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The purpose of this paper is to provide an extension of the Corporate Governance Reporting Initiative (CGI) 2004, which reports on Malaysia's first corporate governance ratings. Characteristics of firms with high and low scores in the corporate governance ratings are analysed by comparing companies based on their corporate governance ranking as reported in the CGI.

Firms are classified into those at the top 50 percent and the bottom 50 percent of the corporate governance ratings list to examine whether there are any differences in the characteristics of firms in both classified samples. The characteristics of firms that are being examined are firms' profitability, leverage, growth, market valuation, size, age, ownership structure and countries of operation based on the Logit analysis.

The result shows that firm size has a strong influence with corporate governance ratings, but not so for other variables tested.

This study analyses only eight corporate characteristics. There are other measures that can represent firms' size such as market capitalization.

It is hoped that the traits found from the analysis will be able to provide additional information concerning corporate governance to interested parties. The characteristics revealed may probably be found to be essential elements in the development of effective and efficient corporate governance structure. The study could also help corporations in their short‐ and long‐term strategies.

This study bridges the gap of previous studies by using a complete set of governance standards on the analysis and directly identifies firms with certain scores of corporate governance and addresses issues related to these exceptional companies.

The Islamic bond, known as sukuk, is an ethical financing avenue driven by religious and profit motives. This study aims to analyze the relation between related party transactions and Sukuk. Companies with high related parties transactions are deemed to be committed toward social capital that they are more likely to choose sukuk for their debt financing.

Logistic regression analyses were conducted using data from 122 listed companies in Malaysia. Related party transactions proxy for companies’ commitment to social capital, while the likelihood to choose sukuk represents ethical financing.

This study documents a positive relationship between related party borrowings and sukuk, suggesting that close ties through related parties have created an ethical sense that is associated with the uptake of sukuk.

Future research can opt other measures of related party transactions, such as by identifying the different categories of transactions and related parties. Future research may also extend the sample size by using samples from several countries to enable analysis involving institutional environment variables of the countries.

Findings of this study highlight sukuk uniqueness by supporting its role as ethical financing avenue through commitment toward social capital.

This study is the first to use the social capital perspective of related party transactions in identifying ethical financing choice that the authors believe is relevant in the institutional context of developing Muslim countries.

Despite various regulatory frameworks to combat unethical conduct, fraud and corruption remain alarmingly high. While whistleblowing is an important mechanism to identify and prevent unethical conduct, there is a lack of empirical studies on this issue in the Malaysian context, especially whistleblowing within the audit firms. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the whistleblowing intention of external auditors in Malaysia and the factors influencing this intention.

Data were collected using a structured questionnaire that was sent by post to external auditors throughout Malaysia. Participants were selected using a convenience non-probability sampling technique. A total of 274 responses were analyzed. SmartPLS version 3.2.8 was used for the analysis.

Professional commitment and independence commitment had a positive influence on whistleblowing intention, supporting the argument that professional factors can increase the intention of the external auditors to whistleblow. Perceived behavioural control had a positive relationship with whistleblowing intention, while there is no evidence to indicate that attitude and subjective norms influence whistleblowing intention.

This study explored whistleblowing among external auditors in Malaysia by focussing on the professional factors of professional commitment and independence commitment, which were hypothesized to be key factors in intention to whistleblow. These factors were incorporated with a multi-component of attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, which were derived from the theory of planned behaviour. The findings have implications for the auditing profession because they provide a better understanding of the factors that influence the whistleblowing intention of external auditors.

This paper aims to investigate the joint effect of product market competition (PMC) and institutional environment on accrual quality.

The sample covers a large data set of 52,138 firm-year observations from 35 countries over the period of 2011-2015. Using the weighted least square regression, the study estimates PMC and institutional environment on accrual quality. The study measures PMC based on Herfindahl-Hirschman index, anti-director rights index (ADRI) based on the revised and updated La Porta et al.'s (1998) and accrual quality using the modified Dechow and Dichev (2002) model proposed by McNichols (2002). The study also uses a series of specification tests using alternative measures for each variable.

The study finds that highly intensified PMC relates to a lower quality of accruals. The results also show that accrual quality is better in countries with stronger institutional environment, specifically countries with higher ADRI, investor protection, judicial independence, protection of minority shareholders’ interests, protection of property rights, strength of the auditing and reporting standards, efficacy of corporate boards and corporate ethics. The findings suggest that institutional factors weaken the negative impact of PMC intensity on accrual quality, hence suggesting that institutional environment has a significant role to enhance accrual quality among firms in highly intensified industries.

The findings provide additional insights to policymakers and regulators on the importance of strong institutional and industry environment that can provide incentives and extra governance mechanisms besides the conventional firm-level corporate governance.

This study contributes in understanding the impact of intensity of PMC on accrual quality internationally and subsequently highlights the role of institutional environment as significant country-level governance in determining financial reporting quality, particularly accrual quality.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between ethical values and performance in the context of the banking sector in Malaysia.

Based on the philanthropic model, this study posits that firms undertaking zakat and charity are ethical firms. Zakat disclosure index (ZDI) and charity disclosure index (CDI) were constructed to measure ethical values. This study hypothesises that ethical values are positively associated with bank performance. Ethical values (i.e. CDI and ZDI) and financial performance data (i.e. return on assets) were collected from the disclosures made in the annual reports of 50 banks for a period of five years (2010-2014).

A positive association was found between zakat disclosure and bank performance. The results indicate that higher zakat disclosure is associated with greater bank performance. However, no relationship was found between charity disclosure and bank performance.

Considering the limitation of the index used in this study, other dimensions such as corporate governance, sustainability, products and environment can be considered in the development of index to measure ethical values in future studies.

This study offers additional explanation on the relationship between ethical values and performance by examining the role of zakat disclosures that characterize the unique aspects of Malaysian companies.