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This study tests the proprietary cost of reporting sustainability practices. It explores how market competition impacts the reporting of corporate sustainability information. Further, it examines whether the influence of market competition on sustainability reporting is affected by firm size.

It uses two samples of the UK FTSE 350 and German Frankfurt CDAX nonfinancial firms from 2010 to 2023. The sustainability reporting scores for UK and German firms are their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosure scores based on the Bloomberg disclosure index. The Herfindahl–Hirschman index has been utilized to measure a firm’s degree of market competition.

The results reveal that reporting sustainability practices is a negative function of the degree of market competition. Specifically, companies in highly competitive industries disclose less information about their sustainability practices, suggesting that firms view sustainability reporting as a potential source of competitive disadvantage and, therefore, choose to limit such disclosures to maintain a strategic advantage over rivals. Further, the findings reveal a negative impact of market competition on sustainability reporting among small firms. However, this effect is weak or absent among medium and large firms. The results are more observable in the liberal market economy (i.e. the UK) than in the coordinated market economy (i.e. Germany).

It provides implications for policymakers and market participants to advocate for more significant policies that promote transparency and encourage companies to report their sustainability practices and performance, especially companies in highly competitive industries.

It provides the first evidence of how market competition influences corporate sustainability reporting, adding a deeper insight into another non-financial dimension of sustainability reporting. Likewise, it reflects the varying priorities of companies of different sizes in managing both competition and sustainability reporting. Besides, it is the first to explore this nexus in two distinct jurisdictions: the UK and Germany.

Kuwait has taken significant steps to reform its corporate governance (CG) by introducing the New Company Law (NCL) in 2013. This study investigates how this reform of CG mechanisms affects the disclosure of future-oriented information. Likewise, it explores how CG mechanisms affect the informativeness of this disclosure.

The sample comprises the nonfinancial firms listed on the Boursa Kuwait from 2014 to 2018. The study uses an automated textual analysis to measure the level of future-oriented disclosure in the annual reports of these firms. The informativeness of disclosure is proxied by firm value at three months of the date of the annual report.

The study finds that Kuwaiti firms with larger board sizes and substantial ownership by institutional investors are less likely to disseminate future-oriented information. Conversely, firms with more independent directors and larger audit committees are more inclined to provide future-oriented disclosure. Furthermore, the disclosure of future-oriented information carries contents that enhance investors' valuations of Kuwaiti firms, especially in firms with fewer institutional ownership and more prominent audit committees.

It focuses on management decisions to disclose information in the annual reports. Examining other channels of disseminating information, such as social media disclosure, provides avenues for future research.

Policy setters in Kuwait should consider the importance of some CG mechanisms to improve the transparency of Kuwaiti firms, as suggested by the NCL. Likewise, investors should rely on such specific CG mechanisms to build their prospects about the firm's value.

Apart from developed countries, the current study is the first evidence on how CG mechanisms could affect the informativeness of future-oriented disclosure in a developing economy. It is also the first to investigate the new CG mechanism introduced by Kuwait NCL in 2013.

Corporate managers spend on research and development (R&D) for reasons of growth and survival. However, they may be less willing to invest in R&D because of its long-term horizon, high failure rate and uncertain outcomes. This study aims to explore the extent to which managerial ownership influences R&D expenditure decisions.

Apart from the linear regression models, this study uses a semi-parametric quantile regression analysis for a sample of German non-financial firms throughout 2009–2018.

This study finds a nonmonotonic sensitivity of R&D spending to the level of managerial ownership over various quantiles of R&D distribution. That is, managerial ownership increases the expenditure on R&D at low R&D intensity firms. However, it decreases the expenditure on R&D at high R&D intensity firms. These results suggest the presence of a maximum level of R&D expenditure, after which owner-managers would be unwilling to spend on R&D.

The results confirm the importance of corporate ownership structure for firm R&D and innovation activities. It provides an implication for corporate policymakers to reform the corporate ownership structures to encourage corporate managers and owners to invest in R&D projects.

This study offers two distinct contributions study. First, it provides the first German shred of evidence on the nonlinear relationship between managerial ownership and R&D expenditure decisions by distinguishing between high and low R&D intensity firms. Second, unlike prior research, it uses a semi-parametric quantile regression analysis. This method is more efficient than least-squares estimators and produces robust estimators to heteroscedasticity of the residuals.

This research aimed at identifying the most significant risks relevant to construction contracts of two power station projects in Egypt. These were large scale, fast‐track projects where a multi‐package contracting plan was utilized. Further, the study investigated how risks were perceived and managed by a large sample of Egyptian and international contractors who participated in the execution of these two major projects. A checklist of risk categories was developed to aid contractors in their risk identification effort. The compilation of this checklist identified the following risk categories: 1) owner’s obligations; 2) interface with other contractors; 3) liability risks; 4) financial risks; 5) risks related to changes; 6) technical risks and 7) consortium risks. Research results identified a marked lack of consistency in the contractors’ risk identification effort. Contractors possessing past experience in Egypt were far better able to identify the relevant risks. On the other hand, local Egyptian contractors with vast experience in Egypt but limited project management experience were shown to lack the necessary expertise to properly identify risks and to take the appropriate exceptions. Furthermore, the results revealed that bidders do not include in their proposals their “true” lists of exceptions which represent genuine risks to them.

This study aims to provide an exhaustive review and analysis of accounting research conducted on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

The study combines bibliometric and content analysis techniques to analyze 811 Scopus peer-reviewed research articles from 1998 to 2023, written by 1,195 authors. It quantifies the annual scientific production, examines the main publication venues, visualizes collaboration and various bibliometric networks, identifies thematic research categories and provides a roadmap for future research directions.

