Search results

This paper aims to discuss current work and further steps of the psychological hotline launched by the National Psychological Association of Ukraine (NPA), along with a call for action to mental health professionals worldwide.

This paper describes the training and support of the NPA’s hotline staff as well as reflections on the hotline’s work from June 2022 to April 2023.

With broad international support, the NPA’s psychological hotline currently operates in 21 countries providing psychological assistance and referrals to other service providers within Ukraine and abroad. The authors propose further steps of its work, including international collaboration.

Providing citizens of Ukraine with broad public access to evidence-based remote psychological support through NPA’s hotlines is a high priority considering the war’s negative impact on mental health diverse and the limited capacity of the state mental health system.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the readability of annual reports and corporate performance in Qatari listed firms while controlling for a firm’s competitive position, governance structure and specific features such as size, age and industry type.

This study relies on both agency theory and legitimacy theory to develop testable hypotheses. It uses a sample of 126 firm-year listed companies in the Qatar Stock Exchange to test obfuscation in the annual reports through examining the association between the readability of Narrative Disclosures (NDs) and corporate profitability, financial risk and agency costs for the period from 2014-2016.

The findings show that firms with higher annual report readability are more profitable and have lower agency costs, which is an indication of the existence of “obfuscation.” Qatari firms may use narrative complexity as a disclosure strategy to enhance their image and consequently maintain their social legitimacy.

Although the study findings suffer from limited global generalization, they can be generalized across Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Thus, future cross-country research is encouraged.

The findings encourage Qatari policymakers to instate a policy for “Plain English” writing to make NDs easy to read by international investors.

This study is one of very few studies that examines the readability of annual reports in emerging market economies, i.e. Qatar. The study contributes to the paucity of research that examines English-written annual reports in non-English speaking countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which corporate board characteristics influence the level of dividend pay-out ratio using a sample of UK small- and medium-sized enterprises from 2010 to 2013 listed on the Alternative Investment Market.

The data are analysed by employing multivariate regression techniques, including estimating fixed effects, lagged effects and two-stage least squares regressions.

The results show that board size, the frequency of board meetings, board gender diversity and audit committee size have a significant relationship with the level of dividend pay-out. Audit committee size and board size have a positive association with the level of dividend pay-out, whilst the frequency of board meetings and board gender diversity have a significant negative relationship with the level of dividend pay-out. By contrast, the findings suggest that board independence and CEO role duality do not have any significant effect on the level of dividend pay-out.

This is one of the first attempts at examining the relationship between corporate governance and dividend policy in the UK’s Alternative Investment Market, with the analysis distinctively informed by agency theoretical insights drawn from the outcome and substitution hypotheses.