Academic literature on the topic 'Kuwait banking sector'

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the practices of customer relationship management (CRM) strategy implementation in the Gulf Banking sector, contextualizing with Kuwait. There is broad consensus in the literature that improving and enhancing the relationship with customers is imperative and a determinant factor to gaining competitive edge in the marketplace. The financial sector in general, particularly the banking sector, has taken on a pro-active role in the Kuwaiti economy and, accordingly, susceptible to wide-ranging reforms which are profoundly impacting sector-specific competitive tactics and strategies. This study provides a preliminary evaluation of the evolutionary trends of CRM strategy implementation through a developed model, the antecedents and consequences in relation to competitive positioning/repositioning of organizations in the Kuwaiti banking sector.

Current literature has not examined gender employment issues in Kuwait’s banking industry. This is a key knowledge gap as many women are entering the sector and might be facing discriminatory conducts in comparison to their male colleagues. The scarcity of available literature regarding the Kuwaiti banking sector and its equality practices calls for more research attention to detect discriminatory conducts and improve governmental legislation. This paper builds an international comparison between Kuwait and Britain’s established discrimination legislation. It uses a primary qualitative research method within two of Kuwait’s private banks to address the following questions: firstly, what is the nature of implemented gender equality policies and practices within the banks? This includes patterns of gender segregation, recruitment and selection processes, promotional opportunities and gender pay gaps. And secondly, how do Islamic and conventional banks differ with regards to their equality practices and gender career opportunities? The findings of the study were similar within both Islamic and conventional banks. Results indicated a strong prevalence within Kuwait of social and cultural factors, which shape gender roles and ideologies. Occupational gender segregation and thus pay inequalities were found to be a distinct feature of the sector in both countries. And this was linked to long working hours cultures, the unbalanced load of domestic and care burden between males and females, as well as discretionary managerial practices for selection, hiring and promotions. The paper highlights key areas of improvements with regards to equality practices and legislative policy planning in Kuwait.

<p>This paper aims at finding the effective factors that influence three sectors in Kuwait stock exchange market (KSE) in addition to the whole stock market. The three sectors are banking, real estate and insurance sectors. The paper measures KSE performance through the average share prices calculated on a quarterly basis starting from 2005 until first quarter of 2015. It is found that each sector behaves differently towards macroeconomic variables. The most important determinants for the KSE overall market performance were found to be gold price and the deposits rate. Individually, the banking sector is influenced by consumer price index, interest rate on loans, oil price and gold price. The insurance sector is influenced by money supply, residential real estate price and oil price. The real estate sector is influenced by the exchange rate with respect to US dollars, interest rate on loans, oil price and gold price.</p>

<p><em>This study is aimed at evaluating the impact bank specific and macroeconomic variables including the global financial crisis upon the performance of Islamic and conventional banks in Kuwait. The data are collected from nine banks operated in Kuwait over the period of 2005 to 2012 with four of them are Islamic banks and five are conventional banks. The ROA and ROE are used to measure profitability while the size, credit risk, bank diversification, efficiency, capital strength, and liquidity were used to measure bank specific variables. There are also three external variables that would be used to measure macroeconomic condition i.e. GDP growth, inflation, and financial crisis. The findings from pooled OLS have shown that credit risk, liquidity and efficiency significantly affecting profitability for both Islamic and conventional banks. For macroeconomic conditions, GDP is positively significantly affecting profitability of Islamic banking sector, while inflation is negatively affecting the profitability of conventional banking sector. The result also evidence that Islamic banking sector is more stable than the conventional banking sector in terms of their performance during and after the crisis period.</em></p>

This study aimed to identify the impact of business intelligence on strategic performance in commercial banks operating in the State of Kuwait the researcher used the descriptive analytical approach to introduce both business intelligence and strategic performance. The study population consisted of employees working in top and middle management in commercial banks operating in State of Kuwait. Stratified random sample amounting 363 subjects was used. 270 questionnaires were collected representing 74.3% of the total sample.
 
