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This study examines the value relevance of earnings and Book values derived under the Kuwaiti accounting system that assures a complete compliance with the International Accounting Standards. Using a valuation model provided by Ohlson (1995), the study uses statistical association between stock prices and both earnings and book values to measure value‐relevance of the accounting system. The study also compares the incremental explanatory power of earnings and book values and examines some conditions under which earnings or book values would explain a relatively higher proportion of the variation of stock prices. The results show that earnings and book values jointly and individually are positively and significantly related to stock prices. The incremental information content of earnings is greater than that of book values. Earnings become less value‐relevant and book values more so as firms experience negative earnings. The best fit for the model was obtained for the industrial and food sectors followed by service and financial institutions. Earnings add more to the overall explanatory of the valuation model than book values for financial institutions, services, investments and real estate sectors; whereas book values have superiority only for the industrial sector. The results of our study are generally consistent with the results obtained from U.S. and other developed markets except for the fact that the incremental information content of earnings is greater than that of book values.

This study aims to examine the impact of Covid-19 on transforming accountability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and office operation and control. This paper explains how unleashing the rationality of health and safety along with internal CSR made the transformation to telework successfully operable in a periphery of a western multinational corporation.

The study draws upon the theories of governmentality and social accountability. It adopts an interpretative qualitative research approach and uses the case study method. Data were collected from one of the biggest private sector telecommunication companies in Egypt.

This study finds that Covid-19 and its related health and safety discourse represented a good rationale for the western home office to accelerate the initiation of its office transformation plan to reach full working from home policy in a less developed country peripheral subsidiary. Under the guise of CSR, the company spent a large budget to make this transformation quickly operable, while its Egyptian subsidiary is financially distressed. Moreover, the company achieved its objectives from this new rationality as employees currently prefer the telework mode which reduces the company costs in the long run.

The study provides practitioners with evidence and practicable knowledge regarding the impact of Covid-19 on office reconfiguration and the ways used to achieve this in the Egyptian telecommunication sector.

The current study extends the governmentality literature by illustrating that transformation to telework in emerging markets is an operational manifestation of cost reduction and efficiency rationality under the guise of CSR. Moreover, it extends the office transformation literature by bringing early evidence regarding office transition plans during COVID-19 in an emerging market.

This paper aims to investigate small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) owner–managers’ awareness, willingness and perceptions concerning Islamic financing instruments as an alternative sourcing decision in SMEs’ businesses.

The research employed mixed methods to gather data. A questionnaire survey was conducted via face-to-face interviews with 385 SME owner–managers operating in Muscat, Oman’s capital city, along with face-to-face discussion on Islamic finance with 86 SME owner–managers. Descriptive and thematic analysis were used to analyse the data.

The findings indicate that SME owner–managers are aware of Islamic banking principles and have knowledge of Islamic financial instruments, despite Islamic finance being new to Oman. Interestingly, although the majority of the participants indicated their intention to adopt this new finance method, they were motivated by special requirements other than finance. Their positive perception of Islamic financing methods could play a significant role in developing the Islamic banking industry.

The research is limited in that its data came only from Omani SME owner–managers in Muscat. Future research could investigate wider samples. Secondly, the study’s findings lack generalisability to larger and public enterprises, because only SME owner–managers were surveyed.

This study will be important for policy makers concerned about SMEs’ financing, Islamic financial institutions and new entrants into the Islamic banking industry, as it provides empirically evidence of Omanis’ views, and more specifically those of Omani SME owner–managers, on the recent introduction of Islamic finance into the country. The insights this study offers should help them to develop the strategies required to attract SMEs and to construct policies and regulations to improve Oman’s Islamic banking industry.

The research is significant, as it is the first study to investigate the awareness, willingness and perceptions of Omani SMEs regarding Islamic banking in Oman. Even though all Omanis are Muslims, Oman was the last of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council countries to introduce Islamic finance. Thus, this emerging market provides an important basis from which to extend future research on Islamic finance to other potential Islamic finance markets.

The main purpose of this paper is the generation of the heat transfer and pressure drop correlations by considering three working fluids, namely air, water, and ethylene glycol, for the wavy plate-fin heat exchangers (PFHEs).

In order to present the general correlations, various models with different geometrical parameters should be tested. Because of the problems, such as difficult, long time, and costly fabrication of the wavy fins in experimental tests, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations can be a useful method for the generation of the heat transfer and pressure drop correlations with eliminating the experimental problems. Hence, the effective design parameters of the wavy plate-fin, including fin pitch, fin height, wave length, fin thickness, wave amplitude, and fin length, and also their levels were recognized from the literature. The Taguchi method was applied to formulate the CFD simulation work.

