This study investigates Egyptian credit managers perceptions regarding the management report disclosures provided by firms to banks and how this represent a useful source of information for credit managers in rationalizing the lending decision. We surveyed credit managers in all banks listed by the Central bank of Egypt to determine whether disclosures are meeting the needs of this group of financial reports’ users. The final sample consists of 160 credit managers and their credit officers who work in Egyptian private and governmental banks as well as foreign banks operating in Egypt. Through hypotheses testing the main findings reveal that credit managers perceive both mandatory and voluntary disclosures as useful. Moreover, there was significant difference in some of their perceptions, these differences were explained through psychological engagement (i.e. gender, experience, educational level, and background) throughout the analysis. Some voluntary disclosures are more useful than mandatory disclosures, which clarify the existence of a gap between regulators and users’ perceptions. Moreover, the findings show that respondents consider information related to risk management, key performance indicators, and forward-looking more important than information on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The current study extends and enriches the ongoing academic and practical debate on the usefulness of narrative disclosures. Our findings suggest that regulators should seek more improvement to the current requirements as voluntary disclosures which were found to be more important. Our investigation touched a blind spot in the literature and provided evidence for the usefulness of MR disclosure in lending decision, as previous studies investigated the usefulness of management reports in investment decision.

This study investigates how the emergence of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has raised many concerns in medical and travel insurance, how insurers perceive and react to this pandemic, and the role of governments in this new context, with a particular focus on the Gulf Cooperation Council region (GCC). Data has been collected using archival research and conversations with some chief risk officers (CROs), internal auditors and insurance practitioners. The authors explain how, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the GCC medical and travel insurance industry faces pricing and fraud risks that need specific planning and control. In the GCC, pricing risk is found to represent an immediate risk that is not easy to manage as Abhistorical data is not available. This causes the failure of the present risk models in anticipating the probability and severity of the claims. As a response, insurers rely on scenario analysis and brainstorming to anticipate the costs. Fraud risk is harder to manage, as traditional internal controls are inefficient. Further, both risk managers and internal auditors are currently struggling because of the ‘working from home’ situation and the massive digital transformation in all the transactions. Moreover, the time spent in fraud investigation will delay the payment for hospitalised insurance claims, which would raise concerns about the insurer’s reputation. To resolve this conundrum and manage reputational risk, most GCC insurers seek trade-offs and negotiations with the insured. The authors’ observations and analyses revealed that current responses by GCC insurers are insufficient and need enhancements. Therefore, the authors propose some potential policy solutions that would help insurers overcome both pricing and fraud risks. Through explaining medical and travel insurance risks and proposing potential solutions in this emerging market, this paper provides some practical insights for insurance researchers, insurers and CROs who are seeking solutions to pandemic-related risks.

The current study investigates the failure of the global leaders to unite against the COVID-19 pandemic and how this represents a lack of accountability on the global level. Using the desk research method, the authors draw upon secondary data (e.g., published reports, previous studies, social media, and websites) to gain a broad understanding of the dynamics of global leadership that shapes the global accountability processes during the pandemic time. The authors suggest that accountability at the global level (i.e., the accountability relationship between global health institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and different countries) can better be understood as a geopolitical phenomenon that contains many socio-political and demographic factors that relate accountability to leadership and cooperation. This study has implications for researchers, shareholders, and policymakers by enhancing their understanding of the global accountability process during crisis time.

BACKGROUND: Servant leadership can be viewed as a leadership theory that stresses personal integrity and focuses on protecting and promoting the interests of others.

