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The purpose of this study is to show the specificities of the corporate governance of Tunisian financial institutions and the impact of the internal mechanisms of corporate governance of these institutions on their social performance. It is therefore interesting to establish the existing relationship between these mechanisms of corporate governance and the performance of a financial firm.

This study aims to study the financial sector, generally characterized by its opacity, its regulation, its evolution and its obscurity. Therefore, a study based on the questionnaire method was recommended. The questionnaire is intended for managers. Therefore, the authors interviewed 138 managers of Tunisian financial institutions dispersed between agencies and headquarters in different regions (Gabes, Tozeur, Gafsa, Sfax, Sousse and Tunisia).

As a result, an impact on performance was observed according to the empirical study. Therefore, the authors can conclude an essential role of internal mechanisms for improving the social performance of a financial institution. The empirical findings in this paper lead to important conclusions. Indeed, the variables measuring the governance mechanisms have divergent effects on the social performance of the financial institutions subject to the sample. For the variables board of directors, confidence, culture, auditing, they have a positive effect. While, the incentive remuneration effect negatively the social performance.

This study will be based essentially on the financial sector in Tunisia: the credit institutions (22 banks), the establishments of leasing (eight companies of leasing), two factoring companies and two banks of cases which are listed on the Stock Exchange of Tunis (BVMT).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate two research questions: do accounting reports provide information that helps bondholders assess credit risk of financial institutions? What are the relevant accounting variables related to financial institutions’ credit spreads?

The authors estimate all models of credit spread by specifying fixed effects with year dummies.

The authors’ document that financial institutions’ cash flows and loan loss provisions (LLP) are significantly correlated with bond spreads. The authors observe that an increase in nondiscretionary LLP predicts an increase in credit spreads, as the former reflects a higher default risk. Bondholders also react negatively to an increase in discretionary LLP, viewed as evidence that a financial institution is engaged in opportunistic earnings or tax management. Finally, the authors demonstrate that the relationship between accounting data and credit spreads is stronger for high-yield bonds than for low-yield bond.

This study has certain limitations due to the sample size and data frequency.

First, this paper provides strong evidence to all market participants that financial accounting reports are useful in forecasting credit risk in emerging markets. Second, the paper highlights the importance of disclosure policies and accounting transparency of financial institutions in emerging markets. Third, the results are also of practical interest to standard setters and financial regulators. The latter should consider monitoring accruals, especially the discretionary component of LLP, to mitigate the effects of accounting manipulations and managers’ opportunism.

First, the previous literature does not focus on financial institutions despite their key role in the economy. Second, the paper is the first to study the credit relevance of accounting information in emerging markets (Tunisia).

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of operational and liquidity risk reporting for the Tunisian insurance and banking sectors after the outbreak of the Tunisian revolution on 14 January 2011.

A manual content analysis approach was used to measure risk disclosure by counting the number of risk-related words within risk-related sentences in a wide range of publications.

The results show that operational risk disclosure is associated positively with operational losses frequency, institution size and the proportion of independent non-executive members of the board of directors. Also, board size is found to be negatively associated with risk disclosure. Moreover, net stable funding ratio, size and proportion of independent non-executive members have a positive effect on liquidity risk disclosure. The authors also discover that infrequency of board meetings and the presence of young members on the board increase the extent of liquidity risk information.

The research focuses on a small number of observations which somewhat restrict the generalization of results to the entire class of financial sector in Tunisia. Also, the qualitative character of some supposed explanatory variables (frequency and severity of operational risk) relies heavily on the experiences of interviewees and their basic perceptions.

Investors might do well to rely on such characteristics (large board size, less active board and a high proportion of non-executive directors) to predict the disclosure of risk information, either operational or liquidity risk. Board members should keep an eye on reporting on risk, by promoting the success keys of governance, because good corporate governance has to be recognizable at first to be an effective value driver.

The findings rationalize the debate over the impact of improved corporate governance on risk disclosure practices within the context of the Tunisian revolution. The logic of this rationalization may help to promote political incentives that will encourage a risk management culture based on a dynamic communication framework.

The notion of social performance of the company (SPC) is a fundamental concept of the research on ethics of business and work on company-society relationships. The study raises several debates concerning SPC’s determinants. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework of SPC along with its social and technological determinants. After identification of the determinants, the authors have searched through a managerial perspective to recognize the effects of these determinants on SPC.

Content analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with the HR managers, and statistical analysis of data collected from Managers/HR Managers (n=250) working in private and public sector banks of Tunisia was undertaken. Structural equation modeling (SEM), has been used to test the hypotheses and statistically validate the proposed relationships. Data for the study were collected online.

Results indicate a strong interrelationship between SPC and its determinants. Such an interrelation aims to enrich the framework of analysis of the SPC by considering the action of social responsibility of the company, organizational commitment and managers’ characteristics on one hand, and human resources information system, the practices of knowledge management, and facilitating conditions for the use of the information and communication technologies on the other.

The study reconciles various perspectives in the SPC literature and presents a comprehensive model of SPC by identifying its determinants – social and technological, which could stimulate the SPC in Tunisian context.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the current state of the Islamic financial system in Tunisia. In addition, it is aimed at discussing the preconditions that can help exploit the potential development of Tunisia's Islamic finance and expand the banked population.

The paper describes the regulatory and legal framework governing the Tunisian Islamic banks. It provides a mapping of Islamic banks, mutual funds, Takaful institutions and a potential Sukuk market. The paper also relates recent developments including academic qualifications and training in Islamic finance.

The paper concludes with various recommendations for the successful transition from a niche position to a critical mass. It argues the need to establish a specific regulatory framework, supervisory standards and rules of accounting for this kind of institutions. It suggests the development of Islamic financial education to strengthen the role played by the Islamic financing Ecosystem and to help Tunisia promote local and exportable expertise to other countries. Finally, authorities should focus more on promoting market Sukuk, Takaful and microcredit to fund SME.

