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This study aims to examine how board gender diversity and foreign directors influence the sector-wise corporate philanthropic giving (donation) of Islamic banks in Bangladesh.

Unbalanced panel data were extracted from the annual reports of Islamic banks in Bangladesh over 11 years, from 2010 to 2020.

The findings indicate that gender diversity significantly improves corporate philanthropic giving for the education sector but insignificantly influences corporate philanthropic giving for health and humanitarian and disaster relief sectors. In contrast, the results show that foreign directors significantly and positively affect the banks' corporate philanthropic giving for the three sectors.

This paper used only secondary data extracted from the annual reports of Islamic banks in Bangladesh between 2010 and 2020. Besides, only three sectors of corporate social responsibility activities were considered. Hence, the findings could not be generalized, as the study used only data from one country.

The findings can be useful to policymakers and regulators to provide policies and regulations that ensure the appointment of women and foreign directors to boards that can competently promote Islamic banks' charitable donations.

Inducing Islamic banks to provide corporate donations for activities related to education, health and humanitarian and disaster relief can contribute directly to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) like SDG-3 (good health and well-being) and SDG-4 (quality education) and impliedly support attaining some indicators of SDG-1 (no poverty), SDG-2 (zero hunger) and SDG-10 (reduced inequality).

This study contributes to the literature by investigating how board gender diversity and foreign directors influence sector-wise corporate donations for the education, health and human and disaster relief sectors instead of aggregate donations studies concentrated by previous studies.

This study aims to evaluate how audit committee (AC) characteristics affect the performance of banks in Africa.

The authors manually generated unbalanced panel data from 78 commercial banks operating in twelve (12) countries whose annual reports were published on the website of African Financials between 2010 and 2020.

The results indicate that AC size has an insignificant positive association with bank performance (return on equity and Tobin’s Q). AC independence has a significant positive association with bank performance. However, AC gender diversity has a significant negative association with bank performance. Besides, AC financial expertise has a significant positive and negative association with return on equity and Tobin’s Q, respectively.

The study considered only 78 banks that operate in twelve (12) African countries. Besides, the authors consider only four (4) AC attributes.

The findings suggest the need to maintain a smaller AC, appoint more independent members to AC, reduce the number of women appointed to AC and ensure most AC members have financial expertise. These measures could improve bank performance in Africa.

Unlike previous African studies that are mostly restricted to a country level, the study examined how AC attributes influence the performance of banks that operate in Africa.

The purpose of this study is to extend the extant literature on the relationship between financial risk tolerance (FRT), awareness of Islamic financial principles (AWIF) and positive financial behaviour (FB) on financial satisfaction (FS) of micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) owners by principally investigating the mediating effect of access to Islamic financing (AIF) on these relationships.

A quantitative survey method of data collection through a self-administered questionnaire. The sample of 384 MSME owners was selected in which 208 questionnaires were retrieved and analysed using the partial least square structural equation modelling (SEM).

The result shows that the relationships between FRT and AIF as well as FB and AIF are not significant. However, the AWIF–AIF relationship was found to be positively significant. Moreover, only the mediating effect of AIF on the AWIF–FS relationship was established.

The result implies that AIF could strongly influence the FS of MSME owners, and the AWIF–FS relationship is better explained with sufficient AIF. However, AIF could not mediate the relationships between FRT–FS and FB–FS. Therefore, policymakers and MSME owners should emphasize on AWIF and AIF to enhance FS.

This study pioneers the examination of the mediating influence of AIF on FRT, AWIF, FB and FS of MSME owners in a single framework. Despite the importance of MSME owners on economic sustainability, literature on MSME owners' FS is lacking expressly among developing countries, particularly in Nigeria. This study also revealed new theoretical and practical knowledge by illuminating the mediating effect of AIF on AWIF–FS relationship.

This study investigated how working capital management (WCM) influences the profitability of listed halal food and beverage companies.

The study utilized a sample of 56 listed halal food and beverage companies operating in Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unbalanced panel data were generated from the Bloomberg database between 2008 and 2021. Besides, the study employed the two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) technique for the estimation, which can address the models' endogeneity, heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation problems. Also, feasible generalized least square (FGLS) regression was applied to check the robustness of the results.

The study revealed that the cash conversion cycle (CCC) and accounts receivable period (ARP) significantly reduced firm profitability. Also, the inventory conversion period (ICP) significantly reduced return on assets (ROA) but insignificantly influenced return on equity (ROE). However, the results showed that the accounts payable period (APP) significantly increased firm profitability. These findings are robust to the results obtained by applying FGLS regression.

The study utilized a sample of only the listed halal food and beverage firms that operate in Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The study suggests that the management of listed halal firms should adopt an aggressive policy in managing their working capital in order to enhance their financial performance. This could be attained by lowering CCC when ARP and ICP are reduced and APP is increased.

This study contributes to the literature by providing cross-country empirical evidence showing how working capital and its components affect the financial performance of firms that solely produce or buy and sell halal food and beverage products in five countries.