Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted The Impact of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Factors on Firm Financial Performance: An Empirical Study of Non-Financial Constituents of the S&P 500(University of Liverpool, 2024-09) Fallatah, Ahmed; Giorgioni, GianluigiAbstract This study empirically examines the influence of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors on financial performance of non-financial firms listed on the S&P 500. It analyzes data for 425 firms over the period from 2010 to 2023. This research study apply panel data analysis using Generalized Least Squares (GLS) Regression and reveals a significant and positive relationship between overall ESG scores and Corporate financial performance metrics, Return on Equity, Return on Assets and Tobin's Q for current S&P 500 firms. For the firms that were removed from the index, while ESG scores significantly enhance Tobin's Q in terms of market evaluation and their impact on financial measurement is less pronounced. The analysis highlights that environmental scores influence financial outcomes across both current and dropped firms. Social scores positively affect financial performance in current firms but show limited impact for firms removed from the index. Governance scores appear to have a more nuanced impact, suggesting that good governance alone may not be enough to differentiate performance among firms. The study shows the importance of robust ESG practices, particularly in environmental and social pillars, for enhancing corporate financial success and market valuation. The firm’s market position and financial health may influence the relationship between ESG factors and immediate financial returns. The research shows that ESG investments can boost a market position of company and resilience and their direct impact on immediate financial returns can vary depending on the company’s financial health and market status. Therefore, this study reveals the complex relationship between ESG practices and financial performance. The findings provide useful valuable insights for business leaders, investors, and policymakers looking to align ESG practices with financial goals and foster sustainable, long-term growth.4 0Item Restricted The Economic Ripple Effect of Tourism: Insights from Saudi Arabia's Growth and Local Communities(University of Glasgow, 2024) Alatif, Munis; Patrizia, RigantiThe research aimed to measure tourism's impact on Saudi Arabia by investigating the industry's ability to contribute to the country's GDP, create new job opportunities, and impact the local community. The research approach also used secondary data methodology, which used two approaches to collect the data on tourism impact: quantitative and qualitative methods. The research found that the tourism industry in Saudi Arabia has both direct and indirect impacts on Saudi Arabia. As a result, tourism contributed to the total GDP of Saudi Arabia between 2019 to 2022 by 3.8 to 3.0% as a direct impact. Moreover, the study showed the links between the number of tourists, tourist spending, and employment opportunities related to economic growth in Saudi Arabia, which might have an indirect impact on the tourism industry in Saudi Arabia. However, in addition to its positive impact, the tourism sector had a negative effect on the Saudi Arabian community, particularly on the cultural structure. Thus, this report represents the impact of tourism on social, cutlery, and policy strategy in Saudi Arabia how the kingdom shifted the economy from oil sources to the non-oil sector, and how the government reduced the cultural harm from tourism practice. This work not only provides a comprehensive understanding of the social economy and the tourism industry's impact on Saudi Arabia but also offers practical insights and recommendations. It presents a detailed analysis of the Saudi government's strategies and the current state, potentials, strategy, and forward insights for sustainable tourism development. By doing so, this study not only enhances our understanding of the impact of the tourism industry in Saudi Arabia but also provides valuable guidance for future policy and strategy development in the country12 0Item Restricted Social engineering on cybersecurity(University of Portsmouth, 2024-05-20) jalban, Saad; Adamos, VasileosSocial engineering exploits weaknesses to steal sensitive data from people and corporations. This research examines social engineering methods, effective prevention, awareness campaigns, and resource management. The research analyses social engineering attacks and responses using a comprehensive literature review and expert and survey data. Important findings show that phishing, pretexting, and baiting are common social engineering methods, emphasising the necessity for robust prevention. Staff training, practice runs, and cutting-edge cybersecurity software may prevent intrusions. Interactive training modules, cybersecurity technologies, and regular information about emerging risks are the greatest ways to reduce social engineering assaults. Open-source technology, sector cooperation, and innovative finance may help overcome resource constraints. This research helps business26 0Item Restricted Analysing the Context of Nonverbal Behavioural Cues in Multiple Social Settings(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-12-06) Alsaleh, Hadeel; Vinciarelli, AlessandroSocio-cognitive disorders such as depression or social incompetency in communicating and interacting with