Search results

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the perspectives of key stakeholders on strategies to improve the effectiveness of audit committees (ACs) in African economies, with a specific focus on the Libyan banking sector.

The study uses a mixed-methods approach, combining questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews. The data collection process involves gathering responses from participants through questionnaires and conducting in-depth interviews to gain deeper insights into the subject matter.

The research findings highlight several key points. Firstly, fortifying Libya’s accounting and auditing profession emerges as the most widely endorsed suggestion for enhancing AC effectiveness. Secondly, participants identified various actions that can strengthen ACs, including appointing members with financial expertise, refining the legal requirements governing AC responsibilities, securing board support, enhancing Libya’s legal and regulatory framework, adequately compensating AC members and reducing government intervention in AC practices.

This research contributes to the field of corporate governance by providing valuable insights into the perspectives of stakeholders on enhancing AC effectiveness in the Libyan banking sector, within the broader context of African economies. The findings offer actionable plans for regulators and policymakers seeking to improve AC effectiveness in Libya.

This study distinctively explores the firm-level and national-level determinants of audit committee effectiveness (ACE) in the Libyan banking sector (LBS).

A mixed-methods approach has been employed to enhance the quality of the collected data and reduce the risk of bias. Five groups of actors in the Libyan banking sector were surveyed, including board members, AC members, executive managers, internal auditors and external auditors, further to interviewing a representative sample of these groups. In total, 218 survey responses were gathered, and 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The study results show that AC authority, financial expertise and diligence are positively and significantly attributed to ACE, although AC independence and resources are not significantly related to ACE. The authors find that the legal and regulatory environment, government intervention, and the accounting and auditing environment are perceived as important and associated with ACE regarding national-level factors. These findings are strongly supported by semi-structured interviews and suggest that both firm-level and national-level factors are essential in understanding ACE in Libya's banking sector.

The study’s evidence reiterates the vital need for more concentrated work to integrate governance, legislative and regulatory reforms to ensure the effectiveness of ACs as a key corporate governance (CG) mechanism in developing economies.

This study extends the literature relating measures of AC inputs and outputs by examining the perception of stakeholders to understand both the firm-level and national-level factors that affect ACE in a single institutional setting. Additionally, this work adds to the limited number of recent studies examining the role of ACs in the banking sector in developing economies.

This study aims to investigate the extent of compliance of university accounting programs in Libya with the International Education Standard (IES 3) and the extent of the impact of the skills included in programs of accounting education in Libya aligned with IES 3 requirements on students' academic performance and then to identify factors that can hinder the implementation of professional skills in accounting education in Libya.

A questionnaire was prepared and circulated among accounting graduates from public universities in Libya. A total of 116 useable responses were received from many of these universities. An exploratory factor analysis based on a pairwise polychoric correlation matrix was carried out to validate the scale. Also, it applies the regression analysis for a robustness check.

The findings indicate that the skills included in accounting education programs in Libya partially comply with the instructions of IES 3 (Intellectual, Interpersonal and Communication, Personal and Organizational). They provide empirical evidence that the accounting education program in Libya is a partial tool for implementing professional skills in accounting education in Libya. The findings of this study also show that there is no statistically significant relationship between the skills included in programs of accounting education in Libya aligned with IES 3 requirements and the academic performance of students.

Findings may help the government, higher education officials and accounting faculty members in Libya pay more attention to accounting education to improve its effectiveness and meet the requirements of IES 3. Therefore, it fills an information gap in the accounting literature by investigating university accounting programs and their compliance with IES 3 in Libya, a context that is still poorly understood.

Little is known about accounting education in the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, where the literature shows that little research has been conducted on accounting students in the countries of this region, particularly in Libyan universities.