This study uses the Resource-Based View (RBV) and technology, organization, and environment (TOE) theories to examine how smart supply chain (SSC) practices affect financial performance (FP) in enterprises of various sizes. Our results show that SSC benefits larger enterprises more financially than smaller firms. SSC has a statistically significant effect on green supply chain management (GSCM) and sustainable supply chain performance (SSCP), and the strength of the relationship declines with a decline in firm size. Smaller enterprises are more receptive to competitive pressure and implement GSCM alongside SSC. Our findings show that SSCP improves financial performance, while GSCM does not, even in large enterprises. Further, mediation effects show that GSCM mediates the relationship between SSC and SSCP, whereas it does not mediate between SSC and FP across all sizes. The impact of SSC on FP is sequentially mediated via GSCM and SSCP. Using a non-linear approach (ANN), we also rank independent variables for small, medium, and large firms. Our research provides important implications.

The evolution of audit technology is changing the profession, but studies conducted in Kuwait and the GCC have remained ad hoc, tending to treat traditional audit software and AI analytics as two separate entities rather than as a unified technological trajectory. This research addresses that gap by analysing the interaction of these tools as a sequential process of improving audit quality. A mixed-methods design was employed, combining a structured survey of 219 auditors and finance executives with semi-structured interviews. Analysis proceeded through hierarchical descriptive tabulation, factor validation testing, structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), bootstrapped mediation and moderation testing, incremental value analysis, and multi-group comparison. The findings demonstrate that audit software and AI analytics are complementary rather than competing technologies: software improves process efficiency and compliance foundations, while AI analytics extends these foundations through predictive risk capabilities and fraud detection maturity. Auditor expertise, targeted training, and organisational readiness significantly moderate both pathways. Adoption of both tools in combination produced the strongest gains in audit quality, and multi-group analysis revealed contextual differences across GCC firms. This paper makes three contributions. First, it provides empirical validation of a Sequential Adoption Model, demonstrating that audit software and AI analytics are complementary and sequentially ordered phases of a single audit technology trajectory. Second, it identifies auditor expertise, targeted training, and organisational readiness as key moderators of both pathways, and documents significant contextual differences between Kuwaiti and broader GCC firms. Third, it establishes a planning-phase boundary condition: AQF-based evidence from the GCC indicates that the planning dimension (AQF 2) remains the least effectively technology-supported phase even after sequential adoption, pointing to a phase-specific gap whose mechanisms are examined in complementary conceptual work.

The six GCC states share similar economic, geographic and socio-cultural characteristics and also face with similar challenges in terms of energy perspective. This study plans to focus on the eco-nomic and energy efficiency of the six GCC states. In the process, the study ranks the GCC states in terms of their efficiency scores. These efficiencies are computed through Data Envelopment Analysis. The economic efficiency is calculated for all six GCC states. Capital and labor are the inputs and GDP is the output. In this survey, Saudi Arabia maintains the highest efficiency score of 0.94, closely followed by Qatar (0.92), Kuwait (0.89), Bahrain (0.83), Oman (0.81) and UAE (0.67). There is a huge gap between the economic efficiency scores of Saudi Arabia and UAE. The environmental efficiency scores are calculated using CO2 emissions as output and electric power consumption and energy as input. Again, the highest efficiency score is for Saudi Arabia (0.91) followed by Oman (0.87), Kuwait and Bahrain have a tie for the 3rd position with a score of 0.74. Finally, the laggards are UAE (0.65) and Qatar (0.62). Again, there is a huge gap between the best and the worst performers. The case of two countries is worth mentioning. Qatar is ranked second in terms of economic efficiency while it was ranked sixth in terms of economic efficiency. Oman was ranked fifth in terms of economic efficiency while it was ranked second in terms of environmental efficiency. Finally, an average of economic and environmental efficiency are taken to compute the composite index. Saudi Arabia has the first place followed by Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE.