Search results

This study aims to examine whether the monitoring effectiveness of female directors in corporate boards is moderated by political connections and family ownership.

This study employs a Malaysian dataset of listed firms from 2005 to 2015. The ordinary least squares model (OLS) is used to test all the research questions.

The authors find that female directors' monitoring is associated with higher earnings quality. This implies effective monitoring by female board directors. However, the monitoring effectiveness by female directors is attenuated by political connections; consistent with the argument that politically connected firms (PCFs) are plagued by severe agency problems. On the other hand, the association between female directors and higher earnings quality is strengthened by family ownership, indicating less severe type 1 agency problem.

This study is the first to show that the monitoring capability of female board directors is significantly influenced by a country's institutional setting. Although prior studies find that higher proportion of female directors is associated with higher earnings quality; the findings suggest that institutional setting such as political connections (family ownership) attenuate (strengthen) the monitoring effectiveness of female directors in the corporate board.

This paper uses the monetary demand approach of Tanzi (1983) to develop plausible estimates of the size of the hidden income and extent of tax evasion in Malaysia for the period 1971 to 1994. Key influences are income tax rates, the rate of interest, rate of inflation, and structural change in the financial market. Estimates of the size of the hidden economy range from a high of 8.7 per cent of GNP in 1980 to a low of 3.7 per cent in 1993, with tax evasion accounting for an average of just over 20 per cent of actual income tax collections over the period.

In recent years, there have been a significant number of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) among financial institutions in American, European as well as in Asian countries. The Malaysian government too has encouraged mergers among financial institutions since the 1997‐98 financial crisis so as to create stronger and more viable business entities. Through M&As Malaysian financial institutions are expected to emerge more resilient to withstand the pressures and challenges arising from the increasingly globalized business environment. Numerous tax considerations arise as a result of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and this has financial implications for the new entities. This paper examines broad tax issues involving M&As. The types of taxes that would become payable include income tax, real property gains tax and stamp duty. Income tax effects include deductibility of payments for termination of employees, legal fees, bad debts and treatment of business losses as well as capital allowances. Aspects involving stamp duty payment are also analyzed. Mergers and acquisitions inevitably involve a transfer of shares or property and as such the property gains tax issues are also addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the level of research and development (R&D) reporting practices by public listed companies (PLC) in Malaysia. R&D activities initiated by a firm are an important signal for a firm's potential future value‐creation. Due to the uncertain nature of the outcomes of R&D, many companies report R&D costs as an expense. These costs are immediately written off from the balance sheet. However, this practice underestimates the intellectual capital accumulation of the firm and does not accurately capture its equity strength.

The PROBIT model was used to empirically evaluate the R&D reporting practices among PLCs in Malaysia. The impact of total assets, and profit before tax on the R&D reporting patterns among Malaysian PLCs were also investigated. This study was conducted on 230 PLCs from the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia (previously known as the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange) for the 2004 reporting year.

Empirical results showed that companies in the consumer sector have a higher probability of reporting R&D costs as an intangible asset (investment) than companies in the industrial sector. Companies with higher total assets also have a higher probability of reporting R&D costs as intangible assets.

This study is only for a specific year (i.e. 2004) and is limited to listed companies in the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia.

Recommendations are made for appropriate strategies to increase the probability of industrial companies reporting R&D costs as intangible assets in their annual reports, thereby raising the future equity of the firm.

This study employs an innovative approach using the PROBIT model to measure the level of reporting R&D by PLCs.

The pivotal role of knowledge management (KM) and its extensive implications have been debated in the academic literature with insufficient focus on its link to particular organizational control mechanisms such as performance measurement systems (PMS). To bridge this gap and building on resource orchestration theory, this paper aims to investigate the relationships between KM factors, PMS and corporate performance.

Based on a survey data set of 92 listed companies in Iran, the framework and hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on partial least squares (PLS).

The SEM-PLS results indicate that knowledge assets are significantly associated with both PMS and corporate performance while knowledge process capabilities (KPC) are not significantly associated with PMS and corporate performance. This study also shows that PMS mediates the relationship between knowledge assets and corporate performance.

The results suggest that the use of appropriate management control systems plays an effective role in synchronizing, aligning and orchestrating a company’s various knowledge resources, which, in turn, can lead to superior overall performance.

Building on a unique synthesis of resource orchestration theory and the knowledge-based view of the firm, the results of this study provide the first empirical evidence on how PMS intervenes in the relationship between knowledge resources (knowledge assets and KPC) and corporate performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of religiosity, gender and Islamic educational background of Muslims on zakat compliance. It also aims to identify which dimensions of religiosity are significantly related to zakat compliance.

The study uses a self-administered questionnaire that was distributed to working Muslims individuals in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Analysis of the data was based on 690 usable questionnaires.

The findings show that religiosity had a significant influence on zakat compliance and three dimensions of religiosity, namely obligation, virtues and vices, and optional ritual, were significantly related to zakat compliance. Gender was also significantly related to zakat compliance, but in a negative direction, suggesting that Muslim working females are less compliant to zakat obligations compared to their male counterparts. It is found that formal Islamic educational background had no significant influence on zakat compliance.

Given the importance of zakat collection to the growth of the economy and society, the findings of this paper might provide some insights to Muslim-majority countries and zakat institutions which areas require more attention to encourage zakat payment among Muslims.

Compared to prior zakat studies, the findings of this study were derived from a larger sample size of Muslim working respondents. Furthermore, this study also identifies which dimensions of religiosity are significantly related to zakat compliance. Hence this study enriches the scarce literature on zakat and religiosity.