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This study aims to theoretically investigate the effect of activating corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on the association between adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) and tax avoidance (TA). Based on the analyzing of the previous studies, the authors support the results of studies that found a positive effect for activating CG on the adoption of CSR. Also, they found that there is a negative impact of activating CG mechanisms on TA, as CG includes controls and procedures that contribute to limiting opportunistic behaviors of management and ensures making decisions that maximize value for shareholders. To the best of the authors' knowledge, it is the only chapter that examines the effect of activating CG mechanisms on the association between CSR and TA.

This chapter provides insight into the professionalisation of women football in the Arab region. In a traditionally conservative geographic area where men's football has only recently turned professional or remains semi-professional, the chances for the professionalisation of women football appear dim; yet some countries are already taking progressive strides. This chapter explores the practical and cultural barriers to women football professionalisation and provides examples of success stories, current efforts in the wake of global trends and the resilience of female footballers in the region. In doing so, the chapter challenges misconceptions and critically examines assumptions around what professionalisation ‘looks like’ within the context presented. The research takes a multi-sited approach, presenting evidence of the women footballing environment from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It utilises an intersectional and transnational lens for analysing women football experiences as shaped by a culmination of the athletes' gender, religion and cultural expectations and as situated within the international women footballing context. The author uses her professional field experience with over 18 years of involvement in elite Arab women football, connecting personal experiences to the study and providing richer interpretive opportunities to the data provided. Her professional participation as a local expert and researcher uniquely positions this study for engagement on the field and sense-making reflective practices and analysis. The study aims to further understandings on women football experiences from an area where there is a great dearth of scholarship on the matter and even less so from local researchers.

This research examines the bidirectional relationship between Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) voluntary disclosure engagement and financial performance of a panel of banks extracted from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banking industry, covering a period of 11 years (2007–2017). We find that GCC banks, and in particular Islamic banks, voluntarily disclose low level of information related to ESG activities. Using system GMM methodology, we provide evidence that ESG disclosure adversely affects bank performance, regardless of the bank performance measure used. Thus spending on ESG turns out to be costly for GCC banks, a result that is consistent with the agency problem, where managers are likely to reduce long-term expenditures related to ESG actions in order to boost short-term profits. As managers' compensations often relate to short-term financial performance, managers tend to reduce their spending on ESG activities. Furthermore, contrary to previous research, our results indicate that the relationship between ESG and financial performance is bidirectional and dynamic. We also find evidence that ESG disclosure positively affects performance only for well-diversified banks. Finally, although conventional banks disclose significantly more information related to ESG activities, we do not find any significant differences between the two types of banks in the relationship between ESG disclosure and performance. Our suggestion is that these results are consistent with what we call “clientele” and “gravitation” effects, where a customer tends to choose to deal with the bank that reflects his religious beliefs (gravitation effect) and with the bank that provides him with the best services (clientele effect) regardless of its ESG disclosure.

Existing models of gift applied to religious charities are either abstract or sometimes very limited in their applicability to understand the reciprocal relationships throughout the interconnected chain of giving and receiving charities. The paper contributes to this debate by asking: How gift economy explains the circulation of charities across interconnected spheres of local governance? And what are the implications of these inter-linkages for social welfare provisions where states are ineffective in the provision of these services? To answer these questions, the study presents the case of Zakat in Islam and Dasvandh in Sikhism in the northwest of Pakistan. In both the cases, charity is an important element of the social welfare provision within local governance structure. The findings suggest that conceptualizations of the religious charities as a triad including God, the rich and the poor are unsuitable gift models for grasping the role of charities in the local governance of social welfare provision.

The tourism industry has been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering Turkey's global importance in both domestic and foreign tourism, being able to determine consumers' vacation plans and risk perceptions during the COVID-19 pandemic has become more important than ever. This study aims to quantify the effect of COVID-19 on the consumers' perceived risk and behavioral intention in the context of the tourism industry. An online questionnaire was conducted on 234 Turkish participants between July and August 2020. In this study we compare the risk perceptions of consumers who plan to take a vacation and those who do not, in six dimensions regarding the perceived risk of Turkish tourists after the first wave COVID-19 pandemic in order to provide further insight. Therefore, Exploratory Factor analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and t-test analyses were performed. The results revealed that risk perceptions of those who plan their vacation post COVID-19 are lower. Participants who plan to soon go on vacation have lower psychological, equipment and cost, performance, social, and physical risk perceptions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic than those who do not have a vacation plan. These findings aid our understanding how risk perception affects behavioral willingness to travel.

This study aims to study the impact of corporate governance (CG) versus ethical investment on the firm performance. It takes into account the firms of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan for the purpose of the study. A composite variable of CG index and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) index is used to test the impact on the firm performance. Separate country wise and overall analysis is obtained. Regression analysis is used to obtain the results. Two measures of performance are used, one is return on assets (ROA) and other is Tobin Q. The findings of the study reveal that there is an impact of corporate governance index (CGI) on firm performance (overall and country wise) whereas ethical investment (EI) has an impact on firm performance when tested overall and no impact when checked for country wise results. The results further show that on country level, increase in CG measures may lead to positive results, but at the macro level, it may lower the performance. On the other hand, at the micro level, ethical finance may not show its impact; however, at the macro level, it has an impact. The study has implications for the investors and policymakers.