Introduction

The determinants of the corporate social responsibility, its sustainability, and its association with organizational performance have been studied extensively, with most of these determinants centered on financial and institutional aspects Albarrak and Ben Mahjoub (2020), (Ben Mahjoub 2019; Kao et al. 2018; Timbate and Park 2018, Lu and Wang 2020). On the other hand, the most important studies in this aspect focused on the developed countries, and since the issue of sustainability concerns the activities associated with the environment, in particular, the study of these aspects in Saudi Arabia is the most prominent motivation for this study (Ben Mahjoub 2018, 2019; Aina et al. 2019; Habbash 2016; Windsor 2017). The emergence of the UN 2030 Agenda and 17 Sustainable Development Goals promoted addressing the other determinants of sustainability, as green innovation and the presence of foreigners are the most prominent current topics, which can influence the extent of corporate sustainability, Gennari (2019) found that the pressure by the internal (ownership structure) and external variables (soft law) has an effect on the establishment of a CSR committee. In the same context, Garanina and Aray (2021) argue that foreign board members and cross-listing help companies improve their accountability through strengthened corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. In another hand, Fuente et al. (2017) find a positive significant relation between the presence of non-executive directors and the importance of preserving diversity; the same research proves that the existence of a CSR committee is important in the successful CSR reporting.

Based on the above, will green innovation affect the extent of sustainability disclosure for Saudi listed companies? Do foreign members in the company play an effective role in strengthening this relationship?

So, I attempt in this paper, to highlight the importance of green innovation in promoting sustainability in Saudi Arabia and to find out the moderating role of the existence of foreign members on the relationship between green innovation and sustainability reporting.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The “Background” section presents the theoretical background, in which I discuss the concepts of green innovation and foreigners in Saudi Arabia. In the “Literature review and hypotheses development” section, hypotheses were developed by referring to previous studies and appropriate theories. While in the “Research design,” “Empirical results and discussion,” and “Summary and conclusion” sections, the research design of the study will be presented, where the population, the sample, and the sampling will be explained, as well as the interpretation of the results, the testing of hypotheses, and finally the conclusion and recommendations.

Background

Green Innovation

Various terms and ideas have been utilized to characterize the innovations that target diminishing negative environmental effects. Among them, green innovation (GI), eco-innovation, environmental innovation, and reasonable innovation have been the well-known ones. In accordance with Kemp and Pearson (2007), I characterized GI as new or essentially improved products and enterprises, measures, promoting techniques, hierarchical structures, and institutional game plans that lead to environmental enhancements contrasted with relevant electives (Wang et al. 2021b, Guo et al. 2020).

A few other definitions have been recommended by scholastics and experts. The World Bank characterizes green innovation as “the turn of events and commercialization of better approaches to tackle environmental issues through upgrades in technology, with a wide understanding of technology as incorporating item, measure, hierarchical, and promoting enhancements” (World­­-Bank 2012). All the more barely, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization characterizes it as “items that diminish their general life—cycle environmental devil acts by preferring reparability, dismantling, recyclability, and recoverability” (UNIDO 2015). The EU Eco-Innovation Observatory characterizes it as “the presentation of any new or fundamentally improved item (great or administration), measure, authoritative change or advertising arrangement that diminishes the utilization of common assets (materials, energy, water, and land) and diminishes the arrival of unsafe substances over the entire life – cycle” (Doranova et al. 2017).

The environmental advantage can occur when the presented innovation diminishes the utilization of normal assets, diminishes the environmental contamination (air, water, soil, or commotion contamination), replaces environmentally hurtful substances with less unsafe ones, or has longer assistance life or superior recyclability than other important options. This advantage can either be the essential objective or an unintended consequence of the innovation. In accordance with the Oslo Manual, the dispersion and reception of green arrangements are new to the firm; however, previously existing available ones are additionally viewed as GIs (OECD 2018). Following the world’s most commonly perceived philosophy for the assortment and utilization of innovation measurements set in the Oslo Manual (OECD, 2018), I can recognize two general classes of GI:

  • Product GI: another or improved or great administration that prompts critical environmental enhancements contrasted with the great administration recently created or utilized by the firm.

