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The purpose of this paper is to develop a mediational model of small businesses success. In this paper, the authors investigate how the human, social, and financial capital of entrepreneurs influences the capacity of small business to succeed. The objective through this model is to demonstrate that it is through the process of innovation these capitals are converted into success.

The paper suggests an original, conceptual framework for how small businesses can succeed.

To validate this mediational model, the authors used the conditions/steps proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986).

The results of this study have implications for both research and practice. This study provides a new contribution to the existing literature by introducing the innovation in the explanation of the links between these capitals and small business success, i.e. business with greater access to human and financial resources are more likely to undertake an innovation, which, in turn, ensures small business success and access to more financial capital facilitates the pursuit of resource-intensive success strategies because, it is argued, that slack resources can be used for experimentation with new strategies and practices, allowing the business to pursue new opportunities of success.

The proposition is consistent that managers with considerable human capital, social, and finacial capital know where to look for opportunities, can more accurately assess the value of potential opportunities, and have the ability to exploit these opportunities, which encourages innovation. It is this innovation that then facilitates small business success. These resources are important to achieve small business success, but primarily because they encourage innovation, and it is the innovation that drives the small business success.

In this paper, the authors extend the entrepreneurial literature by developing a mediation model of small business success. To the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study that examined the indirect effect of human, social, and financial capital of entrepreneurs on small business success through the mediation of innovation. This model has the indirect effect of human, social, and financial capital on success through their impact on innovation, i.e., through the innovation process such capital is converted into success.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the relationship between energy consumption, economic growth and CO₂ emissions for the G7 countries over the period 1971–2014. The second intent of the paper is to make a comparison whether it is renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy consumption, or both that determine sustainable economic growth in G7 countries.

The authors testify the relationship among energy consumption, economic growth and CO₂ emissions using numerous econometric techniques. The authors have applied pooled mean group autoregressive distribution model (ARDL) for long-run and short-run relationships for individual countries. Finally, the authors have applied Granger causality testing based on Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) and Emirmahmutoglu and Kose’s (2011) approach in order to check the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth, CO₂ emission and economic growth and vice versa.

However, energy usage is a greater concern due to the increase in imported energy prices. With this preposition, new thinking needs to be carried out for energy usage and sustainable economic growth. The authors consider cross-sectional reliance and cross-country heterogeneity for seven developed countries. The tests utilized in this investigation include the bootstrap causality approach of Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) and LA–VAR approach of Toda and Yamamoto (1995) that permits testing the causality for every individual panel individuals independently. However, not very many empirical works bring these two separate streams of writing together to analyze the causal connections between energy consumption, economic growth and CO₂ emission for G7 countries.

However, energy usage is a greater concern due to the increase in imported energy prices. Meanwhile, the exhaustive use of fossil fuels increases emission level which leads to climate change, global warming, reduction in agriculture productivity and danger to human life. With this preposition, new thinking needs to be carried out for energy usage and sustainable economic growth. There are limited number of studies addressing energy consumption, economic growth and CO₂ emission relationship. This study employs different methodology to find out the relationship among the variables.

This paper aims to study the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) readiness, use, and intensity and environmental sustainability factors in the lower and middle lower-income countries from 2012 to 2018.

ICT readiness, use and intensity are measured with the impact of ICT on access to basic services, phone penetration and Internet penetration, while CO₂ emissions per capita, fossil fuel energy consumption and methane emissions are used as indicators for air pollution. To achieve this goal, a two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation was performed which thresholds are computed contingent on the validity of tested hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that increasing ICT readiness, use and intensity in lower and lower-middle-income countries enhance environmental sustainability by decreasing CO₂ emissions and energy consumption.

One of the limitations of this study is that the conclusions and policy recommendations do not take into account the specificities of each country. Indeed there are some differences in the growth pattern of ICT in the lower and middle-lower-income countries. Taken together, the authors conclude that increasing ICT has a positive net effect on CO₂ and methane emissions per capita, while increasing the impact of ICT access in basic services has a net negative effect on CO₂ fossil fuel energy consumption and methane emissions.

The world needs immediate emissions reduction to avoid the long-term danger of climate change. Second, government authorities should give additional efforts in the more pollutant sector such as transport and industry to monitor their energy consumption.

To explore this issue further, the negative net effects suggest that ICT needs to be further developed beyond the determined thresholds, to attain the required negative net effect on fossil fuel energy consumption.

The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis on the economic relationship between trade openness and economic growth and to identify current developments, potential research area and future directions. The emphasis is on the identification of annual growth of publications, country-wise distribution, publication pattern, intellectual structure and cluster analysis of scientific production in this field.

