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Hundreds of Jordanian traditional villages are facing the serious risk of being demolished due to the shortage of basic public services and their resulting abandoned state. Important occurrences of vernacular architecture in these villages necessitate a national strategy to conserve the tangible and intangible heritage they offer, despite the economic difficulties that impede the local community in their efforts to protect or rehabilitate their long-established habitat and traditions. The case of Dana is a relevant example of these villages that are abandoned in spite of their considerable human and material potentialities. Therefore, analyses of place-oriented conceptual meaning, which affect man's belonging to the place, and building typologies are developed in order to comprehend the traditional spatial composition and the interrogatives of conserving the original habitat for tourism purposes. Appropriate scenarios of administrative and technical approaches could better offer the local communities the conservation of memories, place identity and sustainable economic development, hopefully extendible to other situations in traditional villages.

The relationship between people, environmental circumstances and the cost of projects in Jordan are focal points of this study, where the problem of low-income housing needs is still increasing, having tripled in the last two decades. The shortage of public housing production and the cost of lands and building materials, mainly controlled by private sector investors, are substantial reasons for the housing crisis in a country of poor economic recourses and high percentage of poverty.

The Jordanian government decided to aid the poorest class of the population, offering free of charge shelters organized in small residential quarters, which became a prototype diffused throughout all the Jordanian regions. This paper analyzes one of these typical quarters, collecting data through face-to-face interviews with the households using a structured questionnaire. The study focuses on the physical components of the quarter, looking at open spaces, paths, streets, volumes, materials, colors in relation with the environmental context. It also investigates the households' requirements, relationships and preferences.

The study discusses also the housing problems at the macro scale level in order to concretely evaluate the shelters' cost, setting some guidelines with respect to the cultural and environmental local conditions.

The purpose of this case study is to explore whether Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) complies with the Global Reporting Initiative Standards in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure practices for the period 2014–2019.

By analysing both annual and sustainability reports of the bank using content analysis for each Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) category, 100 universal standards, 200 economic standards, 300 environmental standards, 400 social standards. The authors then compute and discuss the degree of compliance of ADIB disclosures by using annual charts and graphs.

Results show that, although ADIB issues sustainability reports, numerous GRI standards do not appear in the bank’s reports such as general disclosures GRI 102, economic disclosures items such as anti-competitive behaviour GRI 206 and environmental disclosures such as gas emissions GRI 305 due to the nature of bank’s activities. However, the bank focuses mainly on social standards GRI 400 including community services, training and development. Hence, ADIB partially complies with the GRI standards (2016) especially social disclosures.

The study encompasses some limitations: first, due to the discretionary nature of CSR reporting, many items were ignored or missed for the full period. Second, the disclosure of a sustainability report by the company was only available for the year 2017, which, in turn, makes it difficult for comparison.

The findings of this study have important implications for academics and researchers, and practitioners as they pave the way for further investigation regarding CSR compliance of Islamic financial institutions. The results also have important implications for Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions in developing a CSR reporting standard if Islamic banks are to enhance their image globally and to maintain competitive advantages.

This paper contributes to the growing debate on CSR disclosures in the Islamic banking industry by comparing ADIB practices with regard to the GRI standards.

This paper aims to analyze the scientific trend of research on Islamic banking sustainability (IBS) through a bibliometric study. In particular, the paper extensively investigates all the articles issued through the Scopus database regarding the IBS.

The authors discovered 76 papers that met the function, subject and set requirements by using the phrase IBS. The authors used VOSviewer as an analytical tool and the Scopus website.

IBS publications were found in the period 2005–2022, and the publication trend of IBS research demonstrates that it is growing exponentially after 2018. Malaysia is the leading country in terms of productive authors, universities, number of documents, citations and collaboration research on IBS. The current research trends are summarized into five cluster maps for future research directions: sustainability measurement, sustainability practices, risk and governance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and IBS theory. The Maqashid al Shariah approach conceptually influences the framework for constructing the dimensions and indicators used to measure the IBS.

The authors retrieved data for their research from the Scopus database; using other databases might result in totally different research patterns with this IBS bibliometric research.

The research encompasses valuable implications for Islamic banking as it offers valuable insights on how to assess the performance of IBS. Particularly, it contributes to identifying the dimensions and indicators needed to measure IBS performance. Furthermore, this research provides strategic initiatives to promote sustainable practices in Islamic banking in terms of green financing taxonomy, services, operations, risk management and governance.