  • Business-process GI: another or improved business measure for at least one business work that has been brought into utilization by the firm and which creates environmental upgrades contrasted with the business measures recently utilized by the developing firm. These kinds of GI are not totally unrelated; that is, one green innovation could be an item and also a business-process GI simultaneously. For instance, the presentation of refillable cleanser jugs may represent to both a product and a business-process GI.

Presence of Foreign Members

Policies for integrating immigrants or people of immigrant origin into the labor market are one of the objectives of effective and responsible diversity management. Diversity is understood as ethnic, cultural, or even identity diversity. Diversity in the sense that it must be managed also refers to gender, age, or disability. In the rest of the text, when I talk about diversity, I am referring to the notion of diversity in connection with the integration of immigrants or people of immigrant origin. Otherwise, I specify what type of diversity I am talking about. Diversity, understood in this way, is set to increase the challenges, and companies will be increasingly confronted with it. This diversity is a challenge for society as a whole and companies in particular (Ben-Amar et al. 2017, Ben‐Amar and McIlkenny 2015, Wolff et al. 2018).

Concerning the context of Saudi Arabia, and despite the passage of decades since the beginning of the first oil boom in Saudi Arabia, its economy is still largely dependent on oil exports, and the attempts to diversify the economy have not succeeded during that period, as the oil still represents more than 80% of exports, as well as revenues. Oil contributes to more than 90% of the Saudi government’s revenue. This paper seeks to explain the reasons for Saudi Arabia’s failure to transform from a rentier economy dependent on oil to a productive, sustainable economy (Callen et al. 2014).

In Saudi Arabia, expatriates represent more than a third of the population, which are diverse, with various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Recently, the Saudi government permitted the foreigners to be members of the board of directors of the chambers and the issuance of a new type of visa that allows for privileged residence, to encourage investment. In recent years, it has issued legislation urging the Saudization (Saudi nationalization scheme) of several sectors in Saudi Arabia, but it does not include especially the areas that require expertise and higher qualifications.

Sustainability in Saudi Arabia

Sustainability is an international socioeconomic term with which the different national and international organizations have drawn a map for environmental, social, and economic development all over the world. Its main goal is to improve the living conditions of every individual and develop the production of quality tools, and manage them in a way that does not deplete the natural resources of the planet and does not deprive the future generations of their fair share of the same and without abusing the remaining natural resources (Leonidou et al. 2018; Pimonenko et al. 2020; PwC 2008).

So, the United Nations, and many national organizations, NGOs, and countries, including Saudi Arabia, joined efforts and forces to fight this issue (especially the overuse of the natural resources). They aimed at adopting objectives of the sustainable development towards creating an international humanitarian community amalgamated to fight the challenges, reduce poverty, change production and consumption behaviors as to non-renewable resources, and protect and sustainably manage natural resources, air, and sea (Ibrahim et al. 2015; Albarrak and Ben Mahjoub 2020).

Driven by this, the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture of Saudi Arabia (MEWA) was set to play a crucial role in achieving these virtuous goals and objectives. Saudi Arabia has been among the first countries to adopt sustainable development objectives since its announcement. MEWA joined hands with other government institutions to adhere to the national constructive initiatives, face the challenges, and carry out the national transformation programs that aim at attaining sustainable development, according to the principles announced by the international community as the main pillars:

  • Sustainable economic development

  • Sustainable social development

  • Sustainable protection of the environment and natural resources

In the same context, Saudi Arabia is ranked 161st in the Global Sustainability Index for the year 2019 (Lafortune and Schmidt‐Traub 2019). Saudi Arabia is set to host the 2030 nationally determined contributions (NDCs). For this purpose, intensive preparations began during this period, mainly represented by the Saudi Green Initiative (www.saudigreeninitiative.org). Nevertheless, Climate Action Tracker has anticipated that Saudi Arabia’s emissions will attain a 92–108% rise higher than 2010 levels in 2030 (Dargin 2021). Saudi Arabia’s environmental image in the world was not better, especially by the effect of the big petroleum companies such as Aramco, which was named the biggest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions.

In another important aspect, I find that Saudi Arabia has several initiatives in the field of green economy, sustainable development, and green innovation. Among these initiatives, I discover what King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is doing regarding green buildings (Overview | King Abdullah University (kaust.edu.sa)) and King Salman Energy Park on innovative solutions for sustainable development (Spark).