 The study concluded that business intelligence system ensures data processing using data storage techniques and data extraction to obtain consistent and qualified information, thus providing the required knowledge to achieve the strategic goals and objectives by end users and executives in the future. The researcher recommends that Kuwaiti banks should keep pace with developments in the field of business intelligence to be employed in a better way in enhancing its strategic performance, in addition to conduct future studies that follow the analytical approach to deepen its utilization in Kuwaiti commercial banking sector.

This study investigated the impact of corporate culture dimensions (empowerment, competence development, fair rewards and information sharing) on the affective, continuance, and normative organizational commitment in the banking sector in Kuwait. An empirical analysis was conducted across permanent, full-time and part-time employees (managers and non-managers) of five large private banks in Kuwait (n = 398). Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and hierarchical regression analyses were used to draw the relationship between these variables. The results showed that sixty percent of variables confirmed previous studies and the remaining ones, surprisingly, were in conflict with previous studies due to some specific Kuwaiti cultural factors. Researchers are challenged to delve deeper into the complex relationship between variables since many of the studies have been conducted in Western societies; thus, the findings can be useful in future comparative studies. A replication of this study in other Arab countries with either the same corporate culture dimensions developed earlier or extended ones could reveal whether these results are country-specified or may be generalized to other countries.

In the past decade, Islamic banking (IB) has seen incredible growth. The purpose of this study is to determine the factors affecting perceptions of customers to adopt Islamic banking and finance. The primary data is collected through a questionnaire survey, conducted amongst university students and bank employees from three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia). This study applies a regression model by analyzing understanding (U), awareness (A), religious inspiration (RI), customer innovativeness (CI), and perceived risk (PR) as independent variables and customer perception (CP) as a dependent variable. The results indicate inclusively that perceptions of customers are optimistic regarding Islamic banking and finance. The findings reveal that all independent constructs significantly influence the perceptions of customers about Islamic financing. Resultantly, the research outputs have significant implications for Islamic regulatory bodies. The foremost implication of this research is to promote academic linkages with the banking sector, i.e. to conduct research studies related to customers’ perceptions about Islamic banking in other GCC countries. This research contributes to enhancing the theoretical perspective of customers’ perception to consider Islamic banking services and gives practical suggestions to help marketers of Islamic banks to maximize outreach. Moreover, the results can serve as a directive factor for future studies.

In stock markets, information plays a crucial role in determining trading dynamics and price discovery. In the investment decisions, an investor may have incomplete information regarding the firm-specific factors because of information asymmetry. Therefore, investors rely on market factors. Extensive work has been done on stock price synchronicity (SYNCH) from the dual banking system viewpoint. Therefore, the present study examines the association of Stock Price Synchronicity with Bank’s Disclosure items and Shariah Compliance using data of 138 banks for 09 years (2011-2019) by taking dual banking system countries. We consider 11 countries, i.e., Bahrain, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, and Yemen, for analysis. We select different banks based on these countries' dual banking systems and exclude two countries (UAE & Yemen) due to data availability issues. Data of 138 banks is analyzed using specific statistical techniques like descriptive statistics, correlation, Fisher-type unit-root test, endogeneity test, and generalized method of moments (GMM) by using STATA. In the analysis, we found that bank disclosure has a significant positive relationship with SYNCH. However, shariah compliance banks have a significant negative relation with SYNCH. Moreover, control variables which include banks profitability, and leverage have a significant positive relationship with SYNCH. The banks' size has a significant negative relationship because the size affects the banks according to the market.
 Keywords: Stock Price Synchronicity, Bank’s Disclosure, Asymmetric Information, Banking Sector.
 JEL Classification: D82, G21

The objective is to assess the disclosure practices of human capital in the banking sector of the Gulf Council Countries. This study aims to assess the level and quality of human capital disclosure and to investigate the consistency among countries. The study investigates the human disclosure practice of eight banks from each the six gulf countries with a total of 48 banks out of the 56 national banks over five years. The paper develops the variables of the disclosure index based on long discussion with professional and researchers. The disclosure index is computed for each variable for all banks under the sample. Compensation comes as the most disclosed variable with an average score of 2.87 Whereas knowledge is the least disclosed variable with an average score of 0.75. The Bahrain banks score the first level of disclosure with a disclosure score of 391, followed by UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait.

In recent years the important of leadership in the organization has become an area of interest. Leadership has been noted to impact corporate culture, employee commitment and response and the overall performance of the organization. Given the fact that leadership is such an important part of organizational development and discourse, effective methods for developing effective leadership in the organization are needed. Without definitive methods for leadership development, organizations will not be able to optimize the outcomes of leadership in the organization. Thus, there is a clear impetus to delineate what works best in the context of leadership development. This study used concurrent qualitative and quantitative research to understand better the effect of cross-cultural influences on the leadership development programmes and leadership practices development in a study population consisting of managers and supervisors in the Kuwaiti banking industry. Although Kuwaiti organisations employ many international employees and operate foreign subsidiaries, they have not created leadership development programmes to improve cross-cultural leadership skills for managers. As a result, Kuwaiti managers often rely on traditional transactional methods and an authoritarian style of leadership that may be less effective with employees from different nations and cultural backgrounds. The qualitative phase of the research collected data from Kuwaiti bank managers through interviews while the quantitative phase of the research collected data with survey instrument. The quantitative phase of the study also tested the validity of a conceptual model and hypotheses using structural equation modelling and regression analysis. The research was guided by distributed leadership theory, which considers leadership as a series of interactions between leader and follower with the follower sometimes adopting an informal role as temporary leader. The theory also considers the context in which the leader operates as a critical factor for motivating leadership practise. The testing and validation of the theoretical model in the study led to the acceptance of a new 'Effective Cross Cultural Leadership' (ECL) model. This model describes the relationship between the exogenous or independent variables of cultural differences, training and development in traditional Kuwaiti leadership, cross cultural leadership development programmes and international leadership practises with the endogenous or dependent variables of leadership development programmes and leadership practises development. The testing of the hypotheses of the study showed a statistically significant relationship between the four independent variables and the two dependent variables with exception of the relationship between the independent variable of international leadership practises and the dependant variable of leadership programmes development. The quantitative findings also indicated that demographic variables do not have a moderating effect on the model. The qualitative findings of the study determined that cultural differences between employees and managers influence the managers' leadership behaviours and their understanding of the type of leadership development programmes to improve their cross-cultural leadership skills. Managers with greater experience or knowledge of foreign cultures adopt more flexible leadership practises when leading international teams. The qualitative findings also determined that front office managers are more willing to use participative leadership styles in leadership practises, while back office managers rely on authoritarian leadership styles focusing on tasks in their leadership practises, indicating that the context influences leadership styles and practise. The findings of the study including the development and validation of the Effective Cross-Cultural Leadership (ECL) model contribute to the theoretical and practical knowledge of cross-cultural leadership in Kuwait that can be extended to other Middle Eastern nations. In addition, the study finding extends cross-cultural theory by indicating that international influences both internal and external to the organisation affect leadership styles despite national norms and preferences. These findings implied that Kuwaiti organisations experience significant pressure to adopt some international leadership practises and styles to accommodate the expectations and needs of the many international workers employed in Kuwait. The practical implication of these findings showed that Kuwaiti managers would benefit from leadership training emphasising that no standard or correct approach to leadership exists and that it can be acceptable for leaders to use participative styles when warranted by the situation.

