This paper aims to examine the effects of political connections (PCs) on corporate financial performance (CFP) in an emerging economy. It also investigates the moderating…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the effects of political connections (PCs) on corporate financial performance (CFP) in an emerging economy. It also investigates the moderating influence of the directors’ financial expertise (DFE) on the relationship between politically connected firms and their financial performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The study sample includes 304 firm-year observations from non-financial Tunisian listed firms covered over 2012–2019. Financial data are from various sources: financial statements, annual reports, official bulletins of the Tunisian Stock Exchange (TSE) and the Financial Market Council. PCs and DFE data are manually collected from the TSE and companies’ websites. Multivariate regression analyses are used to test the research hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that PCs negatively affect CFP and the DFE is a moderator variable that exacerbates this negative relationship. These results could be explained on the one hand by the fact that politicians often lack management, professionalism and know-how. On the other hand, political members on boards focus mainly on their political agendas and prioritize their interests rather than firm performance. Furthermore, board directors are more inclined towards the grabbing-hand approach to create personal linkages with these politicians and take personal benefits rather than protect the interests of minority shareholders and effectively use firm resources.
Research limitations/implications
The most important limitation of the study is the small number of non-financial TSE-listed firms. Indeed, the small sample size prevents us from considering industry specificities and working in a homogeneous environment.
Practical implications
This study recommends that external investors pay particular attention to politically connected firms as PCs tend to weaken corporate governance. Also, it helps policymakers better assess the need to harmonize and develop corporate governance standards and practices that account for the specific conditions in Tunisia to mitigate the lobbying of political parties and supervise their abuse of power. Furthermore, the negative relationship between PCs and CFP in a poorly regulated and governed country could be used by financial institutions in their credit scoring.
Social implications
The findings suggest that the nexus between politics and business draws attention to corruption post-revolution.
Originality/value
The originality and the relevance of this study consist in studying the moderating effect of the DFE on the association between PCs and CFP. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study pioneers assessing the role of the DFE as a moderating variable. It also supplements prior literature by examining the combined factors, such as PCs and DFE, on CFP in an emerging market.
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Achraf Haddad, Anis El Ammari and Abdelfattah Bouri
This study aims to test empirically the differences between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of impacts of the audit committees' quality on financial performance between…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to test empirically the differences between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of impacts of the audit committees' quality on financial performance between Subprime and Corona crises.
Design/methodology/approach
The variables are articulated in four hypotheses tested by the GLS analysis. The data were collected via DATASTREAM and from banks' annual reports. The collected data covered four continents: America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The financial performance measures and audit committee's determinants of the conventional and Islamic banks concerned 112 banks of each type after the Subprime crisis and before the Corona crisis (2010–2019).
Findings
Results showed that the audit committee reduced the profitability of two bank types. Moreover, it harmed the conventional banks' efficiency, but reported an unclear effect within Islamic banks. Even so, the authors noticed that the audit committee had a positive impact for the conventional banks' liquidity, while the same effect was apparently ambiguous on the Islamic banks' liquidity. For solvency, the audit committee positively influenced conventional banks, while it affected that of Islamic banks.
Research limitations/implications
Empirically, the authors’ results can serve as a reference for decision-makers allowing to clarify the data on the financial competitiveness of two bank types to facilitate the planning of strategic performance programs based on the audit committee quality. Theoretically, researchers found that the differences between the results are due to the audit committee quality of each bank type or to the financial performance evaluation method. However, there are further factors that are related to the research peculiarities, the methodology, the data and the interpretation.
Originality/value
Based on the comparative literature review between conventional and Islamic banks, this study is the first conditional and comparative research between the audit committee quality and the financial performance of conventional and Islamic banks in a specific period (after Subprime and before Corona crises).
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Ines Amara, Imen Khelil, Anis El Ammari and Hichem Khlif
This paper aims to examine the association between money laundering and infrastructure quality and whether the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) moderates this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the association between money laundering and infrastructure quality and whether the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) moderates this association.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample includes 348 country-year observations over the period of 2015–2017. The authors use Basel Anti-Money Laundering reports for 2015, 2016 and 2017 to collect data concerning money laundering. Infrastructure quality and the remaining variables are gathered from the Global Competitiveness reports for the same years.
Findings
Results show that money laundering is negatively associated with infrastructure quality. This negative association remains stable for countries characterised by low SARS, while it becomes less pronounced for countries with high SARS. Additional tests for the moderating impact of the SARS, using an interaction term between money laundering and SARS dummy variable, confirm that high SARS mitigates the adverse effect of money laundering on infrastructure quality.
Originality/value
These findings are important for policymakers, as they put emphasis on the adverse effect of money laundering and financial crimes on infrastructure quality and how solid auditing and reporting standards may improve infrastructure quality and reduce the negative effect of money laundering on the same variable. Thus, strengthening legislations concerning auditing and reporting standards in one country may improve infrastructure quality and combat money laundering and its adverse impacts.
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Imen Khelil, Anis El Ammari, Mohamed Amine Bouraoui and Hichem Khlif
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between digitalization and money laundering and tests whether ethical behaviour of firms and corruption moderate this association.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between digitalization and money laundering and tests whether ethical behaviour of firms and corruption moderate this association.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample includes 114 countries during 2016. Basel Anti-Money Laundering Report for 2016 is used to collect data concerning money laundering. Digitalization proxies are collected from digital adoption index from the World Bank for 2016. Finally, the remaining variables are gathered from the Global Competitiveness Report for the same year.