On the other hand, the Kingdom is making considerable efforts regarding the United Nations Agenda 2030 (Sustainable Development Goals and the Saudi Efforts to Achieve Them (my.gov.sa)). Finally, Saudi Arabia participated in October–November 2021 in the summit of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow related to climate change, where the extent of the Kingdom’s contribution to preserving the environment was confirmed, and the propaganda for the Saudi Green Initiative and the Middle East Green Initiative was debated (Xing and Rai 2021).

Literature Review and Hypotheses Development

Green Innovation and Sustainability Reporting

Claims to protect the earth from pollution began a long time ago considering the great impacts that humans caused on the planet, as organizations to protect the environment began to form, aiming to introduce the great danger posed by humans and the result of industrial development that was negatively affected by the natural environment of the globe (Manisalidis et al. 2020). As a result, the whole world and companies in particular began to focus on developing their products in such a way that their impact on the environment is less, but also extended to encouraging the manufacture of products that contribute to improving the earth’s environment, and here stems the essence of the idea of my research “green innovation,” which aims to encourage companies to provide green products that are not harmful to the environment, and not only products, but the processes and machinery that produce these products must be harmless to the environment as well (Welford 2014; World­­-Bank 2012).

This context includes several areas in the domain of sustainability and many areas through which companies can reduce the level of pollution and benefit greatly because the concern for the environment has become one of the competitive precedents that focus on it as a result of the increased awareness of the customer in this area (Gal et al. 2018; Vezzoli and Manzini 2008). Focuses on obtaining products that protect the environment in addition to the social responsibility that companies feel towards society, thus, preserving the share of its future generations in the context of environmental sustainability (González-Rodríguez et al. 2019).

The literature in the domain of the green economy suggests that companies must design a strategic plan in order to define their innovation possibilities and capabilities to comply with the external exigencies, especially with the external competitive environment and the society in general. If someone assumes that research and training and innovation are ambiguous and especially interrelated, there are aspects of enhancing a greater value, containing innovative products via a modern production process (World­­-Bank 2012, Wang et al. 2021b).

Some studies prove the existence of a positive relationship between the extent of innovativeness and the disposition to change and accept new ways of doing things and invest greater efforts in research and development (Musaeva 2015); also, a high level of innovation has a relation with the green innovation programs or strategies in line with the environmental tendencies and transformations (Andersén, 2021; Huang and Wang 2020).

Companies can adapt to the circumstances and demands of their institutional context whether on the economic side or the social side. There are three distinct types of institutional forces both inside and outside of organizations: regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive (Khan et al. 2021). Companies’ green innovation efforts and initiatives stemmed from their CSR and sustainability interests which can furnish an opportunity to assess the interaction of contextual issues and companies’ reactions and their preemptive strategies for employing institutional services.

Corresponding to the tenets of organizational learning theory, companies tend to act and discover from their current proficiency and acquired knowledge. For that, companies get inspired by interrelated processes, models, and organized activities that touch on directors’ standpoints that are inspired by previous habits. Furthermore, the principle of learning theory is that the level of firms’ capability to obtain differs on firms’ accumulated skills associated with expertise assimilation into managerial purposes. Likewise, green innovation is judged important in advancing satisfactory direction, and communication, and helps to rearrange the firm’s understanding and competencies in improving the chance of being “green” (Ullah et al. 2021; Chiou et al. 2011). Several researchers explored the association between green innovation and CSR and sustainability; nevertheless, the literature in this area is confusing to prove a precise connection among the variables. For example, in an Indonesian context and by using a learning machine method, De Las Heras et al. (2020) argue that companies can reduce production costs via CSR behavior; their study results confirm that corporate social responsibility can be the company’s mainstay in firm performance and CSR owned by the companies can influence the level of empowerment of the company’s atmosphere in terms of sustainability.

In the recent period, I have been talking about the use of modern technologies (learning machine, ultra-precision machining, green learning…) as a way to achieve sustainability, including avoiding pollution, as well as extravagance and damage, and a good number of studies have worked on this aspect (Zhou et al. 2022; Khan et al. 2022; Wang et al. 2022). By the way, most of the works found a positive relationship between green innovation and sustainability (Rehman et al. 2021; Kuzma et al. 2020; Ullah et al. 2021). Given the above, the following hypothesis can be presented:

Hypothesis 1

The higher spending on green innovation, the greater the sustainability reporting made by Saudi listed companies.