others are common among all genders. The traditional way of diagnosing these disorders involves the examination of individuals through verbal cues extracted from speech and communication patterns identified by clinicians in clinical settings. However, this is time consuming and costly, and chances of error of clinical judgement is quite high due to the artificial speaking style and wordings used by individuals afflicted by cognitive and social disorders. Therefore, there is need to develop methodologies which can be used to examine the social and mental health conditions of people without their conscious involvement. This can lead to early detection of disorders, followed by implementation of effective and timely therapeutic strategies. This work aims at such a goal by analysing non-verbal cues in different social settings. This study used telephone call data from 120 subjects and interview transcriptions involving 59 individuals (including 30 diagnosed with depression) and analysed the distribution of the context surrounding nonverbal cues, i.e., the type of behaviour that was observed immediately before and immediately after a given nonverbal cue. The results show that there are significant differences in the distribution of silence, lengthening, fillers, laughter, between the dataset depressed individuals and the others, thereby indicating the potential of non-verbal cues as of depression. The analysis of telephone call datasets indicated that silence, fillers and laughter tend to appear in different contexts. The data generated in this study contributes to the existing literature based on corpus analysis methodologies.12 0Item Restricted A Systematic Review of the Role of Artificial Intelligence Technology in Sustainable Supply Chain(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-12-14) Abuhaimed, Noura; Touboulic, AnneIn recent years, the sustainable supply chain (SSC) has gained considerable global attention due to its incorporation of sustainability dimensions into its processes. Recent advancements in technologies have presented solutions to various issues associated with supply chain networks (SC). While the role of various technologies like blockchain, IoT, and Industry 4.0 in sustainable supply chains (SSCs) is well- established in the literature, there has been a lack of research on the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and its sub-fields in establishing SSCs. To address this gap, this paper pursues the following objectives: (1) To conduct a systematic review of the role of Artificial Intelligence technology in sustainable supply chains. For this, a total of 55 articles were searched using a set of keywords in the Scopus database in all research fields published in 45 peer-reviewed academic journals from 2010 to 2022. These papers were filtered using the title abstract keywords principle. (2) To document the association of AI technology with the social, and environmental aspects of the supply chain. (3) To highlight the AI deployments that could contribute to the enhancement of SSCs. (4) To draw attention to the gap in the literature and identify promising areas for future study. (5) To create a conceptual framework for the role of AI technology in SSC. This research is valuable for academic scholars and industry practitioners seeking insights into the role of AI in SSCs, as it is the first paper to comprehensively present all AI types in SSC. The study demonstrates that AI technology has the capacity to enhance supply chain sustainability, and it foresees a growing popularity of AI in supply chain management. By laying a strong foundation for understanding the role of AI technology in advancing sustainability, the results offer recommendations for future research directions to address the identified gaps in the literature. This study presents a research framework that integrates AI- based techniques with conventional supply chain practices to address supply chain challenges effectively. The framework outlines the incorporation of AI-enabled operations alongside operations that do not rely on AI to achieve sustainability within the supply chain. The developed framework could help researchers and professionals who want to create SSC models using AI methods32 0Item Restricted A Comprehensive Case Study on ESG Integration and Analysis for Sustainable Commercial Banks in the United Kingdom(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-03-18) Alnabood, Ali; Hayward, RobertCommercial banks in the United Kingdom strive to operate sustainably and satisfy the demands of their stakeholders, which has increased the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. This comprehensive case study employs a mixed-methods approach that discusses analysing and integrating ESG elements for sustainable commercial banks in the UK. The study commences with a comprehensive examination of current literature on integrating and analysing ESG factors in the banking sector. Subsequently, the literature review outcomes are employed to construct a conceptual framework for integrating and analysing ESG factors customised to the commercial banking industry in the UK. Next, the study uses publicly available data to analyse the ESG performance of the leading five commercial banks in the UK. The analysis includes assessing the banks' implementation of various ESG indicators, including carbon emissions, diversity and inclusion, and governance practices. Finally, the analysis results identify trends and best practices in ESG integration and analysis