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Undergraduate courses: Auditing, Leadership, Management accounting. Postgraduate courses: Leadership, Management accounting.

Auditing, Leadership, Management accounting

This case documents the journey of a professional accountancy organisation, namely, the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) and document the MIA’s journey on the establishment of digital blueprint for the accounting profession in Malaysia including some major milestone in innovating audit evidence-gathering technique by introducing e-confirm for auditing bank confirmation in Malaysia. This case highlights the significant role played by a lady chief executive officer (CEO) in embarking into the digitalisation of the accountancy profession and practice in Malaysia. While the ultimate objective of digital blueprint is to transform the accounting and auditing practices in Malaysia, the CEO has led by example by embedding digitalisation within MIA’s practices itself.

The learning outcome of this paper are as follows: to develop students’ understanding on the right attitudes, skills and characters that a successful leader should possess in contemporary business environment by focusing on dilemma and stereo-typing faced by women leaders; to develop the students’ understanding on the changes in business environment particularly the rise of digital technology that affecting the ways in which accounting functions in organisations; to encourage students to be aware that technical accounting knowledge is just one of the key success factors in the career of a professional accountant. The case offer insight into accountants’ role in digital environment and the development needed for accounting profession; to demonstrate how auditing process can benefit from the advancement in technology; and to encourage critical discussion on the development of accounting profession in Malaysia. The case aims to develop students’ critical discussion on the roles of MIA as a regulator of accounting profession and to appreciate historical development of accounting profession in Malaysia. The case also aims to encourage students to realise the existence of other professional accounting bodies, accounting practitioners and academic accountants, and together with MIA, they play significant role in shaping the accounting profession in Malaysia.

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The case has a strong implication on the role of effective leaders in ensuring that significant efforts involved in digitalisation journal, a vital need for the accountancy professional to continue to be a relevant profession, is a success.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

Women leadership, Digitalisation, Professional accountancy organisation, Electronic bank confirmation, Malaysia

This study is conducted to identify which attributes that are considered important by accounting students of University of Malaya and International Islamic University of Malaysia in the job selection process. The questionnaires which lists the attributes of public accounting firms are distributed to the accounting students and they were asked to rate each attribute on a 5 point Likert scale. The students’ demographic profile and their academic achievements (CGPA) are also analysed to determine their relationships with the preference in the subjects’ job selection. It is found that the students rank opportunity and advancement as the most important attributes followed by office atmosphere/friendliness of staff and firms’ training programme. The findings from this study might assist public accounting firms in developing policies that might attract more quality recruits. They can also be used by institutions of higher learning to give more appropriate career advice to students who are seeking for their first accounting job.

Drawing on institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence et al., 2011), this study aims to explore how the concept of value for money (VFM) is understood in terms of the private finance initiative (PFI) implementation in Malaysia.

In-depth interviews with 25 actors involved in the implementation of PFI projects at two public universities in Malaysia were conducted. The interviews focused on the ways in which participants in the projects make sense of VFM in their ongoing involvement with the projects. In addition, a review of publicly available documents was conducted to understand the ways in which the notion of VFM is reflected in the policies and procedures of the government. Data from the interviews and documents were analysed using thematic analysis.

It is found that the advocacy work of macro-level actors, as well as micro-level actors, has promoted PFI implementation to achieve VFM. However, to the micro-level actors, VFM is just a concept that carries different interpretations, depending on how PFI fits their everyday functional discourses. In addition, direct negotiation and lack of commercial appreciation are disruptive not only to the achievement of VFM but also to the public sector reform agenda of the country.

The present study contributes to the discourses on the concept of VFM that is assumed to be inherent in PFI. The findings are based on micro- and macro-level actors and cover both advocacy and disruption of VFM achievement.

To provide evidence on the establishment of the internal audit function in the higher education institutions in Malaysia and also to obtain the perceptions of the management of the higher education institutions towards the role and scope of the internal audit.

Sample consisted of 17 public universities and 49 private universities in Malaysia and variables used by Gordon and Fischer were adopted for this study.

The findings revealed that a substantial number of private institutions of higher education do not have an internal audit function. The study also indicates that the management of both types of institutions have similar perceptions on the role of internal auditors and the important audit areas as there are no significant differences between public and private institutions of higher education.