Presence of Foreigners on Board and Committees and Sustainability Reporting

Discussing foreigners in companies brings me back to evoking the notion of cultural differences and their organizational role. Several researches have addressed this axis (Tata and Prasad 2015, Fernandez‐Feijoo et al. 2014, Ben Mahjoub and Amara 2020); in my research, I will focus on the role of the presence of foreigners on the boards of directors and the different committees, on the level of disclosure on the sustainability.

There have been very few studies conducted on the foreign nationality of managers and directors in the Gulf countries context. Miletkov et al. (2014) carry out a cross-country comparison concerning the effect of the presence of foreigners on corporate governance.

A culturally diverse company allows employees to develop their talents and skills. A range of ideas and expertise allows everyone to learn from their mates.

It can also strengthen problem-solving skills and increase happiness, well-being, and productivity. In an environment where all voices are heard, this spirit of innovation and encouragement to contribute is an accelerator of business success.

Bremholm (2015) argue that foreign ownership has a positive effect on corporate performance, and foreign investors may encourage organizations to work better.

Some research papers emphasize the importance of foreigners’ presence in the companies and this in several aspects, for example, Setiawan et al. (2021) argue that foreigners are more concerned about the quality of corporate governance practice and foreign investors enhance organizations to ask for better corporate governance practices. On the other hand, according to Bertrand et al. (2021), the firms hiring foreigners are characterized by good governance and subsequently by a good performance. In the same context, Tokas and Yadav (2020) and Garanina and Aray (2021) confirm the expectation that foreign boards improve CSR in India and in Russia, respectively.

In a study on the Australian context, Mishra (2014) find a positive effect of foreign ownership on firm value. In the same context, foreigners line up their interests with shareholders; therefore, foreign ownership encourages transparency and earnings quality (Vo and Chu 2019). In addition, foreign owners reck to the firm’s activities on corporate social responsibility. Rustam et al. (2019) examined the effect of foreign ownership on CSR using the Pakistan context. The findings of this research found that foreign ownership has a significant effect on CSR, and they argue that foreigners employ discretion to incite firms to be more engaged in CSR and sustainability events. In Asian countries, such as Malaysia and Japan, interest in gas emissions and environmental pollution is of increasing concern, and some recent studies focused on the role of foreign workers in reducing gas emissions and the extent of care exerted by them in this aspect (Rahman et al. 2022; Kitao and Yamada 2021). Saudi Arabia, as an Asian country, abounds with a huge number of foreign workers, as it has recently become keen to reduce cheap labor in favor of attracting specialized workers who can be aware of social responsibility, including environmental protection (Rutkowski and Koettl 2022).

From the above, I can conclude that the variable “presence of foreigners” can have an effect on sustainability reporting and also it can have a moderating effect on the relationship between green innovation and sustainability reporting.

Hypothesis 2a

The presence of non-Saudi members within the board of directors and different committees has a positive effect on sustainability reporting made by Saudi listed companies.

Hypothesis 2 b

The presence of non-Saudi members within the board of directors and different committees enhances the relationship between green innovation and sustainability reporting made by Saudi listed companies.

Research Design

Population and Sample

The choice to include Saudi companies in the study is based on the regional place of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the existence of its oil and petroleum resources. These companies, which belong to industries that are often perceived as polluters, represent the best and the most effective proof of their capability to disclose social and environmental information in the presence of the ISO 26000 standard (Raufflet et al. 2014).

“During the decade of 2003 to 2013, it almost doubled in size on the back of a protracted oil boom” (McKinsey and Company, 2015).

Therefore, the sample is extracted from a population of Saudi listed companies that excludes financial institutions, service industries, and firms that do not have updated websites (see the Appendix Table 8).

The final list of the companies included in the sample includes 112 companies belonging to 7 industries during the 3-year period (2017–2020), resulting in 448 observations. My data was collected from “tadawul,” “argaam,” and “asmainfo”Footnote 1 Saudi websites and the annual reports of the companies.