OBJECTIVE: This article investigates whether the relationship between servant leadership and nurses’ upward voice behavior in an Egyptian hospital is contingent on prosocial motivation. Invoking substitutes for leadership theory, we propose that the relationship between servant leadership and nurses’ upward voice will be attenuated when nurses have a strong desire to protect and promote the well-being of others.
METHODS: Using a sample of 341 nurses working in a large governmental hospital in Egypt, this proposition was tested using PROCESS Macro for SPSS.
RESULTS: The results revealed that the relationship between servant leadership and nurses’ upward voice was stronger for those lower in prosocial motivation than for those higher in prosocial motivation.
CONCLUSION:These results were explained through communal impulsion which adds a newinsight into Greenleaf’s theory of servant leadership. Overall, the results of the study shed new light on the conditions through which servant leadership enhances upward voice behavior in an Egyptian hospital

Purpose – The study aims to investigate the appearance of corporate social and environmental responsibility
(CSER) practices in a context where economic, communal and political institutions are highly central and
competing with each other.
Design/methodology/approach – Theoretically, the study draws upon the institutional logics perspective
and the theoretical concepts of logics centrality and compatibility to understand how higher-order institutions
interact with mundane CSER practices observed at the case company’s micro level. Empirical data were
solicited in an Egyptian village community, where fishing, agriculture and especially salt production constitute
the main economic activities underlying its livelihood. A combination of interviews, informal conversations,
observations and documents solicits the required data.
Findings – Thereby, this study presents an inclusive view of CSER as practiced in developing countries,
which is based not only on rational economic perspectives – as is the case in developed and stabilised contexts –
but also on social, familial and political aspects that are central to the present complex institutional
environment.
Originality/value – The reported findings in this study highlight the role of non-economic (societal) logics in
understating CSER in African developing nations.

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Practical implications

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.

Originality/value

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.

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the usefulness of disclosures provided by Egyptian firms in the management report from the viewpoint of financial analysts and institutional investors.

Design/methodology/approach

Institutional investors are surveyed to determine whether disclosures are meeting the needs of these financial statements’ users. The final sample consists of 78 financial analysts who work at stockbrokerage firms and 36 institutional investors who work in Egyptian banks and insurance companies.

Findings

The main findings reveal that investors view mandatory and voluntary disclosures differently. Some voluntary disclosures are more useful than mandatory disclosures, which highlights a gap between the regulations and users’ information needs. Moreover, the findings show that respondents consider information related to ownership structure more important than information on risks and firms’ future performance.

Research limitations/implications

This study enriches the scientific debate on the usefulness of disclosures provided in the management report. It might also encourage other researchers to focus on investigating different types of information that may have a significant influence on the decision-making process.

Practical implications

The findings will be useful to regulators to improve the current rules of disclosures. In addition, these results will also be helpful to managers because they highlight the disclosure items that are considered important by users.

Originality/value

This study provides evidence on how users perceive the usefulness of information disclosed in the management reports for their decision-making in an emerging capital market. Even though previous studies investigated the usefulness of management reports, no one of them emphasized the users’ viewpoint.

Climate change has several negative effects on health, including cardiovascular disease. Many studies have considered the effect of temperature on cardiovascular disease and found that there is an association between extreme levels of temperature, cold and hot, and cardiovascular disease. However, the number of articles that have studied the change point or the threshold in temperature is very limited. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no studies focusing on detecting and testing the significance of the change point in the temperature–cardiovascular relationship. Identifying the change point in cities may help to design better adaptive strategies in view of predicted weather changes in the future. Knowing the change points of temperature may prevent further mortality associated with the weather changes. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a unified approach that simultaneously estimates the semiparametric relationship and detects the significant point. A semiparametric generalized change point single index model is introduced as our unified approach by adjusting for several weather variables. A permutation-based testing procedure to detect the change point is introduced as well. A simulation study is conducted to evaluate the proposed algorithm. The advantage of our proposed approach is demonstrated using the cardiovascular mortality data of the city of Chicago, USA.

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Insurance is a policy that eliminates or decreases loss costs occurred by various risks. Various factors influence the cost of insurance. These considerations contribute to the insurance policy formulation. Machine learning (ML) for the insurance industry sector can make the wording of insurance policies more efficient. This study demonstrates how different models of regression can forecast insurance costs. And we will compare the results of models, for example, Multiple Linear Regression, Generalized Additive Model, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest Regressor, CART, XGBoost, k-Nearest Neighbors, Stochastic Gradient Boosting, and Deep Neural Network. This paper offers the best approach to the Stochastic Gradient Boosting model with an MAE value of 0.17448, RMSE value of 0.38018and R -squared value of 85.8295.