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The main objective of this paper is to investigate the main challenges that startups face in Saudi Arabia. It tries to identify the wave of opportunities that come along with startups and analyze the main factors for success and sustainability. A sample of 40 respondents was established. According to the survey results, consumer-oriented activity dominates startup activities. Startups remain mainly dependent on non-equity funding. The first challenge that startups encounter is finding funding. Saudi startups are more focused on product innovation. Most of the respondents think that aspects of the entrepreneur's personality and skills play a significant role in the success of startups.    

Islamic finance is a growing industry with global distribution in all continents including Europe and America. The aim of the current study was to examine how popular is Islamic finance in the USA during the period 2014-2019 using Google Trends. In addition, the interest in Islamic finance across different US states was also investigated. Using “Islamic finance” and “Islamic bank” as search terms in Goggle Trends, the trend curve showed decreases in search volumes, suggesting a decline in the popularity of Islamic finance in the USA with years. Search volumes were detected in seven out of 50 states, suggesting low interest in Islamic finance in the majority of US states. The order of the popularity in the seven states was: Virginia > New York > New Jersey > Illinois > Texas > California > Pennsylvania > Georgia > Florida > Massachusetts. Longitudinal survey studies are needed to confirm the present findings.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of overeducation on several job attitudes and outcomes. The study is based on cross-sectional survey data from 398 Saudis in the labor market. Drawing upon a person-job fit theory, two different self-assessments—direct self-assessment and indirect self-assessment—are used to examine how overeducation influences job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and job performance. The results of the hierarchical regressions suggest that overeducation across the two measures is significantly negatively related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment, while significantly positively related to turnover intentions, even after controlling for different confounding variables. However, no significant impact was found for job performance. Furthermore, despite the slight differences in terms of the magnitudes of their effects, the two self-assessment measures of overeducation largely overlap and yield similar conclusions. These findings confirm that except for job performance, overeducation—as a form of person–job misfit—is an important predictor of job attitudes and outcomes. The current study extends the existing literature by providing comparative empirical evidence on the impact of overeducation in Saudi Arabia

The perceptions of Islamic banking professionals are surveyed through a questionnaire to explore whether the process of risk management mediates board involvement in risk management and risk management practices of Islamic banks in Malaysia and Egypt. The findings of this study identified that the Islamic banks in the selected countries are somewhat efficient in their risk management process. It was noticed that board involvement in risk management, process of risk management and risk management among Islamic banks in Malaysia are significantly higher than their counterparts in Egypt. Furthermore, high involvement of boards in risk management significantly increases the risk management process, and in turn, leads to significantly higher riskmanagement practices in Islamic banks. Hence, boards should take formal responsibility for setting, managing and periodically assessing the risk management culture of the banks. It is expected that the outcomes of this study would help policy setters in the selected countries to develop a well-structured and harmonized risk management process that enhance risk management practices, with emphasis on the effective involvements of the board of directors and Shari’ah supervisory boards in risk management practices.

This paper examines the impact of audit committee characteristics on the performance of Saudi listed banks. Data are collected from the annual reports of Saudi listed banks from 2010 to 2018. To test hypotheses, this study applies the random effects model as the main method of analysis, while the ordinary least square (OLS), the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), and the panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) methods are used for robustness check and additional analysis. The empirical results indicate a significant positive effect of audit committee independence on all measures of bank performance (ROA, ROE, Tobin’s Q). The empirical results of this study also provide important implications for regulatory bodies and market participants in Saudi Arabia and developing countries to understand the actual role of different attributes of the audit committees on firm performance.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming accounting practice by displacing traditional data-processing tasks, augmenting auditing functions, and reshaping the professional competency requirements of financial reporting. While these technological developments generate substantial efficiency gains, they simultaneously introduce unprecedented ethical challenges, including algorithmic opacity, accountability diffusion, bias propagation in automated judgment, and the erosion of professional scepticism — that threaten the integrity of financial reporting and the public trust upon which the accounting profession's social licence to operate ultimately depends. This paper develops a rigorous, theoretically grounded analysis of the intersection between artificial intelligence and accounting ethics, drawing on institutional theory, agency theory, virtue ethics, and the stakeholder trust framework to diagnose how AI adoption reconfigures the ethical architecture of financial reporting and to prescribe the governance, professional, and regulatory responses required to safeguard ethical standards and trust in this transformed environment. The paper makes three original contributions: first, it develops a multi-dimensional taxonomy of AI-related ethical risks in accounting, distinguishing technical, professional, and systemic risk categories; second, it proposes the Ethical AI Accounting Governance Framework (EAAGF), an original implementation model that integrates algorithmic governance, professional ethics renewal, regulatory adaptation, and stakeholder assurance mechanisms; and third, it situates these contributions within a comparative empirical analysis of AI adoption experiences across major accounting contexts, integrating evidence from surveys, regulatory reports, and case illustrations. The paper argues that the central challenge is not whether AI will transform accounting — this is already occurring — but whether the profession, regulators, and organisations can collectively construct the ethical governance infrastructure required to ensure that transformation advances rather than undermines the accountability, transparency, and trust that constitute the profession's foundational social purpose.

Research on organizational sustainability (OS) remains a global debate. Consequently, organizations have become increasingly interested in adopting leadership styles to drive sustainability goals. Thus, in the present study we examined the impact of green transformation leadership (GTL) on OS and its dimensions (environmental, social, and economic), focusing on the mediating role of green talent management (GTM). We employed a quantitative methodology, using questionnaires for data collection and SPSS (version 25) and AMOS (version 23) for data analysis. The sample consisted of lower-level leadership, including executive management and department heads from Egypt’s renewable energy organizations. We gathered 250 valid responses. The findings indicate that GTL has a positive impact on OS both directly and indirectly through GTM. Also, we found that GTM mediates the relationship between GTL and OS. These findings strengthen the view that the effectiveness of GTL is fundamentally reflected in the adoption of sustainable strategies and is the cornerstone for enabling an organization to achieve OS. Our research addresses a gap in the literature by examining the impact of GTL on OS while considering the impact of GTM, which previous researchers did not consider. In addition, we provide managerial implications for renewable energy organizations as well as limitations and directions for future research.

There is a limited understanding of the emerging technologies, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning (ML) and their effect on the insurance sector in the Saudi Arabian market. A structural equational modelling was implemented to investigate the impact of emerging technology on customer experience, business productivity, risk management, and financial performance in Saudi insurance companies. Online surveys were directed to the insurance sector to explore their perceptions of the use of technology and its effect in 2024. The sample includes 102 valid responses in the data analysis. The findings show that the development and integration of technology in the Saudi Arabian insurance sector significantly improve customer experience, business productivity, risk management, and financial performance, which aligns with accelerated transformation in the market to achieve the main goals of the Saudi Vision 2030. 

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the main challenges that startups face in Saudi Arabia. It tries to identify the wave of opportunities that come along with startups and analyze the main factors for success and sustainability. A sample of 40 respondents was established. According to the survey results, consumer-oriented activity dominates startup activities. Startups remain mainly dependent on non-equity funding. The first challenge that startups encounter is finding funding. Saudi startups are more focused on product innovation. Most of the respondents think that aspects of the entrepreneur's personality and skills play a significant role in the success of startups.    

This paper examines the impact of audit committee characteristics on the performance of Saudi listed banks. Data are collected from the annual reports of Saudi listed banks from 2010 to 2018. To test hypotheses, this study applies the random effects model as the main method of analysis, while the ordinary least square (OLS), the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), and the panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) methods are used for robustness check and additional analysis. The empirical results indicate a significant positive effect of audit committee independence on all measures of bank performance (ROA, ROE, Tobin’s Q). The empirical results of this study also provide important implications for regulatory bodies and market participants in Saudi Arabia and developing countries to understand the actual role of different attributes of the audit committees on firm performance.