This study used evaluative techniques, text mining approach and performance analysis to identify possible patterns and correlation and to measure the impact of authors/citations/scientific production. Further, this study used the bibliometric mapping to represent the structural features of scientific production. This study emphasized on identification of the research hotspots based on occurrence of indexed keywords, productive researchers and journals during 2000–2022. Further, cluster analysis is performed using VOS viewer to analyze the current dynamics and future direction of the association between trade openness and economic growth (Eck and Waltman, 2011). Also, co-citation analysis is used in this study to identify the relations among authors or journals or documents using citation data, whereas the bibliographic coupling/mapping is intended to analyze the citing documents. Similarly, co-word analysis is used to study the article keywords that are mainly used to assess the conceptual structure of a concerning subject.

Economic growth is a function of trade openness, and it is important to analyze the relationship between trade openness and economic growth. Trade openness tends to become more liberalized over time, to contribute more to economic growth. Empirical evidence suggested that there exists a strong association between trade openness and economic growth. Further, keyword timeline analysis illustrated that the linkage between trade openness and economic growth is current area of interest among researchers. As per bibliometric analysis, China, Pakistan and Malaysia are the three most prolific countries in the terms of published articles on this theme. However, the most influential publications based on h-index and citation on trade openness–economic growth relationship is produced by Turkey. Based on cluster analysis, this study suggests that researchers are currently working on trade openness–economic growth relationship with other variables such as FDI, financial development, labor force, environment degradation and carbon emission, while in future, researchers could work on variables such as technology and sustainable development.

There are some limitations of this study. The first limitation is the authors have used Scopus database, leaving the possibility for future research to use Web of Science, Google Scholar or other similar sources. The second limitation is that the authors have used search terms “trade openness “and “economic growth,” although research could be performed using synonyms or even relevant terms in other languages.

Cluster analysis suggested that researchers are currently working on trade openness–economic growth relationship with other variables such as FDI, financial development, labor force, environment degradation and carbon emission, while in future, researchers could work on variables such as technology and sustainable development. Therefore, this study identified the potential research area in this research domain.

To confirm the originality of this study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to combine bibliometric analysis and cluster analysis on trade openness–economic growth relationship. This study makes a comparison with phenomena/processes/events in contemporary economic and social reality in the field of trade openness and economic growth relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine how women in board represent moderates the relationship between audit quality and corporate tax avoidance.

The study is based on a sample consisting of 270 UK firms over the 2005–2017 period. This study is motivated by moderating regression analysis.

The results show that audit quality influences the corporate tax avoidance. Audit quality measured by two proxies audit specialization and audit fees has a negative effect on corporate tax avoidance. Board gender diversity “BGD” moderates the relationship between audit quality and tax avoidance. The impact of the BGD level increases as the presence of woman in the board escalated from 40 to 60 percent but, then, weakens at 10 percent level.

The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers, practitioners and regulators who are interested in discovering relation between audit quality and tax avoidance with the presence of woman in the board. This study should be of interest to tax policymakers concerned about declining corporate tax revenues.

This paper extends the existing literature by examining the moderating effect of BGD on the relation between audit quality and corporate tax avoidance using the sensitivity analysis.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the effect of CEO tenure, gender, age and education on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performances, notably their societal and environmental commitment.

The paper checks the hypotheses on the relationship between CEO demographic characteristics and CSR categories. Feasible Generalized Least Square was performed on a sample of 215 European firm-year-observations indexed on STOXX Europe 600 Index from 2014 to 2021.

Results provide strong evidence that CEO characteristics are significantly and positively associated with corporate social and environmental performance. The findings specify that CEOs in their early years of service and firms led by female CEOs invest more in social and environmental activities. The authors also found that older CEO age and higher educational level are positively related to CSR categories.

Drawn on upper echelons theory, this study suggests that strategic environmental and social decisions in the firm are significantly influenced by the CEO’s demographic characteristics.

This paper provides a comprehensive picture by inculcating different CEO characteristics and CSR categories (product responsibility, community and human rights, emission reduction, product innovation and resource reduction) in European companies.

The study of the relationship between external auditing services and investment deviation in a French setting has received relatively little research attention thus far. There are insufficient indicators to measure audit quality and then have a measurable link to investment efficiency. This study is motivated by such a research gap as well as the important role of auditing services in assuring investment efficiency. The purpose of this study is to test whether a good audit quality service improves corporate investment awareness in French-listed companies and contributes to establishing a comprehensive analysis framework for inefficient investment and how audit services have become an important tool to reduce the investment deviation of listed companies in France.

Based on a sample of 89 non-financial French firms listed on the Stoxx 600 Index from 2015 to 2021, this study uses feasible generalised least squares (FGLS) regressions to study the relationship between investment deviation and auditing service quality.

