Financial inclusion, as an instrument for sustainable growth and stability while achieving social goals such as poverty reduction and gender equality, is now a core feature of the global development project. The development agenda presents financial inclusion to women as a precondition for securing their own, their families' and their communities' autonomy and future well-being. This research investigates this claim, the assumptions on which it is based, the institutions and narratives that underpin it, and the limits, as well as the potential, of financial inclusion regarding gender equality in the case of mobile money, and in particular of M-Pesa in Kenya. Mobile money refers to payment systems that provide access to formal financial services via mobile phone network infrastructure. M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa Swahili for money), is a mobile money platform introduced in Kenya in 2007 via a public-private partnership between Vodafone and the UK Department for International Development. Now used by about 70 per cent of the Kenyan population, M-Pesa has captured global imagination as a successful financial inclusion project providing access to formal financial services for the 'financially excluded', including poor and low-income women. The main question this thesis asks is whether and to what extent M-Pesa can be considered a successful financial inclusion project in terms of substantive gender equality. A framework of analysis drawing on feminist political economy and African and Kenyan feminism(s) is used to explore the context and institutionalisation of M-Pesa, and the regulatory arrangements through which it has facilitated access to formal finance for poor and low-income women. The analysis focuses on two main elements emerging from the empirical and theoretical investigation, social entrepreneurship and the law. It argues that although M-Pesa has increased the number of women accessing formal financial services, it has not advanced substantive gender equality at the lower end of the income distribution, mainly due to the lack of correspondent redistributive measures addressing existing socio-economic inequalities. Funds, partnerships and initiatives developed around mobile money are organised and distributed according to a logic of entrepreneurial opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution. A logic of opportunity, unlike a politics of redistribution, not only tends to ignore the past and present political, socio-economic and legal dynamics that have contributed to creating and reproducing gender inequality but also risks furthering unequal gender relations by investing poor and low-income women with the responsibility for transforming opportunities into better livelihoods. The centrality of opportunity in M-Pesa, for instance the opportunity for self-employment or to access basic goods and services, is powered by narratives such as philanthrocapitalism that tend to favour providers and financial institutions over poor and low-income people. Mobile money products and services, in fact, reconceptualise access to basic resources as a for-profit enterprise rather than as a public good or entitlement, seeing such basic needs as market opportunities to be accessed via fee-based mobile financial services. In this way, the opportunities created by mobile money ensure a secure source of revenue for mobile money providers and other powerful institutions involved in the mobile money 'social' business. These dynamics, which are also facilitated by the way in which M-Pesa is regulated, undermine mobile money's potential for contributing to a fundamental transformation towards substantive gender equality. This thesis sees gender inequality as deriving more from a lack of redistributive approaches and measures than from a lack of financial services, and argues for a politics of redistribution to guide financial inclusion projects, policies and regulation. Finance can be organised and regulated according to different interests: expanding access to financial services can further the interests of financial providers and other powerful institutions, reproducing and increasing inequalities; or it can contribute to a fundamental transformation oriented towards universal provisioning and substantive equality through the redistribution of power, resources and responsibilities.

No description available.