The main limitation of this study is that it only examines whether the scope of internal audit covers the areas mentioned by treasury circular or the IIA Guideline. It ignored the extent to which the higher education institutions comply with both guidelines. It is, therefore, suggested that future research could consider the degree of compliance to the above guidelines. The difference in the role of internal auditing between the education sector and other industries represents an interesting area for further research. Also, since this study only focuses on the perceptions of the management and the internal auditor themselves, the perception of other parties such as regulators and the audit committee on the role of internal audit in institutions of higher education will be an interesting area to explore for future research.

The failure to establish an internal audit function in the private universities calls for government intervention to ensure the existence of an internal audit function in the private sector higher education institutions.

The findings of this paper will be important in further refining the scope of the internal audit function in the higher educations institutions in Malaysia, especially to policymakers concerned with regulations governing the internal audit function.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which organisations embedding key performance indicators (KPIs) as part of their organisational activities. Specifically this paper shows the role of cultural change programme in enabling the implementation of KPIs in the context of this study.

The present study was conducted using ethnographic approach. Consistent with tradition in doing ethnographic studies, observation was the main method employed in this study. Additionally, this study employed interview and document review methods.

This study concludes that the operation of KPIs in this organisation were made to work through a programme of cultural change. This finding suggests that accounting measurements such as KPIs can be embedded as part of organisational activities through cultural intervention.

This study provides empirical evidence of the actions people do in making performance measurement works in organisations.

This study adds to the limited number of literatures that link culture and performance measurement.

The purpose of this paper is to study the role of budget speech in the Malaysian Government as a “hybrid” for governing both the economy and social cohesion.

Through archival research, a governmentality framework and the concept of hybrids (Miller et al., 2008) are employed to explore the role of budget speech in articulating ways in which the government managed the economic and social agenda.

Previous governmentality studies have primarily been conducted on economic performance in western liberal democracies. Such research has illustrated the framework, measures undertaken by the government and choices of the governable person in actions for economic life. This paper applies these studies to a South East Asian context and finds that budget speeches between 2007 and 2011 are hybrids, in that they set out ways of achieving the two key priorities of post-independence Malaysia – the need to promote economic development whilst also fostering social harmony. Most notably, it finds that economic development was the dominant priority in those budget speeches held prior to the global financial crisis and 2008 general election, whereas social cohesion assumed this position from 2009 onwards.

The findings have both practical and social implications for Malaysia, but also other jurisdictions that are using budget speeches to try to promote economic reforms and foster social cohesion.

The purpose of this paper is to explore accounting students' perceived usefulness of case studies in Malaysia, which has a more passive learning environment, and if gender, prior academic performance and prior exposure to case studies influenced students' perceptions.

A questionnaire survey on students' perceived usefulness of case studies based on Weil et al. was used with final-year students enrolled in an advanced management accounting course. The data were gathered over two semesters in 2006/2007.

Findings reveal that generally students felt that the case method was very useful and gave them numerous benefits. However, there were no significant differences in the perceived usefulness of case studies across gender and prior academic performance. Some differences were observed between students with prior exposure to case studies and students without such exposure, in that students without prior exposure perceived higher benefits of case studies.

The study showed that students in a passive learning environment generally find case studies to be very beneficial.

The case approach should be used more extensively and introduced earlier in accounting undergraduate programmes.

This study is one of very few studies which have investigated students' perceived usefulness of case studies, in a developing country, Malaysia, where a more passive learning environment exists – addressing an important gap in the accounting education literature.

This paper aims to interpret the role and professional issues of public sector performance auditing (PA) as a mechanism of neoliberal governmentality in the New Public Management (NPM) era by drawing on a Foucauldian conceptual lens to chart directions for future research.

The study uses the Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity to interpret PA against the background of neoliberal imperatives of public sector management.

As the growing emphasis on PA in recent decades can be understood as driven by the concurrent development of neoliberal and NPM rationalities, the relatively underexploited concepts of visibility and identity allow further inquiry into important PA issues. This paper identifies avenues for future research under the following three themes: the issue of visibility in neoliberal governmentality and potential for auditors-general to expand the domain of influence of National Audit Offices through the PA role; the potential for PA as a unified distinct specialisation; and the neoliberal idea of professional identity as the individual expert and its interplay with the potential emergence of PA as a distinct function within the accounting profession.

This conceptual paper is anticipated to stimulate future PA research. Key areas in this respect include the position and authority afforded to PA and the possibility of transformation in auditors’ conception of their professional worldview.

This paper charts direction for future research by interpreting PA using Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity that remain to be exploited in PA research.