This study determines to what extent Jordanian banks refer to and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in their operation process and examines the impact of AI-related terms disclosure on financial performance. Content analysis is used to analyze the spread of AI and related information in the annual report textual data. Based on content analysis and regression analysis of data from 115 annual reports for 15 Jordanian banks listed in the Amman Stock Exchange for the period 2014 to 2021, the study reveals a consistent increase in the mention of AI-related terms disclosure since 2014. However, the level of AI-related disclosure remains weak for some banks, suggesting that Jordanian banks are still in the early stages of adopting and implementing AI technologies. The results indicate that AI-related keywords disclosure has an influence on banks’ financial performance. AI has a positive effect on accounting performance in terms of ROA and ROE and a negative impact on total expenses, which supports the dominant view that AI improves revenue and reduces cost and is also consistent with past literature findings. This study contributes to the growing body of AI literature, specifically the literature on AI voluntary disclosure, in several aspects. First, it provides an objective measure of the uses of AI by formulating an AI disclosure index that captures the status of AI adoption in practice. Second, it provides insights into the relationship between AI disclosure and financial performance. Third, it supports policymakers’, international authorities’, and supervisory organizations’ efforts to address AI disclosure issues and highlights the need for disclosure guidance requirements. Finally, it provides a contribution to banking sector practitioners who are transforming their operations using AI mechanisms and supports the need for more AI disclosure and informed decision making in a manner that aligns with the objectives of financial institutions.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the retention per share compared to the dividend per share by modeling the firm’s market value as a function of the retention per share and the dividend per share for all firms in the Jordanian context using unbalanced panel data analysis for a sample of 2281 firm years covering the period from 2010 to 2021. The results of the pooled sample indicated a strong positive significant effect for dividends per share. However, the retention per share indicated a negative significant effect on the firm’s market value. The other robustness analysis for the two sub-samples and the financial and non-financial sub-samples indicated the same results, consistent with the pooled sample for the two main explanatory variables.

This review provides an understanding of the teaching and practising of forensic accounting across the globe. It includes a review of published forensic accounting studies that conclude that forensic accounting is of benefit to both students and professionals. Despite this, there are areas of concern; namely, the insufficiency of an appropriate structure of regulation and a lack of control over the academic qualifications to enter the profession. This review of both the teaching and practising of forensic accounting provides an overview of the vital issues and concerns that must be understood in order to advance the essential application of forensic accounting. It is expected that this review will influence future policy that will advance business and limit episodes of fraud. The amount of published literature on the subject of forensic accounting is widespread and diverse. However, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding regarding the strengths and weaknesses of forensic accounting; this review will address this and provide policymakers with a thorough explanation of the subject.

This paper aims to inform the ongoing emphasis on board structure (Yu, 2023) by reconciling the Australian empirical evidence on firm performance-board structure links. While international findings are instructional, differences between governance systems across nations (Alabdullah et al., 2022; Outa & Kutubi, 2021) highlight the importance of understanding the salient nature of the Australian context compared to the UK and US (e.g., fewer listed companies with lower levels of institutional shareholding, higher agency costs and higher compliance to the prescribed governance practices. Meta-analysis was employed to reach an overall Pearson correlation for the association between firm performance and four board composition characteristics (i.e., board independence, CEO duality, board size, and female ratio on boards). The meta-analysis employed includes all empirical studies that used Australian data to investigate firm performance-board structure links. This research also provides guidance on improved theorizing, measurement, and modelling for boards’ research. The results indicate that the correlation between each board’s independence, CEO duality, and financial performance is almost zero. Moreover, board size and female ratio on board have a small positive correlation with financial performance. This paper highlights the importance of considering a specific theory and evidence before employing intermediary variables as controls.

Agency theory posits that the separation of ownership and control in a company allows self-interested managers to pursue their own interests by taking advantage of their superior information compared to shareholders. In this paper, we present evidence that agency costs (i.e., flawed director decision-making) can arise because of directors’ limited competence and the problem of specification of objectives, independent of information asymmetry and director independence. Using a 2x2 experimental design addressed to 180 directors, we demonstrate that anchors (Angeletos & Huo, 2021) and the mechanism of fairness (Mussel et al., 2022) may cause directors to deviate from the rational choice that maximizes a given utility function. We argue that the decision-making process can undermine a director’s ability to effectively monitor by exploiting their limited rationality, and this aspect remains inadequately specified in existing agency models. Consequently, we contribute to the literature that examines the board as a decision-making group by showcasing how a focused analysis of the decision process can unveil new mechanisms within the governance process.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Abstract This paper presents a comprehensive review of the