In recent years the important of leadership in the organization has become an area of interest. Leadership has been noted to impact corporate culture, employee commitment and response and the overall performance of the organization. Given the fact that leadership is such an important part of organizational development and discourse, effective methods for developing effective leadership in the organization are needed. Without definitive methods for leadership development, organizations will not be able to optimize the outcomes of leadership in the organization. Thus, there is a clear impetus to delineate what works best in the context of leadership development. This study used concurrent qualitative and quantitative research to understand better the effect of cross-cultural influences on the leadership development programmes and leadership practices development in a study population consisting of managers and supervisors in the Kuwaiti banking industry. Although Kuwaiti organisations employ many international employees and operate foreign subsidiaries, they have not created leadership development programmes to improve cross-cultural leadership skills for managers. As a result, Kuwaiti managers often rely on traditional transactional methods and an authoritarian style of leadership that may be less effective with employees from different nations and cultural backgrounds. The qualitative phase of the research collected data from Kuwaiti bank managers through interviews while the quantitative phase of the research collected data with survey instrument. The quantitative phase of the study also tested the validity of a conceptual model and hypotheses using structural equation modelling and regression analysis. The research was guided by distributed leadership theory, which considers leadership as a series of interactions between leader and follower with the follower sometimes adopting an informal role as temporary leader. The theory also considers the context in which the leader operates as a critical factor for motivating leadership practise. The testing and validation of the theoretical model in the study led to the acceptance of a new 'Effective Cross Cultural Leadership' (ECL) model. This model describes the relationship between the exogenous or independent variables of cultural differences, training and development in traditional Kuwaiti leadership, cross cultural leadership development programmes and international leadership practises with the endogenous or dependent variables of leadership development programmes and leadership practises development. The testing of the hypotheses of the study showed a statistically significant relationship between the four independent variables and the two dependent variables with exception of the relationship between the independent variable of international leadership practises and the dependant variable of leadership programmes development. The quantitative findings also indicated that demographic variables do not have a moderating effect on the model. The qualitative findings of the study determined that cultural differences between employees and managers influence the managers' leadership behaviours and their understanding of the type of leadership development programmes to improve their cross-cultural leadership skills. Managers with greater experience or knowledge of foreign cultures adopt more flexible leadership practises when leading international teams. The qualitative findings also determined that front office managers are more willing to use participative leadership styles in leadership practises, while back office managers rely on authoritarian leadership styles focusing on tasks in their leadership practises, indicating that the context influences leadership styles and practise. The findings of the study including the development and validation of the Effective Cross-Cultural Leadership (ECL) model contribute to the theoretical and practical knowledge of cross-cultural leadership in Kuwait that can be extended to other Middle Eastern nations. In addition, the study finding extends cross-cultural theory by indicating that international influences both internal and external to the organisation affect leadership styles despite national norms and preferences. These findings implied that Kuwaiti organisations experience significant pressure to adopt some international leadership practises and styles to accommodate the expectations and needs of the many international workers employed in Kuwait. The practical implication of these findings showed that Kuwaiti managers would benefit from leadership training emphasising that no standard or correct approach to leadership exists and that it can be acceptable for leaders to use participative styles when warranted by the situation.

The widespread use of Corporate Philanthropy (CP) in the US and the UK has resulted in a significant body of literature on the phenomena and its use. However, the literature generated around CP is criticised for being of an economic nature and for being biased toward the context of developed Western countries. This thesis suggests that the context of developing countries is important in relation to the non-economic nature of CP, due to the existence of intense religious beliefs and values. However, there has been little attempt to explicitly examine how the institutional pressures within this context shape the CP of a non-economic and more precisely of an altruistic nature, and how firms act in response to these influences. This thesis leverages institutional theory by proposing that stakeholders – including communities, competitors, NGOs and politicians – may impose coercive and mimetic pressures encouraging isomorphic field-level CP of a non-economic nature in a context of intense Islamic beliefs, values and norms. However, the way in which firms perceive and act upon these pressures may differ depending on specific factors related to the firm itself, including the identity of the firm, the competitive position of the firm, and shareholder pressures. These differences between firms result in the adoption of different CP strategies as decided by each firm, expressing its appropriate responses to field pressures. This study uses a qualitative methodology using data collected from 27 of the key personnel responsible for CP decisions (shareholders and managers) in the Kuwaiti banking sector. Questions were developed to assess the relationships between institutional pressures at the field and organisational levels of analysis. Data was collected through multiple sources such as in-depth interviews, documentation, and archival records. The contributions of the thesis are in relation to: a) the institutional theory; b) gaining more understanding of CP in developing countries; C) offering a robust understanding of altruistic CP influenced by an Islamic context; and d) practical implementations of CP in Islamic banks.