Specification of the Model

$$\begin{array}{l}{SUST}_{it}={a}_{0}+a1 {GRIN}_{it}+a2 {FORG}_{it}+a3 GRIN*{FORG}_{it}+a4 {INDS}_{it}+a5 {LVRG}_{it}+a6 {AUQU}_{it}+a7 {AGE}_{it}+a8 {SIZE}_{it}+it\\ i=\mathrm{1,2},3,\dots ,89.\\ t=\mathrm{1,2},3.\end{array}$$

where

SUST:

level of sustainability reporting

GRIN:

green innovation

FORG:

percentage of foreigners on the board of directors, sub-committees, and executive management

SIZE:

size of firm i in year t

INDS:

the firm i among the sensitive industries or not

LVRG:

leverage of firm i in year t

AGE:

number of years from creation to present

AUQU:

audit quality, binary variable (1 if auditor from big four auditors, 0 otherwise)

Variables Measurement

Measurement of Green Innovation (GRIN)

By reviewing the literature related to green innovation, academics are searching for a measurable index. Since it is useful to identify the facts about green innovation, relying on recent empirical research, the innovative aspects that must be counted in measuring green innovation are as follows: production, process, marketing, organizational aspect, material flow, and social aspect (Park et al. 2016).

The Eco-Innovation Scoreboard, established by the Eco-Innovation Observatory and supported by the European Union, collects an index compounded from a group of indicators to measure the strengths, weaknesses, and green innovation performance of the European Union countries. These indicators counted 16, englobe 5 fields: eco-innovation inputs, eco-innovation activities, eco-innovation outputs, resource efficiency, and socioeconomic outcomes (Moreno and García-Álvarez 2018). There are many other tools used to measure green innovation, such as the number of eco-patents developed by the companies (Urbaniec et al. 2021; García-Granero et al. 2018; Oltra et al. 2010).

On the other hand, when observing the definition of “green innovation,” I conclude that a green innovation may be new technology, product, process, business model, etc. Even though, a lot of research papers refer to green innovation in general terms, i.e., green innovation encompasses the different techniques that can help the various parties, whether at the micro or macro level, so as not to allow damage and violate the environment, and therefore, the appropriate measure for this variable can be the sum of the expenditures centered around this aspect (Tumelero et al. 2019; Park et al. 2016; Xu et al. 2021). And therefore, in my research, I use the research and development (R&D) expenditures as a measure of green innovation to be in line with the nature of the research problem first and in line with the nature of the sample that I chose, secondly.

Measurement of the “Presence of Foreigners”

In this research, I use, as a measure of the variable “presence of foreigners,” the percentage of foreigners on the board of directors, sub-committees, and executive management; all measurements are gathered from annual reports, direction reports, and companies’ websites.

Measurement of Sustainability Reporting

The index created in order to measure sustainability reporting (SUST) is used to evaluate the overall performance of social, environmental, and economic principles of companies to ensure sustainability (Appendix Table 9). This index englobes 21 indicators extracted from 76 underlying variables. The principles sources of these variables are the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the guidelines of ISO 26000, and the goals of the Agenda of United Nation 2030 (Diez-Cañamero et al. 2020; Gerged et al. 2018; Sethi et al. 2017; Ben Mahjoub 2019).

These indicators are deemed to contain the quality of air and water, biodiversity, artificialization of the territory, constraints on ecosystems, waste, natural resource management, environmental policy, social aspects, etc. SUST refers to the ability to reach major levels of social and environmental performance in 5 areas (environmental systems, reducing environmental stress, reducing human vulnerability, social and institutional capabilities, and global stewardship) in a sustainable approach (Table 1).

Table 1 Variable measurements summary
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Empirical Results and Discussion

Descriptive Analysis

My research englobes both the dichotomous variables and continuous variables. Regarding Table 2, I conclude that my sample contains 60% of companies that are controlled by the government and 43% of companies that are audited by a big four auditors.

Table 2 Descriptive analysis of all the variables
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Concerning the mean age of the companies is 33 years indicates that the companies are well established with many years of experience making up the sample of the study.

Finally, regarding the mean (1.77) of the dependent variable SUST, if I take into consideration the values assigned to the items of the measurement index of this variable, I notice that it is an acceptable average since the minimum value assigned is equal to zero and the maximum value is equal to 3.