Findings
Results show negative and significant associations between the overall digitalization score and sub-scores dealing with digitalization adoption by businesses, people and government and money laundering. When testing for the moderating effect of corruption, the negative and significant association remains stable for both low and high corrupt environments for the overall digitalization score and sub-scores dealing digitalization adoption by businesses and people and money laundering. Similarly, ethical behaviour of firms does not moderate the association between digitalization (overall index and digitalization by business and people) and money laundering, as the relationship remains negative and significant for low and high ethical behaviour sub-samples. By contrast, the association becomes insignificant between digitalization adoption by government and money laundering for countries characterized by high corruption and low ethical behaviour of firms, while it is negative and significant for countries characterized by low corruption and high ethical behaviour firms.
Originality/value
These findings confirm that digitalization effort represents a crucial arm to combat money laundering. It also emphasizes the interrelation that may exist between digitalization effort in governmental institutions and institutional environment, as low levels of money laundering cannot be reached if the digitalization effort undertaken by governments is not supported by low corruption and ethical business environment.
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Achraf Guidara, Anis El Ammari and Hichem Khlif
This paper aims to examine the association between the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS, hereafter) and sustainability and investigates whether ethical behavior…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the association between the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS, hereafter) and sustainability and investigates whether ethical behavior of firms moderates relationship between SARS and sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample consists of 500 country-year observations over the period of 2014–2017. Sustainability is collected from the Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index Reports for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, while SARS and ethical behaviors are collected from the Global Competitiveness Reports for the same years.
Findings
The findings of this study suggest that the SARS is associated with sustainability. Similarly, ethical behavior of firms has a positive and significant effect on sustainability. When testing for the moderating effect of ethical behavior of firms on the association between SARS and sustainability, the results show that the positive association SARS becomes positive and more significant for countries where firms operate with high ethical behaviors, while the association becomes insignificant for settings where firms operate with low ethical behaviors.
Originality/value
The findings emphasize the role played by SARS and business ethics in improving sustainability. These results may have policy implications for governments aiming to improve sustainability by strengthening auditing and reporting standards and enforcing laws obliging firms to act ethically.
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Ines Amara, Hichem Khlif and Anis El Ammari
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) and money laundering, and test whether the SARS moderates the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) and money laundering, and test whether the SARS moderates the association between corruption and money laundering.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample consists of 348 country-year observations over the period 2015–2017. Data on money laundering are collected from Basel Anti-Money Laundering Reports for 2015–2017, while data on SARS and corruption are collected from the Global Competiveness Reports for the same years.
Findings
The findings of this study suggest that the SARS is negatively associated with money laundering, while corruption has an insignificant effect on the same variable. The effect of corruption on money laundering becomes positive and significant after removing the SARS. This result implies that the SARS and corruption represent two concurrent forces influencing money laundering phenomenon with a prevailing negative effect for the SARS. When testing for the moderating effect of SARS on the positive association between corruption and money laundering, findings show that the positive association remains stable under low SARS environments, while it is mitigated under high SARS. This moderating effect is further confirmed when using an interaction variable between the SARS dummy variable and corruption as this interaction variable has a negative effect on money laundering.
Originality/value
The findings emphasize the role played by the SARS in reducing money laundering and mitigating the positive association between corruption and money laundering. These results may have policy implications for governments aiming to combat this phenomenon.
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Dhouha Bouaziz, Bassem Salhi and Anis Jarboui
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on the earnings management examined by the discretionary accruals.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on the earnings management examined by the discretionary accruals.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample includes 151 French firms listed on the CAC ALL shares index from 2006 to 2015. The paper uses the feasible generalized least square regression technique to test the relationship between CEO characteristics and earnings management.
Findings
Using discretionary accruals as a proxy for earnings management, the results obtained from the three models (Jones modified 1995; Kothari et al., 2005; Raman and Shahrur, 2008) indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between CEO duality, CEO nationality and the quality of financial communication. However, no significant relationship was found between CEO board member, CEO turnover and earnings management.
Originality/value
A literature review finds that fewer studies have investigated the relationship between earnings management practices and personal CEO characteristics in the French context. Furthermore, no study yet has examined the influence of CEO nationality and CEO age on earnings management practices. This study provides empirical data about the impact of CEO’s characteristics on earnings management and how these different characteristics can facilitate the transition to manipulate and influence the quality of financial communication.
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Sabrine Cherni and Anis Ben Amar
This study aims to examine how digitalization affects the work efficiency of the Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB) in Islamic banks.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how digitalization affects the work efficiency of the Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB) in Islamic banks.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses panel data analysis of annual report disclosures over the past 10 years. The authors have selected 79 Islamic banks for the period ranging from 2012 to 2021. The criteria for SSB efficiency used in this research are disclosure of Zakat and disclosure in the SSB report.
Findings
The econometric results show that digitalization has a positive effect on improving the work efficiency of the SSB in Islamic banks. Accordingly, the authors provide evidence that the higher the bank's digital engagement, the higher the quality of the SSB.
Originality/value
The findings highlight the need to improve the current understanding of SSB structures and governance mechanisms that can better assist Islamic banks in engaging in effective compliance with recent governance and accounting reforms. Moreover, Islamic banks are the most capable and appropriate to implement and activate digitalization because they are based on a vital root calling for development if there are executives believing in it, as well as legislation supporting and serving them.