Purpose -The objective of this paper is to examine environmental disclosure practices among Malaysian public-listed companies in an attempt to interpret corporate motivations for their environmental engagements and commitments. Design/methodology/approach -This paper investigates corporate motivations using content analysis by examining the corporate annual reports. Discourse analysis was used to analyse and then interpret the environmental information. In particular, the reasons that have inspired companies in Malaysia to engage in environmental matters are the focus of the research. Findings -The results revealed high levels of information in environmental disclosures concerning current environmental engagements and future environmental plans/strategies. The environmental information was found to contain messages that revealed the corporate motives of certain environmental engagements. Three key motivating factors were found to be: "stakeholders' concern", "self-environmental concern" and "operational improvements". Research limitations/implications -The paper advocates interpretation of the discourse of environmental information to determine the comprehensive scope on corporate environmental reporting. Originality/value -Disclosure practices (through the use of language) are utilised by business corporations to articulate messages concerning their environmental engagements and the motives behind such engagements. Furthermore, the paper offers some insights into current environmental reporting practices in a developing country.
Using questionnaire setting, this study examines the perception of the Malaysian public university students on the accounting career in Malaysia. This study seeks to identify the respondents’ preferred accounting career, their career exposure, the factors perceived to be important for an accountant and the acquisition qualities of an accountant. The results of this study provide interesting responses from the respondents. More respondents prefer to become a public accountant rather than holding a management post. The respondents obtained their career exposure mostly from the professional accounting bodies and the factors perceived to be most important in an accountant are work performance and self confidence. Salary is also one of the factors perceived to be important for an accountant. The respondents also perceived the essential qualities of an accountant are acquired through education. The results of this study provide insights to the bodies of accounting profession, employers and academics on the nature and relative importance of the factors deemed important for the accounting students in their employment decision and their preferences to employment opportunities
In the late 20th Century and the early part of the 21st Century, the accounting profession has suffered some setback in its image. The recent scandal involving Enron and Arthur Andersen may have an adverse impact on the career choice of accounting students. On the other hand Malaysia needs more accountants to assist the country to achieve developed nation status by year 2020. Therefore, this study is an attempt to determine whether accounting students still prefer to become accountants and to compare the perception of accounting as a career between first semester and final semester accounting undergraduates in Malaysia. One thousand questionnaires were distributed to these two groups of students in all the universities regestered with the Ministry of Education. The valid response rate was 52.7 per cent. The results of this study show a significant difference in career choices between first semester and final semester students. Of the first semester student respondents, 30.3 per cent prefer to be public accountants, whereas only 25.8 per cent of the final semester responsents choose to be public accountants. However, both groups agree that starting salary is an important criterion for choosing accounting as a career and that their university has provided them with adequate knowledge to enable them to join the accounting profession.
This chapter examines the development of e-Services among Malaysian local government authorities. Using content analysis on 147 Local Government Authorities (LGAs), this chapter shows that all agencies have Web sites with a marked improvement in the availability of each category of e-Services. Among the motivating factors to the drastic increase of e-Services were meeting the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) established by the state and federal governments, meeting the government’s requirement of providing most of the essential services online, easing the burden on staff, improving transparency, and providing more convenient service to the customers. The findings in this chapter indicate that the LGAs are implementing e-Services, which should make it easier for the government to rollout more e-Services to the LGAs under its NPM policy to help drive the country into developed nation status by the year 2020. However, there are issues that need to be addressed in order for the government to deliver services effectively and efficiently to its citizens.
In most countries, companies are required to submit their annual financial reports to the relevant authorities. Similarly, some countrIes require charitable organizations to submit their annual reports to the relevant authorities. In Malaysia, all charity organizations, as part of non-profit organizations, have I to be registered with the Registrar ofSocieties (ROS). As part ofthe legal requirement, these organizations must submit their annual reports, including I their financial reports, to the ROS within the stipulated time period. However, less than 50% of the charity organizations do not do so. Thus this study attempts to determine the current state of financial reporting of the charity organizations in the country and highlight major issues and problems faced by them in preparing the financial reports. It is hoped that the findings of this research would assist the relevant authorities andthe organizations themselves to overcome problems related to the non-submission of annual reports as required by the ROS. Annual reports of 32 charity organizations were reviewed for this study and it was found that there were varying degree ofreporting practices among them. All had submitted their balance sheets, but only 60% presented cash flow statement and only 59% had their financial statement auditedby external auditors. Among the problems faced by these organizations in preparing the financial statements were the lack of skilled accounting staff and high staff turnover. These problems may have contributed to the low number ofcharity organizations submitting the annual reports to the ROS.
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