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This study aims to undertake the evaluation and examination of the productivity change of the Egyptian banking sector. Using a novel data set covering 14 banks operating in the Egyptian market from 1997 to 2013. We use a nonparametric approach (based on data envelopment analysis (DEA)) to investigate the productivity change in the Egyptian banking sector. Input-oriented Malmquist indices of productivity change are estimated with DEA to measure total factor productivity (TFP) change. The TFP changes are decomposed into the product of technological change and technical efficiency change (catch-up). In the second stage, we study potential determinants of productivity change using a regression model. We find that the Egyptian banking sector as a whole shows a productivity regress of 0.9% per year, mainly due to the technological improvements. The estimated regression model identifies some variables that significantly influence the productivity of banks in Egypt. The banks with higher loan to deposit ratio and higher returns on equity have higher productivity growth reflecting on their strong strategic and managerial skills. The size of a bank seems to be associated with an increase in productivity. The maturity of a bank (measured by age) is associated with higher productivity. The NIM and NIETA variables do not seem to be affecting the productivity of banks. Surprisingly, our results reveal that the financial crisis was negatively and statistically insignificant, hence it had no effect on the Egyptian banks.

This paper seeks to understand the role of financial accounting regulations in a less developed country in transition, Egypt. It explores the social, political as well as economic contexts that underlie the processes of setting the Egyptian Financial Accounting Regulations (EFAR) in a harmony with International Accounting Standards (IASs).

The paper is based on in‐depth interviews and an analysis of documents. It relies on Habermas' notions of society's lifeworld, institutional steering mechanisms and systems in order to link the changes in EFAR to the changes in the wider social, political and economic contexts wherein organizations operate. The paper also explores the role of EFAR, as “regulative” or “constitutive” steering mechanisms, throughout two longitudinal episodes; starting with the beginning of socialism and extending to liberalism.

The paper finds that the EFAR have had a constitutive tendency during the Egyptian transformation towards a market‐based economy. Although there are remarkable changes in political philosophy in Egypt, the regulators' motivations and the processes of the accountancy profession that mobilized the formulation of EFAR in harmony with IASs, those regulations were acted upon to constitute organizational members' values, norms and knowledge in order to overcome the persistence of the socialist accounting practices. The regulations were also aimed at enhancing professional conduct and, at same time, increasing organizational members' adherence to the processes of privatization as a part of a wider movement towards transparency, democracy, full disclosure and liberalisation.

The paper emphasises the interface between a macro social transformation and micro organizational responses in order to understand the role of EFAR. However, it does not stress how the actual implementation of those regulations is implicated at a micro organizational change level. Furthermore, the paper covers a timeframe – 1952 to 2000 – that extends from the start of socialism extending to liberalism. Although the IASs are now known as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the paper covers a period in which such IFRS were not applicable in Egypt.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the social, political as well as economic role(s) of financial accounting regulations in a transitional country during that country's transformation towards the market economy.

Little research into organizational learning in the public sector in developing countries' is known. In this paper, the authors investigated the context of organizational learning in the public banks in Egypt.

An ethnographic field research was employed by spending a month inside each of two public banks in Egypt. The ethnographic experience was operationalised by using direct observations of learning processes, procedures and practices, semi-structured interviews with learning specialists and focus group discussions with bankers. The authors used thematic analysis to determine the main themes in the previous data collection methods of ethnographic approach.

The findings confirmed a lack of clear focus for the organizational learning practices employed by the banks, which highlights issues of seriousness in undertaking and/or tackling organizational learning, and increased doubts in relation to the added value of the different forms of formal trainings bankers participate in. To enhance the culture and maintain effective functioning of formal organizational learning, the authors suggest considering the following three categories of barriers: purpose-related barriers, implementation and evaluation barriers.

Despite the generalisability caveats associated with the organizations studied, the authors believe that this paper contributes to the existing theory of organizational learning as it provides insights and understanding on the purpose, frame, conduct and results of organizational learning in the public sector. More specifically, the study is unique and is different from previous relevant studies as it relies on ethnographical approach in exploring how organizational leaning practices are perceived in public banks in developing countries.