This paper contributes to the assessment of the current situation of Islamic finance in Tunisia by performing a full scan of the Islamic financial landscape instead of being limited only to Islamic banks. It proposes some prerequisites to benefit from the opportunities offered by the Islamic finance industry in Tunisia to take advantage of its future potential and ensure its promotion.

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.

As an increasing number of business organizations around the world are engaged in the value relevance of accounting information, this study aims to assess the field of the accounting value relevance of book value and earnings in share prices of banks and financial institutions listed in the Tunisian stock exchange.

Using a sample of available banks and financial institutions listed in the Tunisian Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2015, this paper accommodates the documented accounting information in an emergent market context by using stock price of three months after year-end as a dependent variable. This study uses the panel regression technique on 24 banks and financial institutions during the study period.

The authors find that earnings and book value are statistically significantly associated with firm value. Also, using these variables together is positively related to the firm stock price share. Comparatively, these obtain evidence that book value is statistically more value-relevant than earning per share models; expectedly, the earnings explain a higher proportion of the stock price for the group of financial institutions than the group of banks.

A Web-based search is performed during the second quarter of 2016, locating the corporate websites of the sample firms, and the official site of the Datastream (worldscope) is identified. The sample period is 2010-2015 (144 firm-year observations).

This study aims to adopt a mixed-methods approach (accounting and business data) to analyse the effects of the financial institution’s governance on both the knowledge of social responsibility and the consumer’s attitudes and behaviours, and testing the moderating role of the brand identification in the banking sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this concept has been neglected in previous studies.

Data were collected from a sample of 600 respondents in two major Tunisian cities. Participants were selected on the basis of a convenience sampling in which the structural equation modelling method was adopted through SMART PLS 3.0 software.

The results showed that good corporate governance has a positive influence on the knowledge of the company's social responsibility, which positively influences its brand image. Therefore, the company's brand image positively influences the customer’s satisfaction, which positively influences the recommending behaviour of the financial institutions in the COVID-19 era. However, the brand identification has no moderating effect.

Managers of financial institutions are advised to pay particular attention to good corporate governance, as it is mandatory for these companies to assume social responsibility and make it known to clients. Therefore, it is obvious to create a good image in the mind of the consumers to satisfy them to recommend the company in question. It is interesting to mobilise the period of health crisis (COVID-19) to create a favourable attitude among the customers because they are sensitive when evaluating and ranking financial institutions according to the relationships that exist especially during this period.

In fact, there are many studies that dealt with the banking sector. Some of them dealt with the sector through the institutional accounting section while others dealt with the sector through the commercial and marketing section. Therefore, the first contribution of this research is to test a mixed model made up of accounting and commercial data. This model is among the first to determine the effects of the financial institution's governance on the knowledge of social responsibility and on the consumer’s attitude and behaviour to test the moderating role of brand identification in the banking sector. The second contribution is to test this model in a period of health crisis (COVID-19). The third contribution is the use of a mixed sample of data collected from two regions. Then, the fourth contribution is the addition of tests for the verification, robustness and validation of the results obtained. Finally, the fifth contribution is the addition of control variables to test their effects on the research model.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of product market competition and ownership structure on total factor productivity and the interaction between these two governance tools.

Using a sample of 90 Tunisian non-financial firms over the period 1998-2012, the authors use fixed effects and Generalized Method of Moments models to test the complementary/substitutability effect between family ownership and competition.

The authors find that product market competition boosts productivity in that it mitigates agency problems. Moreover, the authors show that large blockholders have a positive impact on firms’ performance. When considering ownership types, it seems that families play an important role in improving productivity. However, this ownership structure is less effective when firms operate in competitive industries. Thus, the results suggest that a substitution effect exists between internal governance mechanisms (particularly family ownership) and competition.

Tunisian politicians must review the investment code and remove barriers and restrictions in order to assure fair product market competition. Also, regulation must be changed to encourage foreigners’ shareholding and the creation of private equity firms. Moreover, large shareholders operating in a competitive environment should open up their capital to new shareholders in order to undertake more investments and to benefit from certain advantages.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of product market competition on the relation between corporate governance and productivity in the Tunisian context. Moreover, the complementary/substitutability effect between family ownership and competition has not been examined before in any context.

This paper aims to trace the process of setting up and developing the higher accounting education curriculum in Tunisian public institutions, stressing the period 1956–1981. Further, this study intends to highlight specificities of the Tunisian context during this period, focusing on the main roles of the Tunisian State and some key actors.

This study is based on a historical approach. Two complementary methodologies were used, mainly, documentary study and semi-directive interviews with key actors heavily involved in higher education. The critical accounting framework and Foucault’s power-knowledge relationship were mobilized to this end.

The paper provides a general overview of higher accounting education in the Tunisian context, focusing on three specific periods. First, in the post-independence period (1956–1960), higher accounting education was a very underdeveloped French heritage. Second, during the 1960s, the Tunisian State focused on institutional and structural measures to set up the initial foundation. Those measures were impacted by the Tunisian socialist economic system, the development of capital human and the cultural French influence, at once. Third, the 1970s were essentially marked by the role of university-scholars and professional-accountants to set up a higher accounting curriculum. The market-oriented economy and the higher social equity are assumed to influence the above-mentioned setting-up. The culmination of this extending process was the unification and publication of the first official program of accounting studies, at the start of 1981.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to trace the process of setting up and developing of higher accounting education curriculum in Tunisia. This study contributes to a better understanding of this process, shedding some light on the specificities of the Tunisian context during the period 1956 to 1981.