In Iraq, like other countries, the Islamic banking industry plays an important role in developing the country’s economic system. The Islamic banking industry of Iraq is regulated by the Islamic Banking Law, 2015. However, Iraq’s Islamic Banking Law of 2015 consists of an incomplete set of rules and regulations. The law does not contain certain fundamental elements such as the licensing requirements. In addition the law does not determine the highest Sharia body in case of Islamic banking problems. Thus, the Islamic banking industry in Iraq is also regulated by the Banking Law 2004 and the Central Bank Law 2004 but they do not make specific reference to Islamic banking. Therefore, the Islamic banking industry in Iraq faces challenges which are both legal and Sharia in character. In this context, the lack of a comprehensive Islamic banking legal framework and unclear relationship between the CBI and Islamic banks are the two main legal problems. Accordingly, the Islamic banking industry of Iraq is regulated by conventional laws and this may result ultimately in legal problems for the Islamic banking system. The Sharia challenge faced by the Islamic banking industry in Iraq is the lack of a proper Sharia framework. In effect, the Sharia supervision of the Iraqi Islamic banking system is not as robust as it should be. Thus, a central Sharia board does not exist and the individual Sharia supervisory boards of Islamic banks are not sufficiently strong because there is a shortage of qualified Sharia scholars to act as members of the Sharia supervisory boards of Islamic banks. In addition, the shortage of qualified Islamic banking experts is another important problem for the Islamic banking system of Iraq. The lack of Sharia scholars for the Sharia supervisory boards of Islamic banks and the lack of qualified staff to run the Islamic banking industry are the main human resource challenges faced by the Iraqi Islamic banking system. Thus, this thesis attempts to find solutions for these problems affecting the Iraqi Islamic banking industry. In this regard, the thesis considers the Islamic banking systems of both Malaysia and Bahrain. Both of these countries are developed and successful and each has a proper regulatory framework for its Islamic banking industry. In Malaysia, the Islamic Financial Services Act 3013 (IFSA) is a special law for the regulation of the Islamic financial sector including Islamic banks. Similarly in Bahrain, Volume 2-Islamic Bank is a set of regulations which govern Islamic banks. In addition, both countries have a proper Sharia regulatory and supervisory system because they have a sufficient number of Sharia scholars to supervise their Islamic banking business. Furthermore, many qualified Islamic banking experts can be found in Malaysia and Bahrain as those countries house universities and centres that offer Islamic banking degrees or courses. By drawing inspiration from the Malaysian and Bahraini Islamic banking industries, Iraq can develop and improve its own Islamic banking industry. This can be done by amending the Islamic Banking Law, 2015 and establishing a central Sharia board, similar to Malaysia’s Sharia Advisory Council. In addition, the Banking Law 2004 and the Iraqi Central Bank Law 2004 should be amended so as to cater more to the Islamic banking industry. It is the responsibility of the Central Bank of Iraq to resolve all problems that are faced by Islamic banks in the country. By drawing judiciously on the Bahraini and Malaysian experiences, CBI regulators will be able to reform the Iraqi Islamic banking industry and find solutions for both legal and Sharia challenges.

The thesis traces developments in executive compensation at a sample of American (US) and European banks from 1999 to 2013. Three investigative chapters examine developments in compensation arrangements in the boom period before the global financial crisis, during and following the crisis, and for cohorts of global-systemically-important-banks, EU banks, and US banks. The thesis reviews the value of banks’ human capital endowment by considering the full C-suite of executive directors in comparison to studies that focus solely on CEOs. The analysis uses a carefully constructed dataset, which contains detailed compensation data for executive directors plus information on their biographical characteristics. The dataset includes bank-level financial statements data and stock data. The first investigative research (Chapter Two) provides an answer as to which factors affect executive compensation in banking. It shows the contrast in pay between bank CEOs and other executive roles. The analysis identifies which biographical characteristics, features of corporate governance structure, and bank-related factors exert most effect on executive compensation and its constituents. The second investigative study (Chapter Three) considers the issue of pay-for-performance in banking, following claims that pay-for-performance systems had become weaker over time, and that powerful firm executives were able to extract rents, which suggests compensation contracts had become sub-optimal for shareholders. It sheds light on the extent to which executive pay growth reflects changes in bank performance. The chapter considers the design of compensation contracts and estimates the strength of pay-for-performance relationships across different pay incentives. The third study (Chapter Four) considers the behaviour of top management teams and investigates whether the size of differences in pay (pay gaps) between the CEO and other C-suite executives affects firm performance, for which the Z-score is a measure of bank stability. A shared finding of this thesis is that heterogeneity matters and not one size fits all. Results often show intertemporal variation and variation between the three cohorts of banks. Larger compensation awards, and considerably larger portfolio holdings, are common at large, complex firms with wide ranging international operations. This suggests that there are selection effects at work with the biggest and most prestigious firms using compensation packages to attract talented and ambitious individuals.