The main aims of this paper are: first, to investigate how decisions are currently made within the Egyptian public sector environment; and, second, to determine whether the decision making can be significantly improved through the use of credit scoring models. A subsidiary aim is to analyze the impact of different proportions of sub‐samples of accepted credit applicants on both efficient decision making and the optimal choice of credit scoring techniques.

Following an investigative phase to identify relevant variables in the sector, the research proceeds to an evaluative phase, in which an analysis is undertaken of real data sets (comprising 1,262 applicants), provided by the commercial public sector banks in Egypt. Two types of neural nets are used, and correspondingly two types of conventional techniques are applied. The use of two evaluative measures/criteria: average correct classification (ACC) rate and estimated misclassification cost (EMC) under different misclassification cost (MC) ratios are investigated.

The currently used approach is based on personal judgement. Statistical scoring techniques are shown to provide more efficient classification results than the currently used judgemental techniques. Furthermore, neural net models give better ACC rates, but the optimal choice of techniques depends on the MC ratio. The probabilistic neural net (PNN) is preferred for a lower cost ratio, whilst the multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) is the preferred choice for a higher ratio. Thus, there is a role for MDA as well as neural nets. There is evidence of statistically significant differences between advanced scoring models and conventional models.

Future research could investigate the use of further evaluative measures, such as the area under the ROC curve and GINI coefficient techniques and more statistical techniques, such as genetic and fuzzy programming. The plan is to enlarge the data set.

There is a huge financial benefit from applying these scoring models to Egyptian public sector banks, for at present only judgemental techniques are being applied in credit evaluation processes. Hence, these techniques can be introduced to support the bank credit decision makers.

Thie paper reveals a set of key variables culturally relevant to the Egyptian environment, and provides an evaluation of personal loans in the Egyptian public sector banking environment, in which (to the best of the author's knowledge) no other authors have studied the use of sophisticated statistical credit scoring techniques.

This study seeks to explore the powerful role(s) of institutionalised performance measurement systems or metrics in smart city governance in a politically and militarily sensitive developing country.

This study extends the application and contribution of a multi-level institutional framework to previous management accounting literature on the potential relationship between performance measurement and smart city governance. The value of utilising a multi-level framework is to broaden and deepen theoretical analyses about this relationship to include the effect of political pressure from the military regime at the macro level on the institutionalisation of a performance measurement system at the micro-organisational level. Taking the New Cairo city council smart electricity networks project (Egypt) as an interpretive qualitative single-case study, data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, direct observations and documentary readings.

Performance measurement systems or metrics, especially in politically and militarily sensitive smart cities, constitutes a process of cascading (macro-micro) institutionalisation that is closely linked to sustainable developments taking place in the wider arena of urban policies. Going a step further, accounting-based performance metrics, arising from political and military pressures towards public-private collaborations, contribute to smart city management and accountability (governance). Institutionalised measurement systems or performance metrics play a powerful accounting role(s) in shaping and reshaping political decisions and military actions in the city council.

Theoretically, this study goes beyond the cascading institutionalisation process by arguing for the powerful role(s) of institutionalised accounting and performance measurement systems in smart city decision-making and governance. Empirically, it enriches previous literature with a case study of a developing Arab Spring country, characterised by an emerging economy, political sensitivity and military engagement, rather than developed and more stable countries that have been thoroughly investigated. It is also among the first politically engaged accounting case studies to highlight public-private collaborations as a recent reform in public sector governance and accountability.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the phenomenon of earnings management in the Egyptian initial public offerings (IPO) market where most of the IPOs were the privatisations of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs).

Using a sample of 59 Egyptian IPOs, the extent of earnings management was computed using a modified cross‐sectional version of Jones’ model.

