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The main aim of this study is to assess the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of 44 government‐linked companies (GLCs) listed on Bursa Malaysia and to ascertain the relationship of certain company characteristics; namely size, age, profitability and leverage on the total CSR disclosure from the year 2005 to 2006.

Content analysis is deployed to determine CSR disclosure. A disclosure index consisting of 16 items was developed based on four general themes: human resource, marketplace, community and environment to assess the disclosure level. The relationship between company characteristics and total disclosure was examined using multiple linear regression analysis.

The major finding of this study is that the theme of disclosure has shifted from human resource to marketplace. This is followed by human resource, community and, finally, environment. Ironically, companies are not only disclosing good news, but also bad/negative news. This study provides further evidence that is, to a certain extent, some GLCs have influenced other companies' practices to disclose CSR information. Company size was found to be positively significant associated with the total disclosure. The remaining variables were found to be insignificant in explaining the total disclosure.

This is the first paper that looks into CSR activities, extent, themes and the determinants of CSR disclosure in the annual reports of Malaysian GLCs. The Malaysian Government, Bursa Saham, Security Commission and other relevant parties could take heed of the findings to further improve CSR awareness, practices and disclosures and quality in GLC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there has been a change in the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and to determine whether corporate governance attributes influence CSR disclosure in corporate annual reports of Malaysian government‐linked companies (GLCs).

The annual reports of 27 GLCs for two years (2005 and 2007) were analysed using content analysis. Multiple regression analysis was performed to identify factors influencing CSR disclosure in annual reports.

Consistent with expectations, the paired‐sample t‐tests showed that there was an increase (significant at the 1 percent level) in the extent of CSR disclosure. The multiple regression analysis revealed that board size was positively associated and statistically significant (at the 1 percent level) with the extent of CSR disclosure.

The regression model reported an R² of 33.9 percent, which means that almost 66 percent of factors influencing CSR disclosure in Malaysian GLCs have not been captured by the model. These other factors may perhaps be identified through other research methods such as questionnaire surveys or interviews.

The findings appear to suggest that the government efforts in promoting CSR among GLCs through the introduction of the Silver Book in 2006 have had some positive impact on CSR disclosure in annual reports. The results also imply that larger board size through wider exchange of ideas and experience could lead to better appreciation and involvement in corporate social activities and hence disclosure in annual reports.

This paper is one of the few studies to examine CSR disclosure and corporate governance attributes in GLCs after the introduction of new initiatives to promote CSR.

This paper aims to investigate whether or not there exists a relationship between network governance structures in GLCs and NGLCs and performance in Malaysia. In pursuing this objective, the study will explore whether the structures are significantly different and, if so, will seek to establish whether the relationship between their structures and performance of the two groups differs.

The study adopts a matched‐pair analysis between GLCs and NGLCs in terms of board listing, types of industry and paid‐up capital. All data related to variables were collected mainly from the annual reports of companies and the Bursa Malaysia websites. Besides paired sample t‐tests, univariate tests were also conducted to establish whether there is a statistically‐significant relationship between each independent variable and firm performance measured by either ROA or ROE.

The results showed that there were statistically‐significant differences for both network governance structures of senior government officers (SGO) and politicians (POL) as directors between GLCs and NGLCs for the period under study. Therefore, the first hypothesis of significant differences between the network governance structures of GLCs and NGLCs is fully supported. However, the presence and contribution of both SGO and POL to firm performance are much more noticeable in NGLCs compared to GLCs. BSZ is generally positively correlated with performance and this relationship is stronger for GLCs than NGLCs. As for RDU, no statistically‐significant relationship was found in all years. This indicates that there is no clear indication of any relationship between RDU and performance measured by ROA and ROE in all groupings of companies.

It is impossible to get an exact pair of GLCs and NGLCs companies. However, both groups of companies have been paired as close as possible based on their paid‐up capital. The research was conducted in a period of three years only and before the transformation process of GLCs. As such, the findings might not reflect the general long‐term performance of GLCs.

This paper contributes to the literature as it examines the relationship between network governance variables to firm performance in the context of GLCs and NGLCs in Malaysia.