This research is valuable for other scholars as it offers a foundation for the future growth of IBS research, focusing on important sustainability clusters obtained from selected reputable journals. This research is beneficial for regulators in enhancing the roadmap for establishing and enhancing long-term IBS with impacts on socio-economic, environmental and governance.

The study presents a concise review of the bibliometric study in IBS and provides recommendations for future research directions in cluster mapping of themes and subthemes. There is still insufficient research that examines the IBS, in particular, complete insights into the IBS literature review.

The purpose of this study is to extend previous literature and examine risk management efficiency among Takaful (TI) and conventional insurance (CI) firms in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study also aims to determine whether Takaful firms are more efficient in managing risks, compared to CI firms.

This study examines risk management efficiency among Takaful and CI firms in the KSA and the UAE for a sample of 20 insurance firms comprising 10 TI firms and 10 CI firms for the period 2018–2020. The authors use Data Envelopment Analysis to estimate efficiency scores among insurance companies to compare risk management efficiency between CI and TI companies and apply two-way analysis of variance to statistically analyze the data.

The results of this study show that TI firms have a higher efficiency score than CI firms, but not significantly and that insurance firms in KSA have higher efficiency scores than insurance firms in UAE. The results also reveal that TI firms did not significantly outperform CI firms in managing risks; however, there is a significant difference in efficiency scores among insurance firms in KSA and UAE.

The authors also contribute to the literature by providing important insights into how the operational business environment of the country can influence the risk management efficiency of CI and TI companies.

This study promotes understanding the insurance industry, its efficiency and risk management, thus offering key implications for decision-makers, regulators and managers associated with the insurance industry in UAE, KSA and other emerging insurance markets. Regulators could provide enabling policies that foster and promote the business environment, as there is a need to improve risk management efficiency in the insurance industry. Also, the results of this study show that the operating status of the UAE insurance industry in terms of efficiency and risk management is lower than that of KSA. Hence, it would be useful for UAE managers and regulators in taking steps to improve the overall insurance industry market.

The results of this study make significant contributions by providing new insights to the existing literature on the risk management efficiency in the insurance industry, as it adopts a different methodological approach that examines risk management efficiency among TI and CI companies.

This study aims to present insights for the preparation of ethical practices in the banking industry of gulf cooperation council (GCC) countries for profit maximization. This study presented information regarding ethical banking practices to determine to which extent banks in GCC countries practiced ethics.

This study followed a mixed-method approach, including both qualitative and quantitative data. For quantitative, data were collected from senior managers employed in 52 leading Islamic and conventional banks across the GCC countries, including the banks in the Kingdom of Bahrain and also from the banks in Kuwait. However, for qualitative analysis, an interview with an Islamic banking specialist was conducted.

The findings of both, qualitative and results from answer of respondents and quantitative results, that is, 91% of respondents strongly agreed that Islamic banks are more committed to ethical investments of projects, revealed that Islamic banks follow more ethical practices than conventional banks. Therefore, the mean score for EBP4 is 4.55 with moderate SD of 1.267. This statistical evidence is in favor that Islamic banks follow more ethical principles.

Respondents were recruited randomly, and the samples consisted of only senior executives and not customers. Because of time and resource limitations, these executives were a sample of conventional and Islamic banks in the GCC only and not from other regions.

The results of this study provided valuable insights to conventional financial institutions, enabling them to enhance their operations as Islamic banks align with more ethical standards.

The research originality lies in its contribution for GCC countries by presenting a comparative view. This study defined and compared similarities and differences of Islamic and conventional banks to indicate how Islamic banks particularly implement more ethical standards than conventional banks.

This study aims to assess the effect of director board and audit committee attributes and ownership structure on firm performance. In general, resource dependency and agency theories have underlined the superior performance of firms equipped with stronger Corporate Governance (CG) versus those of deficient governance. Concurrently, the study delineated the provisions of ownership structure provision, specifically foreign ownership and institutional ownerships, thus describing the component denoting the structural significance in explicating firm performance.

The current study implemented an empirical approach involving the construction of extensive CG measures thus, subjected to 81 non-financial firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange spanning the period of 2014–2018.

The current study identified the positive and significant relationship between the board of directors and audit committee characteristics with the firm performance measures tested, namely, return on equity (ROE) and Tobin’s Q. In terms of ownership structure, both foreign and institutional ownerships yielded a significant and positive relationship with ROE. Meanwhile, Tobin’s Q led to an insignificant and negative relationship between both ownership types and firm performance measures.

