Working capital management is related to the operating activities of a company and therefore is one of the most significant decisions that managers need to make. Despite the important function of working capital management, this area has been very scantily researched. Aggressive or conservative working capital investment and financing policies imply the liquidity position of the company that could affect its operating profit. Not much is known about the working capital management practices among Malaysian companies. Hence, this study takes the task of investigating the trend and practices of working capital management policies of the Malaysian public listed in seven industry sectors. The industry sectors involved are industrial products, trading and services, consumer, properties, construction, plantation and technology. A total of 573 companies are involved in covering the period from 2001 until 2017. Using one-way ANOVA analysis, mean difference t-test and rank correlation test several findings were discovered. The practices of working capital investment policy (WCIP) for most industry sectors are consistently being applied throughout the study period instead of implementing the working capital financing policy (WCFP). Furthermore, the industry means ratio differences of WCIP and WCFP are statistically significant in most industry sectors studied even though the results of WCFP are mostly negative. This connotes a distinct difference in the asset management and financing policies between industry sectors. Lastly, the insignificant statistically negative results of the rank coefficient of correlation test provides inconclusive evidence if the conservative (aggressive) WCIP pursued is accompanied by the aggressive (conservative) WCFP. Keywords: working capital management, conservative working capital investment policy, aggressive working capital financing policy
Occupational fraud requires serious attention due to its detrimental effect towards businesses, nation's economy, and community well-being. Implications led to businesses losing their revenue while affecting global economy negatively and depriving the society of fair share on nation's wealth. Malaysia's businesses have seen cases of occupational fraud among small, medium sized enterprises (SME) representing the significant portion of country's business population of 95%. Such vulnerability among them were due to deficiency in control system. Hence this study aims to assess the influence of internal control, fraud awareness and ethical culture on tendency of occupational fraud within SMEs in Malaysia. Most past studies have focused on public sector and listed companies while limited study was done on SME with inconsistent results. Questionnaire survey was adopted with SME staffs as respondents from 384 SME out of 907,065 establishments. Data collected was analyzed using multiple regression which revealed significant influence by internal control and fraud awareness factors on tendency of occupational fraud among SME staffs, while ethical culture showed insignificant influence. This study has limitation due to limited number of response rate of 33% and sample may not consist of SME whose staffs had committed occupational fraud. The finding provides further evidence on tendency of occupational fraud among SMEs. It will be useful for organizations, especially SMEs in understanding potential areas requiring further attention to remedy occupational fraud.
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