The purpose of this study was to find whether there was any significant difference in performance between government-linked companies (GLCs) and private-owned companies (POCs) and there was any significant improvement in performance of GLCs after Malaysian Government ' s initiatives to transform the GLCs to high-performance companies.

Panel data estimation techniques were used to run the regression in this study.

It was found that there was no significant difference in performance level between GLCs and POCs. It was also found that the performance level of GLCs had improved significantly after the initiation of GLCs ' transformation programme by the Malaysian Government.

The implication of the results of this study is that state-owned enterprises in developing countries like Malaysia can be relevant and important to take care of social responsibilities and needs, as also they can perform at par with private companies. There is no need for privatization of government-owned enterprises; rather, it needs corporatization. Government-owned enterprises can play an important role to drive national development.

The aim of this chapter is to develop the measurement of corporate legitimacy among Government-linked Companies (GLCs) in Malaysia. Corporate legitimacy is important for determining the survival of the corporation. The term of legitimacy can be classified into three different aspects, namely, political, economic, and social legitimacy. Political legitimacy indicates the right to govern and rule; economic legitimacy reflects on success through product selling, customers’ satisfaction, and providing better services and goods. However, in the corporate sectors, corporate social responsibility is used as a platform not only to gain economic legitimacy, but most importantly to achieve social legitimacy. Social legitimacy focuses on corporation as a societal institution that is more complex by combining the social norms, values, and expectation. With the above argument, this chapter explores how corporate social responsibility (or corporate responsibility) can be used to show societal acceptance reflecting their corporate legitimacy. The corporations are expected to be socially acceptable according to social norms, values, and beliefs. The growth of the corporation has faced a number of challenges in gaining and maintaining their existence. While the corporations are expected to deal with the challenges effectively, the corporations must also be relevant in the eyes of the stakeholders. To establish this, corporations emphasized on gaining and maintaining legitimacy through various mechanisms. The principles of legitimacy are related to the conformity to the norms, values, and expectation of their stakeholders’ engagement through corporate social activities. The study employed a cross-sectional sample survey designed to collect data from a pre-selected list of non-governmental organization (NGOs) obtained from the Registrar of Societies, Malaysia. From a list of about 22,000 societies, 377 were shortlisted covering five categories of societies: community welfare, education, sport, social and recreation, and business and trade union. This study measured three dimensions of corporate legitimacy comprising pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy. Using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), this study found that there is a high level of corporate legitimacy from the perspective of NGOs, which indicated that the NGOs highly view the corporate legitimacy of Malaysian GLCs through their corporate responsibility activities.

While international learning programs have received a great deal of attention and have been found to provide valuable learning experiences for participants interested in developing global leadership competencies (GLCs), they are resource-intensive and variably effective. This chapter examines the relatively unexplored use of assessment center (AC) methodology as a complementary avenue for developing students’ GLCs. Scholarly literature sources pertaining to GLCs and their development, experiential learning theory, and AC methodology are reviewed to develop a conceptual model and propositions related to participants’ learning in an AC designed to develop GLCs. An example is described of one university’s design and facilitation of an AC used to develop students’ GLCs. The role of AC methodology, along with international and other learning experiences for developing students’ GLCs, and recommendations for future research, are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to gauge the extent to which government‐linked companies in Malaysia demonstrate corporate entrepreneurship activities.

To achieve the objectives of the study, data was solicited directly from top management through face to face survey.

The findings on nature of corporate entrepreneurship activities suggest that GLCs appeared engage in incremental aspect of CE activities. On the other hand, many of new ideas seemed to come from the top management. Given the nature of external and internal environmental factors of firm which include government policy, environmental hostility, technological forces, top management support, strategic planning, organizational strategies, internal processes, culture, regulation/controls, work discretion, rewards, structure and time/resources were noted to influence the extent to which GLCs pursued CE activities.

The findings in this study were drawn from six top management of GLCs. Future research should include more top management team. Given the external, internal and key challenges, future studies should investigate the direct and/or indirect effect of these factors on CE activities in GLCs.

Based on outcomes of the study, managers may learn that to benefit from CE activities, they should shift their focus from incremental to substantial and/or radical types of CE activities.