The analytical outcomes substantiate the possibility of enhanced performance shown by growing global firms because of the implementation of CG mechanisms, specifically because of the practices resulting in minimised agency costs.

The current study offers novel evidence detailing the impact of CG effectiveness towards performance and its implementation in emerging markets following the minimal amount of scholarly efforts on the topic. It is a timely contribution towards the current understanding of the relationship linking governance and performance for the purpose of ensuring the adoption and imposition of a strong corporate governance code by the government.

Emerging economies are increasingly benefiting from Islamic finance principles. The distinctive features of this unconventional form of finance are starting to be considered even in developed economies. Islamic finance operates under prohibitions on interest, gambling, speculation and complex derivatives according to the dogma in the Quran, Sunnah, Ijma and Qiyas. International financial reporting standards (IFRS) allow companies to attract global capital due to overcoming international borders. However, Islamic finance cannot apply all accounting standards. Therefore, this study aims to explore the implementation of international accounting standards in the Islamic finance context to present applications and future research fields.

Using a bibliometric and coding analysis, the study analyses 226 peer-reviewed journal papers extracted from the Scopus database. Using the bibliometrix package, the authors explored the literature’s intellectual, conceptual and social structures, categorising the findings into thematic clusters relevant to traditional and Islamic finance paradigms.

The results reveal new and interesting elements using the lens of the conceptual, intellectual and social structure. Additionally, the authors find out three main thematic clusters: (1) IFRS and Islamic finance: general principles; (2) IFRS and Zakat; (3) IFRS and Murabaha compatibility; (4) IFRS and Takaful; and (5) IFRS and auditing organisation for Islamic financial institution: governance strategies.

The contribution is original as the authors discover institutional theory perspectives and a diatribe between positivist and ontological approaches.

This study aims to investigate the differences in the credit profiles of Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region and attempts to identify the factors responsible for those differences.

Financial data sourced from the Bankscope database for a sample of 25 Islamic and 56 conventional banks headquartered in the GCC region between 1987 and 2014 are used. The credit risk of Islamic versus conventional banks is compared using a variety of univariate (mean difference test and correlation analysis) and multivariate tests (pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions with robust standard errors and year fixed effects, regressions with interaction variables and logistic regressions).

Pooled OLS regressions find that Islamic banks have lower credit risk than conventional banks. Robustness checks using logistic functions and interaction variables confirm this result. Using multiple econometric specifications, we also find that higher capitalization, greater liquidity and cost inefficiency contribute to the lower risk profile of Islamic banks.

The study is unable to disaggregate data for banks offering both Islamic and conventional banking services and hence does not include conventional banks with Islamic windows. In addition, there are differences across countries even within the GCC region as to what is considered Sharia’h-compliant and what is not.

The results are of potential interest to not only researchers, but also market participants, regulators and legislators. The methods used in this study could be extended to other two-tiered banking systems and, in the case of Islamic and conventional banking, to other markets.

The authors use a unique sample of banks headquartered in the GCC countries, whose banking markets are similar, if not homogeneous, thus excluding operations of multinational banks. By focusing on the Gulf region, differences in the credit profiles of Islamic and conventional banks can be examined without the confounding effects of unobserved factors like culture, accounting regime or regulatory environment.

This paper aims to verify whether the integration of sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance and whether corporate governance characteristics enhance the relationship between sustainability compensation and firms’ non-financial performance and to expand the domain of the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is based on a sample of companies listed on the Milan Italian Stock Exchange from the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index over the 2016–2020 period. Regression analysis was used by using data retrieved from the Refinitiv Eikon database and the sample firms’ remuneration reports.

The findings of this paper show that embedding sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance. The results of this paper also reveal that specific corporate governance features can improve the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is limited to Italian firms included in the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index; however, the findings are highly significant.

The findings provide regulators with useful insights for considering the integration of sustainability goals into executive remuneration. Another implication is that policymakers should require – at least – listed firms to fulfil specific corporate governance structural requirements. Finally, the findings can provide investors and financial analysts with a greater awareness of the role played by executive remuneration in the long-term value-creation process.

This paper contributes to addressing the relationship among sustainability, remuneration and non-financial disclosure, drawing on the stakeholder–agency theoretical framework and focusing on Italian firms. This issue has received limited attention with controversial results in the literature.