among UK commercial banks. The study results emphasise the significance of incorporating and evaluating ESG factors for promoting sustainability in commercial banks operating in the UK. The analysis results demonstrate notable disparities in ESG performance among commercial banks in the UK. Certain banks exhibit superior ESG performance compared to others, with statistically significant differences. The study's author has presented a series of suggestions for UK commercial banks seeking to enhance their ESG performance and incorporate ESG factors into their business practices based on the research results. The suggestions encompass the necessity for endorsement from upper-level management, the significance of thorough data gathering and evaluation, and the advantages of involving stakeholders to comprehend their ESG preferences. Overall, this thorough case study offers insightful information on the difficulties and possibilities of ESG integration and analysis for sustainable commercial banks in the UK. The study's mixed-methods methodology provides a comprehensive understanding of the subject. It also gives helpful advice for UK commercial banks aiming to enhance their ESG performance. Finally, the study's conclusions apply to banks and financial institutions worldwide, not only in the UK, as they work to operate sustainably and satisfy changing stakeholder expectations.29 0Item Restricted Media, Social Activism and the Women’s Driving Ban in Saudi Arabia(2023-06-20) Saud Bin Libdah; Atakav, Eylem; Hand, RichardThis study aims to understand the role of media in activating the social movement against the Saudi women’s driving ban (WDB). Specifically, the current study attempts to explore the role of both print media [newspapers] and social media [Twitter] as platforms to activate and mobilize the social movement for lifting the WDB in Saudi Arabia. The research takes a social constructionist approach to understand the presentation of the WDB social movement through the lens of the local cultural and social norms and values which are embedded within media presentation of the WDB campaign. As a first data collection method from Twitter, this study utilises the hashtag #Women2Drive. The social media crawler and text analysis tool Discover-text are used to gather not only a large number of relevant tweets but also to provide the opportunity to use random sampling to obtain a specific sample for data analysis. The collected data is analysed using discourse analysis, which can be used for written, as well as spoken language in a specific social context. Based on the findings from the discourse analysis, the researcher identified various major themes. One such is Saudi women’s empowerment; and the study discusses in detail how Twitter was used by women activists to gain support so that they could raise awareness, pressurize the government and gain influence to get their driving rights. Discourse analysis was also applied to examine how different news reports published in printed media contributed to the lifting of the WDB in Saudi Arabia. There is a wide range of evidence about how news media and Twitter were used to activate and mobilize the social movement for lifting the WDB. It was also found that women’s rights were granted in order to meet the agenda of the Kingdom, as the government was fully committed to fulfilling their Vision 2030 women’s empowerment goals. Therefore, the government allowed activists to discuss the issue through Twitter as well as other news media such as Arab News. This study has various theoretical and practical contributions which increase its valuein the field. The first theoretical contribution is to consider the activity on Twitter networks in the light of social movement theory to understand how the engagement of international and national influencers played an important role in online activism that increased the success of the WDB social movement in Saudi Arabia. This study provides insights into how Saudi women struggled to get their basic rights such as driving, and how both the traditional media and pressure built on Twitter supported the women’s online activism that helped them to get their driving rights as well as generating opposition to lifting the WDB in a male-dominated culture which is deeply affected by traditional values around honour. The second theoretical contribution is that the use of social movement theory has helped to understand the role of social media in a woman-centric social movement in the KSA. Recommendations for future studies around women’s empowerment in Saudi Arabia are made. For example, there is a need to conduct research on the motivations of Saudi women to empower themselves in areas such as work and to understand the factors that motivate or inhibit Saudi women from diverse income backgrounds to get empowerment. The practical contributions of the study include an insight into the roles of different elite and non-elite participants in social movements and the roles these participants might usefully play in progressing policies on the empowerment of underprivileged groups, such as women in Saudi Arabia. Also, the study provides insights into how social media platforms like Twitter generate spill-over effects and drive a social movement, these insights can help policy makers to capitalise on the positive effects of a movement and minimise its negative effects. Thirdly, the study shed light on how the technological features of social media can be used in social networking to effect social change.28 0