Previous studies on CE focused on the performance of private entities. This paper extends the domain of CE into government business enterprises.

As the major shareholder, in 2004, the Malaysian Government embarked on the transformation initiative of the Government Linked Companies (GLCs). One of the main initiatives was to enhance board effectiveness through its Green Book. Soon after, the progress performance review revealed that the GLCs reported improved earnings. Such drastic performance turnarounds triggered the question as to whether earnings quality is at stake. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the tightening of corporate governance mechanisms on earnings management (EM) activities of the GLCs.

The earnings data for two periods (pre‐ and post‐transformation) were collected and tested to determine whether the GLCs experienced any improvement of board monitoring role in curbing EM activities in the post‐transformation period.

The main findings show that there is an increase of EM activities in the post‐transformation policy. Furthermore, the study also reveals that none of the corporate governance mechanisms has much impact on curbing activities, except for board meetings and leadership structure in the post‐transformation period. The board meetings and separation of chairman and chief executive officers in the companies were shown to only have a negative impact on EM activities in the post‐transformation period. Although the study has shown a positive preliminary impact from tightening the corporate governance of the GLCs, weak earnings quality might undermine the efforts to sustain such a transformation.

The paper contributes to the limited body of literature concerning the impact of corporate governance on earnings management by examining such impact using Government Linked Companies in Malaysia after introducing the transformation programme.

The purpose of this study was to determine the professional competency levels acquired by internal auditors in detecting unethical behaviour, to evaluate the position of internal auditors on objectivity and integrity in dealing with unethical behaviour and to examine the extent of their awareness on ethical issues in government-linked companies (GLCs).

Data were collected via questionnaires that were randomly distributed to the internal auditors of the selected GLS in Malaysia. These questionnaires were constructed from the Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) Examination Paper and The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Competency Framework.

This study found that internal auditors of the GLCs had a high level of competency in performing audit engagements and were able to detect unethical practices in the companies. The majority of the internal auditors also had a high level of objectivity and integrity when faced with unethical behaviour during audit engagements.

This study provided strong evidence that the internal auditors of Malaysian GLCs strongly complied with IIA Code of Ethics. Besides, they were also aware of the unethical behaviour which occurred within their organizations. However, this study is limited to the internal auditors in GLCs, while the questions of the survey instrument are restricted to the elements of integrity, objectivity and professional competencies of internal auditors.

This study highlights the level of internal-auditor competency and adherence to the IIA’s International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (ISPPIA) and IIA’s Practice Guide to identify unethical behaviour within the Malaysian GLCs.

This study is original as it focusses on GLCs which did not get much attention from previous researchers, particularly the GLCs that operate in a developing country such as Malaysia.

This study examined the effect of different types of politically connected (PCON) Malaysian firms on analysts' forecast accuracy and dispersion.

The study identified different types of PCON firms according to Wong and Hooy's (2018) classification, which divided political connections into government-linked companies (GLCs), boards of directors, business owners and family members of government leaders. The sample covered the period 2007–2016, for which earnings forecast data were obtained from the Institutional Brokers' Estimate System (IBES) database and financial data were extracted from Thomson Reuters Fundamentals. We deleted any market consensus estimates made by less than three analysts and/or firms with less than three years of analyst forecast information to control for the impact of individual analysts' personal attributes.

The study found that PCON firms were associated with lower analyst forecast accuracy and higher forecast dispersion. The effect was more salient in GLCs than in other PCON firms, either through families, business ties or boards of directors. Further analyses showed that PCON firms—in particular GLCs—were associated with more aggressive reporting of earnings and poorer quality of accruals, hence providing inadequate information for analysts to produce accurate and less dispersed earnings forecasts. The results were robust even after addressing endogeneity issues.

This study found new evidence of the impact of different types of PCON firms in exacerbating information asymmetry, which was not addressed in prior studies.

This study has a significant practical implication for investors that they should be mindful of high information asymmetry in politically connected firms, particularly government-linked companies.

This is the first study to provide evidence of the impact of different types of PCON firms on analysts' earnings forecasts.