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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to elicit perceptions of senior officers on the overall financial sustainability of their institutions; and, second, to examine senior officers’ perceptions on important revenue diversification and cost management practices.

The study employed a questionnaire survey with senior academic and administrative staff of the 20 public universities in Malaysia. In total, 275 questionnaires were distributed and 69 were returned, yielding a response rate of 25.09 per cent. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the general perceptions of the survey respondents on public university financial sustainability issues.

The study suggests that respondents are receptive of the financial sustainability challenges faced by their institutions. Respondents agree that increasing tuition fees may not be a feasible revenue enhancement strategy for public universities. Instead, all respondents agree that full utilisation of resources will be a key strategy that the universities can apply.

This study contributes to the limited research on the financial sustainability of public universities in developing countries. Findings of the study have implications for the financial management and governance of public universities in Malaysia and other countries facing similar fiscal challenges. The findings of the study also provide important empirical evidence for future work in the area.

This paper explores the institutionalisation of a financial sustainability agenda in Malaysian public universities.

The study uses semi-structured interviews and document analysis. New Institutional Sociology and the institutional logics perspective are utilised to frame the study and explain findings.

The findings reveal that universities manage the conflicting academic and financial logics to co-exist to ensure legitimacy and survival. By compartmentalising the functions of key divisions and through loose coupling, universities are able to support dual logics.

The paper provides university management and policy makers with insights into how leading universities in Malaysia cope with a financial sustainability agenda.

The present study documents how universities cope with and respond to government reforms and budgetary cuts in the context of a developing country, Malaysia. Most prior research in the area focuses on individual or organisational responses. This paper examines organisational-level responses but goes deeper to understand how universities, through three key divisions; bursaries, corporate strategy divisions and faculties manage to enable the multiple logics to co-exist through compartmentalisation and loose coupling.

This study aims to analyze how language is used to present climate change information in the narratives of Malaysian companies’ annual reports.

The study uses content analysis and discourse analysis, and Brennan et al.’s (2009) impression management strategies and legitimacy theory were applied to explain findings.

Much of the discourses are rhetorical in nature and can be considered as corporate attempts to appear concerned for climate change, consistent with an attempt to appear legitimate and manage impressions.

The first limitation is the purposive sampling used which limits the generalizability of the findings. The second limitation is that the study neglects to focus on companies in environmentally sensitive sectors which have more substantial adverse impacts. The third limitation is that the study did not examine all types of impression management strategies, limiting itself only to strategies which provide a favorable view of the firm. Finally, the study did not attempt to investigate the different levels of impression management strategies.

A major practical implication is for regulators to consider mandatory climate change reporting at least for the sectors which contribute adversely to global warming.

This is a first attempt to examine climate change discourses in a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of revenue diversification of selected Malaysian public higher learning institutions (HLIs) and the perceptions of senior officers of Malaysian public HLIs on matters related to revenue diversification.

The study analyses data from the HLIs’ financial statements to compute the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) for revenue diversification and a perception survey with senior officers of the Malaysian public HLIs.

The results suggest that while a majority of the Malaysian public HLIs were still dependent largely on government funding, the more established and larger HLIs had a slightly more diversified revenue structure. The survey suggested that overall the senior officers were receptive to the need for revenue diversification.

The paper is largely based on a perception survey. Future work should utilise in-depth interviews and/or focus groups and a more in-depth analysis of financial statement data to provide richer data.

The study’s findings provide useful baseline data upon which further work may be built, particularly in the less explored developing country context. They will also prove useful to the administrators of public HLIs in other parts of the world facing a similar financial austerity situation.

The present study examines both the extent of revenue diversification of HLIs as well as senior HLI officers’ perceptions on revenue diversification strategies. Most prior studies on revenue diversification have examined non-profit organisations, not HLIs and most were either only perception-based studies or only looked at the extent of revenue diversification using the HHI.

This study attempts to apply legitimacy theory to determine if it explains the extent and nature of environmental disclosures made, and the reasons for the disclosure in the context of Malaysian industrial products and construction companies. The study adopts a dual methodology of content analyses of annual reports and a questionnaire survey. Findings show some limited support for legitimacy theory in explaining the nature of disclosure, as well as the reasons for the disclosure. Extent of environmental disclosures is, however, very low. Further research is suggested in other industry sectors to examine if the results are consistent across industry sectors.