The British economy has always been a trading nation in terms of goods and more recently services. At the heart of the nation and international trading is London, the hub of a global financial empire that unites the globe on a 24-hour basis. Vast revenues are generated by commercial and investment banking institutions, yet research in this sector has been comparatively low. Management researchers have instead gravitated towards the ‘back office’ operations of high street banks or general insurance company call centres (Seddon, 2008). Research has focused on repetitive clerical activities for customers, and how these businesses suffer from ‘failure demand’ and/or ‘demand amplification’ (Forrester 1961) created when a customer is forced to re-establish contact with a call centre to have their issue/concerns reworked (when it should have been ‘right first time’). Modern commercial and investment banks do not share the repetitive and relatively predictable transactions of call centres and instead, represent extreme operations management cases. The workload placed upon commercial and investment banking systems is incredibly high volume, high value and high variety in terms of what clients’ demand and how ‘the product’ (trades) is executed. At this period in time, the financial collapse of 2008 is still shaping working practices due punitive regulatory environment. Many UK banks are now part-owned by the government, there is social and political pressure to stimulate improvement in banking operations which – it is thought – will herald the return of the banks back to private ownership. This thesis addresses the flow of global “trades” through the operations office and explores how the design and fit of the sociotechnical environment provides effective and efficient trade flow performance. The key research questions emerging from the literature review establishing the gap in knowledge are 1) How efficient are commercial and investment banking trading processing systems? And 2) What are the enablers and inhibitors of efficient and high performance of industrialised processing systems? xviii To answer these questions, the researcher undertook an in-depth and longitudinal case study whilst at a British bank that was ‘benchmarked’ as underperforming against its peers (MGT Report1, 2011). The case study strategy was executed using an action research and reflective learning approach (cycles of research) to explore the performance and improvement of banking operations management performance. The findings show that, using systems feedback, the management at the bank were able to develop into a “learning organisation” (Senge 1990) and improve and enhances the flow of work through the system. The study has resulted in significant gains for the case study and a new model of Rolled Throughput Yield is presented that rests on the key concept of “Information Fidelity”. This work marks a contribution to the operations management body of knowledge by exploring “flow” under conditions of high volume and high variety and from within the under-researched context of commercial and investment banking. 1 “MGT” is an anonymised commercial and investment banking industry report into operational efficiency and cost performance. The report was commissioned by the participant banks and conducted by “MGT Consultants” and is considered highly confidential. The researcher was given a copy of the report while working with the case, forming as the catalyst for the research into operational performance. The researcher was unable to receive “MGT Consultants” agreement to ‘directly’ cite the report as part of this study.

Considering that Islamic finance and banking studies have come into dominance in recent years, there are hardly any studies conducted in Islamic economics and political economy. While financial studies and practices require strong theoretical foundation, this is missing in the case of Islamic finance and banking. Due to the lack of theoretical developments, the working mechanism of Islamic finance is very much neo-classical economics despite the fact that its ontological base is ‘Islamic’. This creates tension between theoretical aspirations of Islamic economics and the realities as observed of Islamic finance. This research, therefore, is an attempt for expanding research in Islamic economics or as termed in his study in Islamic Political and Moral Economy to substantiate the theoretical underpinnings of this sub-discipline, whereby a theoretical foundation can be provided for Islamic finance and banking. This study therefore argues that ‘political and moral’ economy nature establishes the distinguishing nature of Islamic discourse in economics and finance, as the normative world of Islam aims to shape individual behaviour and economic operations by suggesting a different set of political economy which can be located within moral economy tradition. In doing so, this research identified five important topics in economics with the objective of developing a theoretical frame for each of these within Islamic norms and their articulation in economics and finance. These topics are: re-configuring Islamic economics as Islamic Political Economy through identifying its components related to public choice as emphasised by Islamic ontology and epistemology; framing Islamic economics as Islamic Moral Economy; mapping the Islamic economics within the family of heterodox economics; reconsidering the social welfare function within Islamic political economy; conceptualisation of utility function in Islamic moral economy. By interpreting the Islamic norms through economics, moral as well as fiqhi perspectives, this study essentialises ‘Islamic substantive morality’ in developing such theoretical frames as distinguishing nature of this sub-discipline away from ‘rationalism’ of ‘economics and finance’ in general. In addition, this study strongly argues that Islamic economics should be constructed as a ‘political economy construct’, as Islamic norms determines the nature of economic and financial activity and behaviour which suggests an embeddedness and integratitiveness by necessitating an integrative analysis of individual, society, state, and environment and their articulations rather than secluding economic analysis to rational choices and individual preferences. Thus, Islamic Political Economy frame is suggested as the theoretical frame, and Islamic Moral Economy is generated to provide the necessary theoretical substance for this frame. In doing so, the sub-discipline of Islamic economics is provided an essential theoretical base beyond pragmatic and prescriptive definitions. Finally, this research also presents an empirical paper aiming to test the socio-economic performance of Islamic finance in relation to Islamic Moral Economy, which found that against the expected Islamic moral economy attributes, Islamic finance and banking has developed a different trajectory which does not intersects with the substantial morality Islamic Political and Moral Economy essentialises. This study argues that such a ‘social failure’ or ‘transformational failure’, despite the transactional success, can partly be explained by underdeveloped theoretical frame aimed at by Islamic economics. This research is constructed as a theoretically grounded research, which aims to contribute to the body of knowledge in relation to Islamic economics, political and moral economy, as the theoretical knowledge development in these fields remains weak.