This study explores the relationship between some demographic characteristics and job satisfaction among Kuwaiti women employees in the Kuwaiti private banking sector. The analysis is focused on the responses of the female employees to their own jobs as indicated by their level of job satisfaction. Specifically, the research involved a stratified sample of the Kuwaiti women employees in the whole private banking sector in Kuwait. This study differs from previous investigations of job satisfaction in three principal ways: in dealing with the private sector (rather than the more common public sector in studies of the Middle East), in incorporating the environment as well as traditional culture, in taking into account demographic variables such as age, education, family status (i.e., marital status, number of children, children's ages, and presence of servants at the household) in the private sector work setting. The thesis builds on a large body of earlier work on job satisfaction, using well developed concepts in a new context. In relation to previous work in this area, this study clearly builds upon the evolving demographic, environmental approach to work. Recent research in job satisfaction has focused on job redesign or on job characteristics such as task variety, job autonomy and so forth as the primary means of increasing job satisfaction. The major findings of this research indicate that a much broader approach towards increasing satisfaction than focusing on the job itself is required. The thesis shows that traditional culture, as well as the respondents' demographic characteristics is of substantial importance in predicting and affecting job satisfaction. Indeed traditional culture explains much of the variance in job satisfaction through affecting the perceptions of the employees toward their work.

Despite the vast amount of research that has been conducted on transformational leadership in a Western context, little is known about this topic in Middle Eastern settings. This lack is significant when one considers the vast disparity between the economies of developing countries (i.e. Kuwait) and the developed nations which have managed to transform the performance of their countries. In exploring the extant literature on transformational leadership and performance, comprehensive broad and narrow systematic reviews were conducted. These involved a review of established review papers (28 from the general literature) and specific empirical studies conducted in the Gulf States (19 studies in total). From these reviews, a number of gaps were identified. Firstly, the literature is found to revolve primarily around self-reporting leaders’ styles and there is a lack of research that explores the dyadic relationship using self- and peer-reporting. Secondly, although the broad literature review supports the influence of transformational leadership on employees’ performance, there was a gap in the research that examines job performance in the Gulf region in relation to leadership style. Hence, this quantitative research aims to understand the impact of transformational leadership, and its four sub-dimensions – idealised influence (II), inspirational motivation (IM), individualised consideration (IC) and intellectual stimulation (IS) – on employees’ job performance. This study set out to answer the following questions within the context of Kuwait: i) to what extent does overall subordinates’ reporting their leaders’ transformational leadership (TL) style affect the followers’ job performance? ii) What is the impact of each of the four sub-dimensions of TL on followers’ job performance? Finally, iii) To what extent do the four sub-dimensions of TL affect employee work attitude (EWA) of subordinates such as job satisfaction (JS), affective commitment (AC) and turnover intention (TO)? The research questions are explored using a survey instrument based on established scales. The survey was distributed to 850 managers and their direct subordinates, resulting in a total of 420 participants (210 leaders and 210 followers). The research design entailed the leaders providing answers that indicated the presence of their TL and the performance of their direct reports, whilst follower responses related not only to the leader’s TL but also their EWA, comprising JS, AC and TO. The data were analysed using a range of inferential statistical tests including structural equation modelling (SEM). Results of the SEM analysis showed that, contrary to the findings in the literature in a Western setting, the subordinates' job performance in a Gulf State context is not impacted by EWA or by the composite measure of TL. However, an interesting contribution arises when TL is "unpacked" to explore the impact of its four sub-dimensions (II, IM, IC and IS), in which cultural differences were found. That is, II, IM and IC are positively related to job performance, whereas IS negatively influences JP. Moreover, the research reveals that the subordinates’ model fit of TL (employees reporting their leaders’ TL style) and JP are stronger than the model fit of leaders’ self-reported TL style. In addition to this, it was found that leaders tended to rate themselves higher than their subordinates did in terms of TL. Potential explanations of the findings are discussed in relation to the extant literature. From the study, it was concluded that the factors that influence workers in developed countries apply with some disparity in the developing nations such as those in the Middle East context (i.e. Kuwait). Finally, the study’s contributions, implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Empirical research on how Islam influences leaders' behaviours and business practices is not easily available. The separation of church and state has never been an Islamic precept; therefore, this paper investigates how Islamic religion affects ethical leadership amongst Kuwait's private sector leaders. Using a constructionist approach within which 40 leaders from Kuwaiti private sector organisations were interviewed, in the banking, investment, real estate and services sectors. The study provides important insights into the concepts related to good and ethical leadership in a non-Western environment and enriches our knowledge in this sector of the management field.