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Adolescence is a developmental stage of transition that is marked by multiple biopsychosocial changes that affect their well- and ill-being. This study aims to examine the multidimensional of well- and ill-being among adolescents, and to understand the relationship between well-being and depression using the PERMA model among school-age adolescents.

A descriptive, cross-sectional design was used to recruit 625 school-age adolescents (343 males and 282 females), using convenience sampling technique from the central district of Jordan. Self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data in relation to depression and well-being.

The analysis revealed that 32% had a well-being score below the median and 19% had severe depressive symptoms. Depression and well-being were moderately correlated, with the connectedness dimension being the most correlated to depression, whereas the engagement dimension was the least correlated. Females had higher scores on all subscales of depression and a significantly higher score on depression than males, whereas males had higher scores on all well-being dimensions and significantly higher scores on overall well-being than females.

Adolescents’ mental health is compromised and affected by their perception of well-being, and a comprehensive psychoeducation for adolescents on how to enhance well-being might combat development of depressive symptoms.

This study used all PERMA model components to provide an in-depth description of adolescents’ well-being, which is a crucial initial phase in better understanding how this age group experiences well-being and how it connects to their ill-being, as indicated by their depressive symptoms. The in-depth description of adolescents’ well-being will aid in planning early intervention and prevention programs for mental illness.

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.

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 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 identify the priorities on water sector planning. The priorities are identified by comparing the climate change impact on water consumption and the impact of using domestic water illegally to irrigate the urban agricultural holdings in suburban areas.

Metered water consumption in summer and winter in both urban and suburban areas was studied in Rafah city. A backward chronological linear model of climate change (precipitation and temperature) influence on water consumption was developed using software STATISTICA 10. The developed statistical relation was used to predict the impact of various climate change scenarios for domestic water consumption. Hence, four climate change scenarios were hypothesized – an increase in temperature by 1 and 20°C and a reduction in the rainfall by 10 and 20 per cent, respectively.

The most influential climate change scenario was the increase of temperature by 20°C, which caused an increase of 1.4 per cent on the average domestic water consumption compared to the current value. The hypothesized reduction of 20 per cent in precipitation caused a negligible increase in water consumption by 0.1 per cent from the current value. Urban agriculture and current practice of using municipal water to irrigate cultivated urban holdings have a significant negative influence on domestic water consumption. The aforementioned practice led to a high percentage of unaccounted for water (UFW) of 33, 38 and 45 per cent for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively.

The concerned decision-makers should consider the right track in prioritizing dilemmas for planning water sector in suburban areas.

This research could be considered the first of its kind because impacts of urban agriculture and climate change on domestic water consumption have never been previously considered in the Gaza Strip.

The purpose of this study is to examine the various factors that influence the productivity (PR) of employees who worked remotely in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study adopts a quantitative approach to analyze data collected online from 110 respondents using the snowball sampling technique during the pandemic. The analysis of the data is conducted using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique of Smart PLS (Partial least squares) to evaluate the direct and moderating variables.

The results indicate that direct variables such as workload, job satisfaction, work–life balance and social support have a significant positive impact on employee PR in the UAE. However, the analysis of the moderating variable indicates that job level is not a significant moderator of the above relationships. The findings, generally, provide support for social exchange theory.

The findings of this study will help businesses of various domains in a variety of industries in understanding the core factors that should be considered to enhance the overall PR of their employees while working from home. Businesses can achieve their organizational goals by ensuring steady growth even during uncertain times.

This paper answers the question of whether remote working affects employee PR during the pandemic in an emerging market, namely the UAE. The current study contributes to the existing literature by combining the variables investigated in previous studies into a single study and by considering job level as a moderator variable.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on corporate financial performance (CFP) using Zakat as a measure for CSR.

The study examines a sample of 107 non-financial firms listed on the Saudi Arabia stock market over a ten-year period from 2004 to 2013. The authors use the generalized method of moments framework developed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998). In addition, for comparison purpose and as a robustness check, the present study uses other panel data techniques including fixed effects model, random effects model (and pooled ordinary least squares.

The results reveal that there is a strong positive relationship between CSR (Zakat) and CFP. This suggests that Zakat contribute positively to both firm’s profitability and value and can be considered as a win-win strategy to maximize returns and improve performance while considering the society as a whole. The results are robust to alternative econometric estimation methods.

The companies in Islamic economies can effectively and efficiently implement the basic Shari’a Law of paying Zakat, as a successful measure to implement CSR program, thus benefiting the society by narrowing the gap between the haves and have-nots, that, in turn, leads the company to achieve successfully its short-term as well as long-term goals and enhances the value of the firm in the market. Moreover, corporations are generally encouraged to adopt CSR because of its perceived benefits to both macro- and micro-performances.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical study attempting to examine CSR-CFP relationship within Saudi context employing Zakat as a proxy for CSR. Additionally, the paper provides support for the stakeholder theory from an Islamic perspective.

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.

This paper aims to examine the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on forward-looking corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure (FCSRD).

The authors use the manual content analysis to measure FCSRD for a sample of 94 companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2016. Data on companies' FCSRD are manually collected from annual reports. The authors also use regression analyses to test the research hypotheses.

The authors find that board size positively affects FCSRD, while CEO duality and family ownership negatively impact FCSRD.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first evidence of how governance mechanisms affect FCSR information in corporate annual reports in a developing country.