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A key goal of this research is to examine empirically whether politically connected board members are likely to impact corporate philanthropy. A further goal of this study is to contribute to the existing literature by examining the moderating role of political connections on the relationship between family ownership and corporate donations.

Based on the content analysis approach, the authors determined the level of cash and in-kind donations made by a group of 94 non-financial Jordanian companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. This study examined 658 annual reports spanning over seven years from 2010 to 2016. Ordinary least squares regression (OLS) is used to test the study hypotheses. In addition, this study used the probit regression to validate those results reported by the OLS regression.

Compared to unconnected companies, politically connected companies in Jordan are more likely to donate to philanthropic causes. Moreover, the results revealed that the presence of significant family ownership shareholding in a firm can weaken the firm tendency to donate. Despite this, the regression analysis results indicate that family-controlled firms with political connections are more likely to engage in charitable giving activities compared to those without political nexuses.

The study contributes to the conversation surrounding corporate giving and sheds light on the role political connections and ownership structure (particularly family-owned firms) play in affecting donations by firms.

Managers of Jordanian firms listed on the stock exchange can use the study's findings to make better decisions about their donations and other philanthropic activities.

This study is the first to examine the relationship between firm donations and political connections in Jordan, and how political nexuses can moderate the relationship between family ownership and corporate donations. Hence, it extends prior research significantly.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of Corporate Philanthropic Donations (CPD) on the Corporate Economic Performance (CEP) of a group of Jordanian public shareholding companies.

The sample includes 94 companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange between 2010 and 2016. Manual content analysis is employed to collect the quantitative-related data needed for this study.

Our findings show that CPD is relevant, with a significant impact on financial performance. More specifically, CPD has a positive impact on the performance indicators measured by Tobin’s Q (TQ), return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA).

This study contributes to the research debate on CPD and CEP, especially in developing countries. It emphasizes the importance of such practices in increasing corporate profitability.

The study’s findings highlight the importance of CPD for Jordanian corporate managers. A greater emphasis on donations is likely to attract investor attention, government attention, media attention and humanitarian activism, all of which will enhance corporate goodwill.

This study demonstrates the positive relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CEP in an emerging economy, with a focus on one aspect of CSR, namely donation, that is underrepresented in developing countries. The study employs multiple methods for analyzing profitability as proxied by TQ, ROE and ROA, given the presence of multiple proxies to measure profitability. A further interesting aspect is examining the topic of CPD in the Jordanian context, where listed companies exhibit a uniform understanding of CPD.

This paper aims to investigate whether and how better corporate governance practices can lead to philanthropic behavior among companies in the UK. In particular, this study attempts to determine whether corporate governance quality in general, as well as its specific mechanisms, affects corporate giving.

The analysis is based on a sample of Financial Times Stock Exchange All-Share nonfinancial companies. Data on firm donations, including donations amount and donations intensity, were manually collected from companies’ annual reports for the period 2018–2020. This paper uses panel data models to examine the research hypotheses.

The results of this study indicate that both donations amount and donations intensity are positively associated with the practice of better corporate governance. Board independence is positively associated with donations amount, but not with the intensity of donations. Furthermore, board size, board gender diversity and the establishment of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee are likely to have a positive impact on the amount and the intensity of firms’ donations. However, neither the chief executive officer board membership nor the audit committee’s independence is related to the firm’s donations.

This study sheds light on specific governance factors that affect firm donations in the context of UK companies. This allows regulators and legislators to evaluate the donations activities in the country and issue more directives to reinforce corporate governance practices that support corporate donations. In addition, the findings of this study are considered crucial to investors who prefer investing in companies with significant CSR-related activities to improve the value relevance of their investments.

This study provides a shred of unique evidence on the impact of corporate governance practices on firms’ donations.

This study examines the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure (hereafter CSRD) on the Corporate Economic Performance (hereafter CEP) of a group of public shareholding companies in Jordan.

This study uses different proxies to examine the impact of CSRD on companies’ financial and economic value. The data were collected from a sample of 94 companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2016. Based on a checklist of 41 indicators, this study employed the manual content analysis technique to collect and analyse CSRD data. A statistical analysis technique was also used to examine the hypothesized relationships between collected data on CSRD and profitability.

The findings indicate that CSRD is value-relevant. It is positively and statistically associated with firm value proxied by Tobin’s Q. In addition, it is positively and statistically associated with firm financial performance proxied by ROE and ROA.

This study contributes to the research debate on the relationship between CSRD and CEP, particularly in developing nations. The study draws attention to the need for information on different dimensions of CSR, including human resource, environmental, product responsibility, and community participation, as disclosure on such dimensions is positively associated with profitability.

The findings provide important implications for Jordanian corporate managers to maintain CSRD in their best interest. With more emphasis on disclosing stand-alone CSR reports, corporate managers can present more information on different dimensions of CSR, attracting the attention of stakeholders such as investors, the government, media, and humanitarian activists and enhancing overall corporate goodwill.

CSRD activities reflect a positive impact on CEP. Due to the dearth of relevant research conducted in developing countries, this study provides empirical evidence on the positive relationship between CSRD and CEP in an emerging economy, with more emphasis on specific dimensions of CSR, including human resources, environmental, product responsibility, and community participation. Since multiple proxies exist to measure profitability, this study uses multi-approaches for profitability examination proxied by Tobin’s Q, ROE, and ROA. Moreover, the issue of CSR is original and interesting to be examined in the Jordanian context, where the listed firms have reported a homogeneous perception of CSR.

This paper aims to investigate whether the sustainability disclosure with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects has an impact on the financial performance represented by Tobin’s Q, return on assets (ROA) and return on equity indices in the Levant countries for the period 2012–2019, which was a period of turmoil and political repercussions that affected the countries of the region.