Concerning the level of sustainability reporting by the industry sensitivity, I conduct a t-test for the mean comparison (Table 3); the findings confirm that there is no remarkable difference between the two groups, which proves that this sensitivity variable has no effect on the SUST level, and this finding corroborates with those of several studies in the field (Simoni et al. 2020; Chrysos-Anestis et al. 2021).

Table 3 Test of comparison of means of sustainability by industry sensitivity
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Correlations

Regarding Table 4, it is related to Pearson correlation; I find that the majority of variables are statistically correlated at a 5% level.

Table 4 Pearson correlations for all the variables
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Finally, by analyzing the progress of the level of SUST over the period 2017–2020 (Table 5), I conclude a big number of companies communicate about sustainability more in the years 2019 and 2020. This rise is especially due to the repercussions of the Corona pandemic on companies, as the recent period has represented a great concern for them, and several studies have recently proven that companies in the world have increased disclosure about these risks related to the 2019 Corona pandemic (Adams and Abhayawansa 2022; Zharfpeykan and Ng 2021).

Table 5 Sustainability evolution over the period 2017–2020
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Hierarchical Moderated Regression AnalysisFootnote 2

Hierarchical regression is a type of regression model in which the predictors are entered in blocks. This method is needed in the presence of the interaction term.

I conducted this regression for two models (blocks): model 1 without the interaction term (moderated variable) and the model 2 with the interaction term (Table 6).

Table 6 Model summary
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After checking the necessary conditions for using linear regression, I found the problem of multicollinearity related to the variable “FORG_GRIN” (describing the moderating role of the variable “presence of foreigners” in the model); to resolve this problem, I standardized this variable via SPSS commands (Table 7).

Table 7 Hierarchical moderated regression result
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From the tables above, I conclude that the variable green innovation in both models has a positive and significant effect on the sustainability reporting at a 5% level, similarly to the variable size of the company which is measured by total assets. But the other control variables have no significant effect on the dependent variable.

Concerning the variable “foreigners” only (model 1), I found no significant effect on sustainability reporting. Similarly, by the moderating role of this variable (model 2), I detect no significant effect.

The importance of GRIN and its impact on sustainability reporting has been the subject of many studies, and their results corroborate my results (Wang et al. 2021a, Qiu et al. 2020). In Saudi Arabia, in support of its global trends in reducing carbon emissions, achieving zero-neutrality and the green economy, advancing innovation and encouraging investment in the private sector, and in support of the Kingdom’s orientation in leading the green era in the region, Saudi Aramco (the biggest company in the country) engaged with national and international investors five conventions related to the investment in green hydrogen industry and services and led to the fabrication of advanced non-metallic building materials, and digital technologies in the industrial fields (2022). This giant company in the field of petroleum industries and with its services is certainly a role model for the rest of the Saudi companies.

On the other hand, the results of the study did not show a strong influence on the variable “the presence of foreigners,” which can be explained by the insignificant role of foreigners in the recent period in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, especially with the increasing number of local skills. Recently, Saudi Arabia started compulsory nationalization programs for most sectors.

Summary and Conclusion

In this paper, I analyzed the effect of green innovation on the level of sustainability reporting in Saudi Arabia, and I tested the moderating role of “the presence of foreigners in the different committees in the company” in strengthening the relationship between green innovation and sustainability reporting.

The results of the study prove a positive and significant effect of green innovation, but the presence of the foreigners appeared to have no effect in this relationship. My findings were affected to some extent by the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the companies and the increase in awareness among various parties of the need to raise awareness of future risks. My findings corroborate with those found by Sobaih et al. (2022) in Saudi context by using a green innovation and CSR as mediating variables to prove the effect of sustainability on corporate performance. The same affirmation on SMEs companies in Saudi Arabia is argued by Al Doghan et al. (2022).

Finally, this paper is a challenge for me, given the difficulty of context and given the scarcity of data and the specific desired variables to be included in the study. I believe the outputs will contribute to the existing literature, serve as useful leads for different stakeholders, and, essentially, open new opportunities for future research. In view of some of the limitations that have been made in this research, I will work to avoid in later research works, including enlargement of the sample and making comparisons, especially among the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as using modern techniques, including machine learning.