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This research aim to assess the effect of absorption on the mechanical properties of sandstone rocks using a servo-controlled testing machine, stress-strain curves were obtained from which the uni-axial compressive strength, Young’s modulus and the brittleness index were measured for specimens prepared from a single block of Sandstone from the Hassi Messaoud site investigation, Algeria. To see how the strength properties were affected by changes in absorption content such as are likely to occur on site, the specimens were divided into three groups which were prepared for testing under different conditions of absorption equilibrium.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the presence of political connections on firm performance through related party transactions in Tunisia, a country where that is characterized by the Jasmin revolution in 2011.

The study uses a sample of nonfinancial firms between 2008 and 2014 listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange and uses generalized least squares on panel data.

First, the political connection and related parties' transaction enhances firm's market performance. Second, the study reveals that political connection moderates the relationship between the related party transactions and firm performance only in the period after revolution. Indeed, politicians seem to have used related party transactions to expropriate firms in a period of political instability. Finally, we show that politicians are more attracted by firms with higher market performance and with higher number of related parties' transactions.

The empirical findings contribute to the current debate on the benefits and costs of political connections in emerging economies. It shows that political connections enhance market valuation of firms. However, political connection costs appear during political instability period.

This study addresses the interaction between related party transactions, political connections and firm performance. It is the first study to test if the related party transactions are used as a tool by politicians to expropriate firms.

This study explores the relationship between state ownership and labour cost stickiness across strategic and non-strategic industries in developing economies. It aims to uncover how non-economic considerations and sociopolitical objectives influence cost behaviour in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), particularly within strategic sectors.

The research employs data from 151 firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2011 to 2021. Using multiple linear regression analysis with year and industry-fixed effects, the study investigates the impact of state ownership on labour cost stickiness, considering the moderating role of industry type.

The analysis reveals a significant influence of industry type on the relationship between state ownership and labour cost stickiness. SOEs exhibit higher labour cost stickiness, especially in strategic industries subject to greater public scrutiny and government intervention. These findings align with agency theory, highlighting how sociopolitical pressures shape SOEs’ managerial decisions and cost management strategies.

This research fills a crucial gap in the literature on cost behaviour in developing countries, emphasising the importance of industry-specific strategies in mitigating labour cost stickiness in SOEs. It provides new insights into how state ownership and sociopolitical objectives affect cost management, offering valuable implications for policymakers and managers in similar economic contexts.

Firm performance has become a thriving research field. However, a review of previous studies shows that the answers to several fundamental questions remain vague and require further investigation. Thus, the purpose of this study is twofold. The first is to determine the extent of the involvement of political connections (PCs) in Pakistani-listed companies, and the second is to examine the association between PCs and firm financial performance with director efficacy’s moderating role.

A data set of 221 non-financial companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange for 10 years (2008–2017) was analysed using panel-corrected standard error regression. Additionally, the authors address endogeneity issue by using Hackman two-stage estimation and lagged variables regression.

The study found that PCs negatively affected the firm’s financial performance, and director efficacy as a moderator strengthened this relationship. The result is consistent with the political economy theory that argues that an unstable political system and a weak judicial system will strongly affect investors and their rights.

The impact of political influence on the corporate sector remains a concern for policymakers, regulators, investors, financial experts, auditors and academic researchers. This study’s findings are that an effective board of directors can strengthen the company’s best practices by controlling political connectedness to protect all the interested parties, particularly investors, and restore their confidence. Therefore, the results of this study can assist all stakeholders when a PCs exists to make the right decisions.

The study extends the literature in terms of theoretical contribution that uses an integrative approach to combine political economy theory, agency theory and resource dependence theory to address the moderating role of director efficacy with an association between PCs and firm financial performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no extant research has investigated the association between PCs and firm financial performance using five aspects of PCs, along with moderator director efficacy.

This study aims to assess the relationship between political connections, auditor characteristics (audit quality and industry specialization) and auditors’ intrinsic characteristics (narcissism) in listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange. In other words, this paper attempts to answer the question “whether political connections, audit quality and industry specialization contribute to the growth of narcissism and overconfidence of auditors of listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange or not.”

A multivariate regression model is used for hypothesis testing. The study’s hypotheses were also examined using a sample of 768-year firm listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2013–2018 and by using the multiple regression pattern.

The obtained results indicate a negative and significant association between political relations, narcissism and overconfidence. The auditor’s overconfidence will go down by increasing political relations. Moreover, the results show a positive and significant relationship between audit quality, industry specialization and narcissism. On the other hand, to the best of authors’ knowledge, this study measured, for the first time, the severity of political connections by using the exploratory factor analysis of eight variables (long-term liabilities, firm size, financial leverage, export, human resources, major governmental shareholders, board members affiliated to the government and institutional ownership).

The authors figured out that few studies carried out, so far, in the emergent markets on political connections and their impacts on narcissism and overconfidence of auditors, so this paper aims to assess the effect of such a phenomenon in the emergent markets and contributes to the development of knowledge and science in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of sustainability governance through the unfolding hybridisation process between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility and the implications of this for understanding patterns in sustainability reporting over time.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident is an extreme case study undertaken to examine its implications on the organisational legitimacy of British Petroleum (BP) and the latter’s response to the incident and beyond. The paper draws on Suchman’s legitimacy framework (1995) to understand sustainability governance as an organisational practice that evolved post the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to manage BP’s legitimacy. It draws on archival records and documentation from 2008 to 2017, as key sources for data collection, using interrogation by NVivo software.