This thesis is structured around three empirical analyses, which are based on bank failures that occurred in the US between 1984 and 2013. The first analysis tests whether financial crises contribute to removing the most inefficient banks from the market and to liberating resources for more efficient use (cleansing effect), or whether they destroy banks regardless of their efficiency (scarring effect). The results show that the nature of bank failures during financial crises are not fully aligned with either a cleansing or a scarring effect. While efficiency helps banks survive over the full sample period, financial crises do not amplify the removal of inefficient institutions. Additional tests show that financial crises contribute to producing a scarring effect via the increase in the failure rate of young banks regardless of their efficiency but also generate a cleansing effect by liberating resources that are more efficiently used by new entry banks. The second set of empirical analyses investigates the long-term post-acquisition performance of failed bank acquirers. The results show that after an acquisition failed bank acquirers’ performance deteriorated significantly, with an exception being the deals completed during the global financial crisis, during which no performance changes were evident. This result is likely caused by the loss-sharing agreements included in most of the latter transactions. Further analysis shows that although no benefit in terms of performance materializes for the acquiring banks, they are less likely to disappear from the market through either an acquisition or outright failure. The final analysis examines the relation between failed bank resolution costs and the competitive pressures in the market. The results show that when restrictions on competition are relaxed, large (small) targets become more (less) desirable, and the associated costs to resolve them reduce (increase). This finding, however, is merely evident during normal times.

The main purpose of this research is to evaluate the current practices of training and development programmes in the Libyan banks to explore the problems and the challenges they face, and to make suggestions that may improve the effectiveness of their training and development programmes. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of research are applied in the collection and analysis of data from nine Libyan banks. Qualitative data were gathered through 18 interviews with nine top managers and nine training and development managers while quantitative data were gathered through the use of questionnaires from 211 employees. The findings have shown that, firstly, training and development programmes were not effective, in general, and mostly did not achieve their objectives. Poor planning and the difficulty in determining training needs had been the most important factors that hindered training and development activities. There was a lack of on-the-job training programmes, a poor quality of external training centres and a lack of well-qualified internal and external trainers. The most frequently used training method was the lecture. Adding to the very few studies carried out in less developed countries, this study is one of the first attempts to investigate the practice of training and development in the Libyan banking sector. It is considered as a step towards the introduction of examples of best practice relating to training and development in the Libyan banking sector. It also provides assessments for the effectiveness of the current practices relating to the implementation and evaluation process of training and development and reflects all the related problems and challenges. This study may help managers of training and development programmes in Libya and other developing countries to better understand how to carry out a training needs analysis, implement and evaluate the training and development programmes.

No description available.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has grown rapidly since independence in 1971, but much of this growth has been fuelled by expatriates. The UAE’s workforce now totals c.4.2 million, of which only 225,000 are Emiratis. Of more concern, just 10% of these are employed in the private sector (UAE Ministry of Labour cited by Salama, 2013). With 150,000 Emirati workers entering the job market by 2020 (Salama, 2013), this over reliance on public sector employment is not sustainable (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2012). The private sector employment of Emiratis however, has proved problematic. Private sector employers have traditionally perceived Emiratis as unattractive employees and Nationals are not generally attracted to the sector. Nevertheless, there are Emiratis who have succeeded outside the government. Developing an in-depth understanding of why they engaged with the sector and how they succeeded within their organisation is critical to address the current challenge and attract more to do the same. We currently know little about the motivations and factors that influenced the career choice of Emiratis who joined the private sector and their subsequent experience. This study considers these questions and utilises the concept of employee engagement to frame the Emirati employee experience. The UAE’s banking sector is by far the largest employer of private sector based Emiratis. This research, therefore, explores the situation through the perspectives of Emirati employees that have joined a mid-sized local bank in the last three years. It is the first study of its kind and makes a three-fold contribution to producing actionable knowledge. Firstly, the findings will help the UAE private sector to attract new Emirati employees and strengthen existing engagement efforts to address the status quo and achieve, inter alia, a more effective Emirati workforce. Secondly, it explores the applicability of employee engagement in the UAE’s banking sector. Thirdly, it contributes towards the current public policy debate about how to encourage greater Emirati participation in the private sector. The study was shaped by the social constructionist philosophy and used mixed methods and an emergent approach to study the phenomenon in depth. Data was collected through; semi-structured interviews with 15 Emiratis, 5 formal group discussions in the form of action learning based sets, and an organisation wide quantitative survey. The research specifically adopted the principles of Action Research including iterative cycles of reflection and experiment/action and case study research. Significant issues were found for Emirati employees, including; challenges in building Meaningfulness, finding a trustworthy working environment, developing a career path, learning from colleagues and coping with significant social pressures. These challenges were explored in action learning sets where a collaborative effort was made to address the problems surfaced. The research confirmed the relevance of the employee engagement model but highlights the importance of a contextual perspective in order to surface the priority areas for action. It also moves the debate away from the overwhelming focus on pay and working hours, to much more subtle considerations that will need to be addressed by individual organisations.