After running an FGLS regression model for two firm groups (overinvestment and overinvestment groups) and testing for a set of control variables, especially COVID-19, the findings show a non-linear correlation between audit service and corporate investment deviation. Both underinvestment and overinvestment decisions are negatively and statistically significantly impacted by audit indicators. Furthermore, involving a high-quality specialised auditor may enhance overall monitoring and lead to a lower investment deviation level. Overall, the empirical results show that a high-quality audit service enhances the investment efficiency of French-indexed companies.

This study offers crucial information that audit regulators can use to better appreciate the advantages of high audit quality and to take seriously the policy issues that affect it. Board members are urged to provide excellent audit quality that improves investment efficiency with careful consideration.

This study contributes to the existing audit literature by illuminating the effect of audit quality services on investment deviation to show a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to the differences in prior studies’ findings in the field of audit quality impacts.

This study aims to focus on the important role of chief executive directors (CEOs’) emotional intelligence to explain the interactive relationship between research and development (R&D) investment and environmental performance in the energy sector and also to explain how the diversification into new energy technology provides explanations for environmental problems.

This research was realised through the completion of a questionnaire-type inquiry structured around table-based analysis. Two five-scale questionnaires were completed by CEOs relating to oil and gas industry. The first instrument reflects the level of emotional intelligence. The second instrument indicates elements of environmental performance. A total of 158 firms were approached using a questionnaire, where 112 responses were received and 108 valid responses were used for analysis. The data were analyzed by the partial least squares method.

The results confirm the positive effect of CEOs’ emotional intelligence on the interaction between R&D, energy and recycling. In addition, the diversification strategy further influences the role of CEOs’ emotional intelligence to provide explanations into a R&D investment for the environmental problems in the Tunisian energy sector. The findings reveal challenges and opportunities for Tunisia’s energy industry to increase R&D investment that will enable the economy to use more environment-friendly devices and technologies that will be reducing pollution.

First, this study indicates the important role of managerial emotional intelligence to explain the impact of R&D investment and help Tunisian energy enterprises look for means to minimise their environmental expenses through raising energy efficiencies, reducing pollution and encouraging reuse and recycling. Second, this study explains how a diversification strategy can mediate the interaction effect of CEO emotional intelligence. The Tunisia oil and gas sector has not been subjected to extensive research and this paper, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, represents a first attempt to provide an overview of the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to test the political costs hypothesis in emerging economies characterized by interventionist governments and weak protection of property rights. The paper uses executives’ political connection and state control to measure firms’ political costs.

Based on a sample of Tunisian firms, univariate and multivariate analyses are used to test whether firms’ political costs have any impact on earnings management.

The empirical analysis indicates that the executives’ political connection is not directly related to earnings management. However, the interaction between executives’ political connection and the state control affects the firm’s sensitivity to political pressure and its earnings management practices. More specifically, this study provides evidence that non-connected firms and state-controlled firms attempt to use accounting policies to decrease their earnings especially during periods of the former government when they had to face high political costs. This finding is robust to comparing means of political cost indicators between different groups. Indeed, private firms with political connection enjoy a significantly lower insurance right, tax and donations and grants compared to other firms.

This study provides empirical evidence for the specific application of accounting theory in emerging economies.

Political influence may be an important criterion that will be used by auditors and investors to appreciate and detect specific manipulations of accounting earnings. Similarly, regulators should be aware of the political factors effect on discretionary behavior of managers to provide appropriate rules and standards.

The study is a pioneer in proving that a firm’s size is not always a suitable measure of its political cost. It extends the accounting literature on the role of political economy in the application of the political costs hypothesis. This hypothesis is confirmed in emerging economies by providing new and significantly measure of firms’ political costs

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance effectiveness and information transparency. Hence, this paper seeks to extend prior information transparency research.

This study uses a sample of 28 non-financial listed Tunisian companies and covers an eight-year period from 2006 to 2013. To test the hypotheses of this research, a simultaneous equation system model was applied.

The results obtained show that, for the Tunisians companies, corporate governance practices have a significant positive effect on information transparency. The current study also provides evidence that pertinent information can improve corporate governance index.

The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers, practitioners and regulators who are interested in discovering the quality of corporate governance practices in Tunisian context.

The findings of this study can help Tunisian regulators in creating corporate governance disclosure requirements. The findings also provide the African business community insights concerning the quality of corporate governance and of corporate reporting.

This research helps also to inform regulators about the benefits of disclosure more information to investors and to the firm. For instance, how the information can be a source of transparency and stability in the firms what and favors the social environment of the firms.

This paper extends the existing literature by examining the causal relationship between corporate governance and information transparency.