The initial results do not provide support for the hypothesis that Egyptian IPO firms tend to overstate their earnings before the IPO date. However, when the sample firms were classified under two groups based on the pre‐IPO discretionary accruals, the results illustrate that most privately‐owned companies were found among those which contemplate to aggressively manage earnings upwards in order to maximise the IPO proceeds, whereas privatised public enterprises were found with no systematic pattern of earnings manipulation. The results also demonstrate that pre‐offering discretionary accruals do not explain the post‐offering underperformance in earnings but predict a portion of the subsequent poor share returns performance.

The findings could be of assistance to all those involved in IPOs, such as the regulatory authorities and the primary and secondary market investors.

With a few exceptions, most of the literature on earnings management has been based on the US data. Therefore, it is hoped that undertaking a research in a country such as Egypt, where the shareholding structures of most Egyptian IPO companies were concentrated in the hands of the state before going public, may reveal a different perception of earnings management and help determine whether this setting would lead to a higher or lower propensity for earnings management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the relational self-identity and prosocial silence in the context of the Egyptian public sector. It also examines the mediating effect of relational maintenance strategies among co-workers (RMSC) on the aforementioned relationship.

The study uses a questionnaire that consists of measures adopted from existing and tested scales. A parallel mediation analysis is conducted using Sobel test for specific indirect effects in regression analysis.

The findings reveal that high relational employees do not engage in prosocial silence unless they are involved in networking and shared tasks strategies.

Prosocial silence has received limited attention despite its drastic effects in employee well-being. This study provides initial insights concerning the dynamics of social behaviours which motivate employees to avoid speaking up in order to not embarrass a workplace friend.

The purpose of this study is to examine the direct effect of paternalistic leadership on the employee’s feedback orientation in the Egyptian public sector. It also investigates the mediating effect of the employee’s workplace well-being on the relationship between paternalistic leadership and feedback orientation.

The study uses a questionnaire that consists of measures adopted from existing and tested scales. A mediation analysis is conducted using structure equation modelling to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The findings reveal that paternalistic leadership is positively associated with feedback utility, accountability, awareness and self-efficacy. Moreover, the employee’s workplace well-being significantly mediates the proposed relationship between paternalistic leadership and the aforementioned dimensions of feedback orientation.

The relationship between paternalistic leadership and feedback orientation has received an extremely limited academic attention. This study hypothesizes a mediation model which investigates the leadership, well-being and feedback associations in the traditionally under-researched Egyptian context.

The purpose of this research is to explore the dynamics of using strategic human resource management (SHRM) practices in the public sector. More specifically, this paper tries to point out some main aspects of SHRM, which strongly influence the decision of employees to stay. The empirical study here tends to reveal greater insights into the SHRM-retention relationship and its validation at the National Bank of Egypt (NBE).

This research is co-relational in nature with cause and effect approach. The design of the study is both descriptive in the theoretical part and quantitative in the applied one. Theoretically, this paper adopted the analytical approach to define the main concepts, aside from an empirical study to investigate correlations in practice.

This paper concludes that the employment of best HRM practices is deemed a remarkable strategic tool in the retention of core public employees. Also, the results of analysis provide evidence that SHRM contributes to employee retention at NBE.

The findings and recommendations of this research can practically guide management to devise effective policies to improve employee retention using appropriate SHRM activities, particularly in the Egyptian public organizations.

This research has valuable implications for both theory and practice, as it offers several contributions to literature in the field of study, as well as the practical contribution.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between ethical leadership and the employee’s perception of job insecurity in the Egyptian public sector. It also investigates the mediating effect of work locus of control on the hypothesized relationship.

The study uses a questionnaire that consists of measures adopted from existing and tested scales. The hypothesized model has been tested using multiple regression analysis.

The findings reveal that the character of ethical leadership significantly reduces the employee’s perception of threats to job features and the powerlessness to counteract threats. However, the empowerment dimension of ethical leadership has adverse effects in the employee’s perception of powerlessness.

The adverse effects of the empowerment behavior dimension of ethical leadership may be attributed to East–West differences in the conceptualization of empowerment. The Arab style of management promotes the Islamic principle of Shura, which may slightly deviate from that of empowerment.

This study extends job insecurity research in the often untapped Egyptian culture and provides new insights into the perceived role of leadership character and empowerment in a non-western context.