The findings reveal phenomenal progress in accounting research on the GCC countries, evidenced by an increased number of peer-reviewed articles, scholars and countries involved. Likewise, a “homophily impact” exists among the productive authors, meaning they share a disciplinary or thematic similarity in their research interests. Besides, there is an apparent weakness in the research collaboration between GCC countries and their global counterparts. Furthermore, four main broad thematic categories of accounting research on the GCC countries were identified: (1) corporate governance, (2) Islamic banks, (3) corporate social responsibility and (4) intellectual capital. Building on the findings, we formulated a comprehensive agenda for guiding future research directions.

This study is the first to thoroughly evaluate accounting research within the GCC countries, utilizing a large sample of 811 peer-reviewed research papers indexed in Scopus from 1998 to 2023. The results are helpful, offer valuable insights and pave the way for future research avenues.

This chapter explores the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from an Islamic Shari'ah-compliant perspective. It provides a comprehensive literature review on CSR with an explicit focus on the Islamic perspective of CSR, Islamic models of CSR, CSR practices in conventional and Islamic banks, and the consequences of CSR to Islamic banks. This chapter's main contribution lies in considering the current CSR literature from a Shari'ah perspective. Likewise, it identifies gaps in the current literature and suggests potential areas for future research. This chapter attempts to improve the understanding of how Islamic banks integrate social responsibility into their operations. The insights from this chapter are helpful to practitioners and academic scholars in Islamic finance, accounting, and CSR. This chapter emphasizes the importance of incorporating Islamic values and principles into CSR practices and encourages further research and investigation in this area.

This paper aims to study the effect of the new modified dispersing agent, milling time of the properties and particle size distribution (PSD) of inkjet ink formulation for polyester fabric printing.

The study’s methods include preparation of different formulations of textile inkjet inks based on different types of dispersing agents, then applying and evaluating the prepared formulations on the polyester fabric. The properties of the prepared ink formulations were analyzed by measuring viscosity, surface tension and particle size. The current work is including the study of the effect of using different doses of different dispersing agents and the milling time on their characteristics. Also, the study was extended to evaluate the printed polyester by using the prepared inks according to light fastness, washing fastness, alkali perspiration fastness and crock fastness.

The results showed that the used dispersing agents and the different milling time enhanced the viscosity and dynamic surface tension in the accepted range, but it was largely cleared in the PSD which tends to perform the inks on the printhead and prevent clogging of nozzles. Light fastness, washing fastness, alkali perspiration fastness and crock fastness gave good results in agreement with this type of inkjet inks for textile printing.

In this work, good results were obtained with this type of dispersing agent for inkjet ink formulations, but for other dispersing agents, other tests could be performed. The inkjet ink could also be formulated with other additives to prevent clogging of nozzles on the printhead.

These ink formulations could be used for printing on polyester fabric by the inkjet printing.

Recently, there was a considerable interest in the study of the effect of PSD on the inkjet inks to prevent clogging of nozzles on the printhead and to improve the print quality on the textile fiber.

This paper aims to study the physical and chemical characteristics of inkjet titanium dioxide inks for cotton fabric digital printing.

Different dispersing agents through the reaction of glycerol monooleate and toluene diisocyanate were prepared and then performed by using three different polyols (succinic anhydride-modified polyethylene glycol PEG 600, EO/PO Polyether Monoamine and p-chloro aniline Polyether Monoamine), to obtain three different dispersing agents for water-based titanium dioxide inkjet inks. The prepared dispersants were characterized using FTIR to monitor the reaction progress. Then the prepared dispersants were formulated in titanium dioxide inkjet inks formulation and characterized by particle size, dynamic surface tension, transmission electron microscopy, viscosity and zeta potential against commercial dispersants. Also, the study was extended to evaluate the printed polyester by using the prepared inks according to washing and crock fastness.

The obtained results showed that p-chloro aniline Polyether Monoamine (J) and succinic anhydride modified polyethylene glycol PEG 600 (H) dispersants provided optimum performance as compared to commercial standards especially, particle size distribution data while EO/PO Polyether Monoamine based on dispersant was against and then failed with the wettability and dispersion stability tests.

These ink formulations could be used for printing on cotton fabric by DTG technique of printing and can be used for other types of fabrics.

The newly prepared ink formulation for digital textile printing based on synthesized polyurethane prepolymers has the potential to be promising in this type of printing inks, to prevent clogging of nozzles on the printhead and to improve the print quality on the textile fiber.

The relationship between online reviews and purchase intention has been studied in previous research. However, there was little knowledge about the effect of information quality and the social presence of online reviews on purchase intention based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework. The purpose of this study is to explore the intrinsic relationship between the stimulus (perceived information quality and social presence) generated from online reviews and the response (purchase intention).

This study developed a research model by applying the S-O-R framework to test the proposed hypotheses. A combination of a web-based experiment and an online survey was employed to collect data. Hypotheses were empirically tested using Smart PLS.

The PLS analysis shows that both perceived information quality and the social presence of online reviews positively affect trust. Moreover, satisfaction with online reviews affects purchase intention, whereas trust has a positive impact on satisfaction, playing a mediating role between two stimuli and satisfaction. Besides, perceived information quality of positive online reviews is found to have a more significant impact on trust, satisfaction and purchase intention.

The results of this study are of great value for expanding both theoretical research and practical applications of online reviews in relation to purchase intention. This study with a new research model reveals the understanding of how the purchase intention will be motivated by online reviews. Meanwhile, the moderating effects and the mediating effects are also discussed.