Sustainability governance is a sound practice that was socially constructed to manage the re-legitimatisation process following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is characterised by broadness (the interplay between the corporate governance and corporate social responsibility disciplines), dynamic (developing the tactics to repair and maintain legitimacy), agility (conforming to the accountability for socially responsible investment and ensuring steps towards geopolitically responsible investment) and interdependence (reflecting composition and interactions).

This paper has practical implications for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s constitution, mechanism and characteristics.

This paper has implications not only for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s characteristics, but also for policy-makers, regulators and accounting education. However, the present paper’s insights are achieved through an in-depth and longitudinal case study.

This paper has problematized the concept of sustainability governance and elaborated its evolution (the emergence, enactment, deployment and interplay) process. The sustainability governance showed an otherwise organisational response that moves our understanding of the deployment of disclosure for complex organisational change as a way to discredit events.

This paper examines the effect of political connections (PCs) on firms' profitability and market value in the Egyptian market after the uprising of 2013.

An empirical study is conducted based on 284 firm-year observations for non-financial listed firms on the EGX100 during the period of 2014–2017. To test the study’s hypothesis, two independent sample t-test, Pearson correlation analysis and ordinary least square (OLS) regressions are conducted.

The results suggest that PCs are common across all industries in Egypt, the PCs through top officers do not improve firm's profitability; however, it has a positive effect on firms' market value. Further, PCs through business owners improve neither profitability nor the market value. Finally, the results suggest that PCs through government ownership have a positive effect on both firms' profitability and market value.

The study’s finding encourages policymakers and regulators in emerging markets, e.g. Egypt, to develop stricter laws, policies and regulatory initiatives to restrain the potential conflict of interest in the politically connected firms.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine the relationship between PCs and both firms’ profitability and market value in Egypt.

This study aims to assess the board of directors’ effectiveness in curbing earnings management (EM) in Jordan, a country where Islamic religious values strongly influence corporate practices.

Using a sample of 51 Amman Stock Exchange-listed firms from 2012 to 2022, generalised least squares regression is used to examine the association between board characteristics and EM.

Most board characteristics do not significantly affect EM. Interestingly, board activity is significantly and positively associated with EM, suggesting that the board’s monitoring function has been relegated to a secondary role.

Formal corporate governance mechanisms may prove ineffective, as their effectiveness in limiting EM is undermined by informal rules.

Regulators should adapt corporate governance rules to the context in which they are embedded. Greater attention to religious dynamics could improve board oversight effectiveness.

This study provides a new perspective to analyse the relationship between corporate governance and EM. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to explore this issue within the context of Islamic countries.

This study aims to examine the association between institutional investors’ ownership (IOW), politically connected firms (POCF) and audit report lag (AUDRL).

This study employs a feasible generalised least squares (FGLS) model for panel data to examine the association between IOW, POCF and AUDRL for Malaysian publicly listed companies.

The findings reveal a statistically significant negative relationship between IOW and AUDRL, with this negative relationship being more pronounced amongst POCF. Additionally, the results demonstrate that the relationship between IOW and AUDRL varies depending on the domicile of IIs (local vs. foreign). Specifically, local institutional investors exhibit a negative and statistically significant relationship with AUDRL, whilst foreign institutional investors show a positive and statistically significant relationship with AUDRL.

The results of this study provide a new understanding of auditor responses to institutional investor monitoring and political connections (PCs) in an emerging economy.

The objective of this paper is to study the impact of political connection and governance on credit rating and whether there is a substitution or complementary relationship between them.

In order to achieve the objective, a succession of eight ordered probit regressions has been carried out. Moderating variables between the political connection and governance characteristics were introduced. The whole population is taken as a sample, i.e., 27 Tunisian companies that are evaluated by FITSH NORTH AFRICA agencies over a period of 10 years (2009–2018).

The outcomes are mixed. They show that the political connection does not always influence credit rating; the size and board independence always improves credit rating; the duality between the functions affects credit rating; whereas the majorities’ proportion does not influence credit rating; and a substitution between the political connection and the governance characteristics is validated.

Like any other research, our results are factors of our measures and variable choice and depends heavily on the how these variables were conceived. Also, although our number of observations responds to the statistical result generalization requirements, our sample remains relatively narrow with 27 companies only.

In practice, the research will allow investors to have a better vision upon the future of their investments based on whether to develop their governance system or promote political networking. It will also prompt lenders to look beyond ratings and consider factors such as political connections to make a rational judgment on their future placements.

This study leads us to find various solutions: the establishment of credit agencies that take into consideration all the data of all the operators taken as a whole (bank, leasing company, and factoring). It encourages the reorganization of the Tunisian banking sector through mergers for example.

This study is a pioneer in the credit rating field in Tunisia, where the source of debt financing is the most used by all enterprises across all sectors. This study extends the literature of political connection effectiveness, independent directors, board size, in improving corporate performance and credit rating.