Using the content analysis technique, the data was collected from 124 nonfinancial companies from Levant countries (Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon), and 883 observations were collected as panel data for the research analysis.

The findings indicate that the environmental, social and ESG collective performance maximizes financial performance, while the governance performance influences ROA only. This suggests that companies pay great attention to various stakeholders, mainly external. Maximizing stakeholder value remains an optimal strategy to achieve the company’s financial goals. Thus, improving the disclosure levels of nonfinancial performance in the capital markets will improve the chances of growth of the financial performance indicators of companies.

The study provided insights about the ESG role and its impact on the financial performance of companies in a less explored context by previous literature, namely, the Levant.

This paper is motivated by the absence of rules that govern the practice of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the corporate governance factors that impact the quality of CSRD. This study further examines the moderating role of family ownership and educational qualifications of female directors on the relation between board gender diversity and CSRD quality.

This study adopts a sample of 94 non-financial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange to collect data on CSRD based on a checklist of 41 items for seven years from 2010–2016. The quality of CSRD is measured using a four-dimensional method that encompasses relative quantity, disclosure intensity, degree of accuracy and management outlook.

This study finds that CSRD quality is far from satisfactory in Jordan. The results also suggest that board size, auditor type, company size and profitability are positively associated with CSRD quality. On the other hand, factors such as chief executive officer duality, board diversity, ownership concentration and financial leverage are negatively associated with CSRD quality. In addition, the results of the empirical analysis suggest that the negative relationship between the quality of CSRD and the presence of female board members is stronger for family-owned companies. By contrast, the negative relationship between the quality of CSRD and the presence of female board members is weakened when the company has more educated, skilled and qualified female directors.

The originality of this study is manifested in the development of a quantitative measurement of CSRD quality.

Given the increasing emphasis on environmental issues, this study attempts to offer concrete evidence on the relationship between ownership structure and environmental disclosure quality and whether media exposure moderates this relationship.

The sample adopted in this study includes a group of 94 Jordanian companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2016. Data about companies' environmental disclosure were manually collected using the content analysis method.

Our findings reveal that increasing the levels of ownership concentration and management ownership can negatively impact the quality of environmental reporting among companies in Jordan. This type of reporting, however, is likely to be benefited from the presence of a high level of foreign ownership. In terms of the role played by media, media coverage may act as a buffer against the negative relationship between environmental reporting and ownership concentration and management ownership. On the other hand, the relationship between foreign ownership and environmental reporting remains positive and significant no matter the amount of media attention the company is receiving.

This study is crucial because it contributes to the existing environmental debate studies in two crucial ways. It first offers the first evidence on how media exposure can moderate the relationship between ownership structure and environmental disclosure. Second, this study's findings provide important implications for regulators and policymakers in Jordan.

The present research conducts a thorough review of published literature relevant to earnings management (EM) practices in family firms (FFs), utilizing the Scopus database, intending to identify potential directions for future research.

Through a systematic review, this study focuses on identifying and summarizing trends in publications over the years, the journal outlets, geographical contexts, research methodologies, the temporal evolution of theories and the specific constructs under investigation.

Earlier empirical studies suggest that corporate governance enhances integrity and transparency in FFs, thereby reducing EM practices. Contrarily, compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) seems to offer managers more opportunities for convenient EM rather than restricting such practices. Notably, corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices do not appear to mitigate EM practices consistently. The literature, however, reveals inclusive results and areas requiring deeper exploration for more definitive results. For instance, certain corporate governance mechanisms, such as family-specific social and cultural business characteristics, subjective measures of family businesses, behavioral approaches to family owners' decision-making and directors' personal, psychological and social factors, remain largely untested. Additionally, there is a notable research gap concerning the relationship between IFRS, capital structure and EM.

This study’s contributions lie in its comprehensive literature review, identification of research trends and gaps, and its potential to guide future research endeavors in the domain of EM practices in FFs.

This study aims to examine the impact of firm indicators on litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector from 2017 to 2021, where the relationship between firm indicators and litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector is a crucial area of research that can help financial institutions understand the factors that increase their probability of litigation risk.

The sample for this study comprised 92 publicly traded financial firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. The study used a quantitative research approach to analyse the relationship between four firm indicators (profitability, firm size, leverage and age) and their impact on litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector from 2017 to 2021.

Our findings reveal that firm size has a significant positive impact on litigation risk, whereas profitability was found to have no significant impact on litigation risk. Moreover, the authors found that financial leverage substantially positively impacts litigation risk levels. However, the firm age was found to have no significant impact on litigation risk.

The results provide valuable insights into factors contributing to litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector and the findings can inform strategic decisions for financial firms as they seek to manage litigation risk and improve financial performance. The study contributes to the existing literature on litigation risk by examining the impact of multiple firm indicators on litigation risk in the context of the Jordanian financial sector.

This paper examines the influence of Shariah compliance (SC) on firms' net working capital (NWC) target and adjustment speed.

The study samples of non-financial firms taken from six Gulf Cooperation countries between 2005 and 2019 and employs static and dynamic models to answer the present study research questions.

The outcomes of the study indicate that SC is one of the major determinants of the decision made by the corporation regarding their NWC. More specifically, enterprises that are compliant with restrictions within Shariah are seen to have laid targets of their NWC at a level that exceeds that of enterprises that are not compliant. Furthermore, compared to conventional firms, they seem to have higher speed when adjusting to meet set NWC targets. Submission to Islamic laws limits the choices from which an enterprise can outsource capital from existing funding instruments. Therefore, they experience a higher expected cost of bankruptcy. That being the case, such financial managers should readily maintain and adjust to higher NWC targets to meet current corporate needs, alleviate the risk of bankruptcy and lower dependency on expensive external funding options.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the influence of SC on firms' NWC target and adjustment speed.