The simulation results were compared and validated with an available experimental data. The mean deviations of the Colburn factor, j, and Fanning friction factor, f, values between the simulation results and the experimental data were 3.74 and 9.07 percent, respectively. The presented air correlations and experimental data were in a good agreement, so that approximately 95 percent of the experimental data were correlated within ±12 percent. The j factor values varied for the different working fluids, while the f factor values did not sensibly change.

The presented correlations can be used to estimate the thermal-hydraulic characteristics and to design of the compact PFHE with the wavy channels.

This manuscript presents the new correlations for the compact PFHEs with the way channels by considering all the geometrical parameters and the working fluids with the different Prandtl numbers, 0.7, 7, and 150.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of culture generally, and Arab culture in particular, for the development of trust in business-to-business (B2B) banking relationships.

Qualitative fieldwork was employed, gathering in-depth interview data from bankers and their business clients in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In total, 80 relationships between bankers and business clients were investigated.

The development of trusting relationships between bankers and clients is affected by the cultural origins of the relationship partners. Strongly held religious beliefs, and loyalty to family, tribe and nation, lead to strong affect-based trust between bankers and clients from Arab culture. Cognitive-based trust is more characteristic of UAE banker/client relationships that involve partners from outside the Arab world.

The study was conducted in the UAE. Additional tests in other Arab countries would be valuable. The qualitative nature of the study means that statistical generalizations cannot be drawn.

The cultural origins of banking relationship managers are of considerable importance when seeking to develop relationships of trust with business banking clients in the Arab world.

This substantial, qualitative study of banker relationships with business clients throws considerable light on the importance of culture as an antecedent to trust in B2B banking relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the resiliency between conventional banks (CBs) and Islamic banks (IBs) in Bangladesh at the financial crisis, pre-crisis and post-crisis period.

Data from 25 banks, 18 CBs and 7 IBs, operating in Bangladesh during the period 2005-2014 have been collected and divided into three stages: the pre-crisis period (2005-2006), the crisis period (2007-2008) and the post-crisis period (2009-2014). Dynamic generalized method of moments and quantile regression analysis have been used for this study.

This paper uses Z-score as an indicator of bank stability and found a significant difference in stability between IBs and CBs during the financial crisis. In addition, this paper also tries to identify the type of banks that performed better during pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods but found no significant differences between IBs and CBs in this regards. For robustness, quantile regression found that the statistical significance level of credit risk, capital adequacy ratio and efficiency ratio of CBs and IBs differ at different percentile.

Most of the previous studies were conceptual or narrative and conducted on a global basis, not country-specific. To filling the country-level research gap, this study provides a meaningful insight about how these two types of banks performed in different periods.

The purpose of this paper is to present a method of modeling the variable reluctance stepper motor using the time‐stepping finite element technique. The proposed model is used to minimize the step response overshoots considering the stator and rotor tooth geometry.

A strongly coupled field‐circuit model considering magnetic nonlinearity of the stepper motor is presented. As the main contribution, the Nelder‐Mead method of the motor geometry optimization that minimize the step response overshoots and positioning error is proposed.

The proposed method can be applied to obtain the optimal tooth/pole geometry of the stepper motor which is efficient to perform the possibly accurate positioning.

The paper examines the application of the presented optimization method to minimize the positioning error of the four‐phased variable reluctance stepper motor.

With the evolving landscape of technology and innovations, metaverse has revealed a huge potential for changing the world. Gradually, it has expanded its wings to different sectors, including higher education. The key purpose of this research work is to synthesize the existing literature on metaverse in higher education and develop future research directions for researchers.

The present study uses the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)” technique to recognize relevant articles from the database, i.e. SCOPUS. Furthermore, it conducts a “bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review” to explore the research area of metaverse in higher education.

The findings reveal that the synthesis and analysis of existing literature led to the identification of an intellectual structure, which resulted in the formation of four clusters. These clusters are defined as attributes related to metaverse applications in higher education, sustainable management of complex learning practices, customization of the teaching–learning process through the metaverse and model development. The theoretical structure informs the co-word analysis and thematic map, identifying four themes: the basic theme, motor theme, niche theme and decline theme. Finally, the social structure is assessed in terms of the author’s network and collaboration across countries.

The study investigated the conceptual structure by developing a thematic map and social structure by measuring the relationship between country–author collaboration through bibliographic coupling (BC). The study also identified future research avenues based on the “TCCM (theory, context, characteristics, and methodology)” framework for future researchers and practitioners.

The research study thrives on enlarging the review scope to measure the metaverse’s role in higher education. Though bibliometric studies have been developed in the metaverse, no study has attempted to measure the relationship between metaverse in higher education using bibliometric and TCCM framework. Thus, developing a synthesized work provides a comprehensive picture of the research domain.