

First, this study examines the economic rationalization process developed by the business corporation, which is a great innovation in the modern West, but criticized for dominating people through overwhelming capital and power. Second, social rationality is explained by focusing on the balance between economic exchange and social exchange. Third, the ethics and practices of traditional Japanese and Islamic business management are examined including their underlying social rationality in business and shared commonalities in business practices that circulate economic gains in their societies.

By encapsulating all the relevant elements drawn from traditional Japanese and Islamic business, four conditions were found which successfully establish socially rational management based on sharing and reciprocity: an appropriately life-sized economy; relation-oriented management; a market in which a profit-seeking exchange economy and a profit-cyclical gift economy coexist; autonomous associations that are independent from the control of both state and business corporations.

This research reevaluates the rationality of management complying with business ethics, which has been kept in traditional and non-Western business practices. These management styles are considered to be incongruous with modern management philosophies that solely rely on economic gain, resulting in the neglect of significant cultural principles in modern management.

This chapter suggests a way to circulate the profits among people through sharing and reciprocity for the public to diminish external diseconomies and solve social problems such as poverty, pollution, war, and alienation through business.

This study presents a method of shifting the paradigm from economically rational to socially rational management, which is urgently required in current business practices worldwide.

This paper provides a political analysis of legal pluralism from a “new institutionalist” perspective. In response to question of why states recognize and incorporate non-state normative orderings into their legal systems, it is hypothesized that the decision of incorporation is made to enhance the capacities of postcolonial states with “rational” calculations. In this respect, two new categories of legal pluralism are introduced: capacity-enhancing recognition and capacity-diminishing recognition. The paper lastly assesses the implications of legal pluralism upon the state-society relations and individual rights and liberties of citizens in the case of Israel.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the legislation mandating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) principles is more effective than regulatory encouragement and voluntary company compliance in Kuwaiti Companies Law. Doctrinal legal research was used to analyse CSR provisions through a legal lens by comparing existing CSR provisions of UK and Indian Companies Law in order to determine a middle-ground approach for Kuwaiti Companies Law, since this research deduced that no such provisions exist in Kuwait. By comparing the Companies Laws of UK, India and Kuwait, a number of CSR provisional areas were explored, such as socioeconomic issues, governance structures, corporate constituencies, directors’ duties, corporate objectives and reporting. The findings show that Kuwait could adopt the models applied to both UK and India, but would gear more towards the Indian model since both countries share similar principles or views on CSR-related issues such as corporate philanthropy, as well as mandatory or prescriptive nature of their respected companies law. Although a potential middle-ground can be established for Kuwait’s legal vision, limitations such as the country’s strict culture and religion could potentially impede the provisions proposed in this thesis. Unless Kuwait changes its stance on cultural and religious issues, such as the gender divide and inequality, the proposed CSR provisions that relate to the religious and cultural norms in Kuwait may not make it into a future Companies Law. This research provides an original outlook on analysing and comparing existing CSR provisions in Companies Law across several contexts and recommends novel CSR provisions for countries that have yet to incorporate CSR provisions in their respective Companies Law.

The study explores how financial institutes in Saudi Arabia report compliance with shari'ah teachings in terms of improving its legitimacy. The study covers all banks and insurance companies listed in Saudi stock market from 2012 to 2015. Around 181 annual reports were investigated by employing content analysis approach. The results show some trends toward more compliance with shariah teachings. Nevertheless, this is still below, especially for insurance companies. Analysis of variance suggests that banks are more likely to report about their compliance with shariah teachings than insurance companies. The conclusions that can be drafted about these results are that the nature of products and social attributes might influence the attitude of financial institutes to show their compliance with shari'ah teachings, reflecting the aim of the company to present its legitimacy.

This paper investigates how individuals determine their tax morale levels and tax compliance decisions. Using a questionnaire survey and a multivariate tests procedure, the paper revealed that tax evasion is morally acceptable in Jordan under some circumstances, indeed there could be an affirmative duty to evade taxes since the government is perceived to be highly corrupted. The findings also show that while the extent of the governmental corruption has a positive (negative) effect on tax non-compliance (tax morale), the efficient expenditure of governmental tax revenues has a negative (positive) impact on tax non-compliance (tax morale). The individuals’ tax non-compliance decisions are likewise positively affected by the tax rates and by the taxation system’s being perceived as unjust, but decline with the increase of audit rates and the subsequent penalty rates. The degree and effectiveness of these determinants are dependent on the individual’s level of risk aversion, financial constraints and the surrounding referent groups. The results also confirm that individual factors play a significant role in determining the level of tax morale. Overall, the tax morale level and the compliance decision of an individual are greatly influenced by gender, age, educational level, occupational status and religious background.

An Islamic social finance ecosystem has its specific instruments in terms of funding and investment that are in line with Shariah (Islamic law) principles. These include waqf (Islamic endowment), zakat (compulsory alms), ṣadaqah (donation), qarḍ ḥasan (benevolent loan) and others. In this context, the Islamic financial institutions can be considered as Islamic social finance institutions since it has the elements of Islamic social finance concepts. The uniqueness of these two types of institutions is that they operate with the absence of riba, maysir, gharar and thus the requirement of Shariah governance comes into existence. The practice of Shariah governance in Islamic financial institutions needs to be extensively examined by using a comprehensive measurement. Therefore, this chapter attempts to discuss on the needs of Shariah Governance Practices Index (SGPi) as a comprehensive measurement to measure the Shariah governance practices. In conclusion, it is proposed to have a comprehensive index to measure the Shariah governance practices which consider few components of Shariah governance such as the board of directors, the management, Shariah Committee and Shariah compliance functions.