The objective of the present study is to examine the extent, quality, nature and trends of environmental disclosures of Malaysian property development companies for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006.

A content analysis was undertaken of the annual reports of a sample of public listed property development companies in Malaysia for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006. The content analysis examined extent, nature and quality of disclosures, utilising number of sentences for extent and the Clarkson et al. disclosure index for nature and quality.

Malaysian property development companies do not appear to respond to the increased public concern due to recent landslide incidents by increasing the extent or quality of environmental disclosures in their annual reports. Both extent and quality of environmental disclosures are very low and most companies provide mostly “soft” disclosures. They also make very few “hard” disclosures, comprising objective, verifiable data. Thus, the Malaysian Government needs to seriously consider making environmental reporting mandatory and to provide more detailed and comprehensive environmental reporting guidelines. Another major finding is that companies are not consistent in the extent, nature or quality of environmental disclosures made over time.

The paper provides empirical evidence of the extent, quality and nature of environmental disclosures in an environmentally‐sensitive sector. It is the first study in a developing country to utilise the Clarkson et al. index, which was developed based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the budgetary participation and performance (BPP) relationship in a public sector organization in a developing country, Malaysia. It also attempts to examine whether organizational commitment and perception of innovation mediate the BPP relationship.

A total of 111 budget managers in the Ministry of Defence, Malaysia, participated in the survey. Response rate was 74 per cent. A path analysis was utilised to examine the direct and indirect effects of budgetary participation on managerial performance.

Budgetary participation affects managerial performance via the mediating variable of organizational commitment but not perception of innovation. There is a direct relationship between budgetary participation, managerial performance, organizational commitment and perception of innovation.

This is a study conducted in the Malaysian Ministry of Defence (MINDEF), thus results may not be generalizable to other organizations. It involves only two intervening variables; organizational commitment and perception of innovation and uses the intervening variable model to explain the budgetary participation and performance relationship. Budgetary participation improves managerial performance in MINDEF in two ways; directly, as a consequence of management involvement in the budgetary process, as well as indirectly, when managers' commitment to the organization increases due to their participation and involvement in the budgetary process.

This paper fills a gap in the literature as very few studies have examined budgetary participation in a developing country and in a public sector organization.

Traditional management accounting techniques such as standard costing and variance analysis, traditional budgeting and cost volume profit analysis are said to be less useful in the present manufacturing environment. To succeed in the present dynamic business environment, tools or strategies such as JIT, ABC, TQM, process re‐engineering, life cycle assessment and target costing would greatly enhance the ability of corporations to meet global competition. Through a literature review, this study examines the extent to which traditional and contemporary management accounting tools are being used in four Asian countries: Singapore, Malaysia, China and India. Overall, the evidence reviewed suggests that the use of contemporary management accounting tools is lacking in the four countries. The use of traditional management accounting techniques remains strong. The paper concludes with various recommendations for future research, the most important of which is the need for future studies to be grounded in theory.

Many authors have predicted that the shorter product life cycles, advanced manufacturing technologies, decreasing emphasis on labour in the production process, and global competition may lead to the demise of standard costing. This exploratory study aims to provide empirical evidence on the extent to which companies in Malaysia use standard costing. It also examines the differences in the use of such techniques between local Malaysian firms and Japanese affiliates.

From the industrial and consumer products sectors listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange and 21 Japanese affiliates in Malaysia, 66 companies were surveyed.

Despite its various criticisms, the empirical findings suggest that standard costing is still being used by a large majority of firms in Malaysia. Thus, Malaysian companies (both Japanese and local) perceive that the basic principles of standard costing remain sound.

While the empirical results may be interesting, the findings represent an exploratory area of research which ultimately needs to be grounded in theory. To do this, future studies should undertake detailed case studies on management accounting in practice.

Provides empirical evidence of the extent of use of standard costing in Malaysia.

The present study aims to examine the effect of environmental information on fund managers’ investment and bank officers’ lending decisions. Specifically, it looks at the effect of qualitative and quantitative forms of environmental information to their decisions.

Drawing from the normative pressure of institutional theory, the study seeks to identify the extent to which education and professional networks influence investment and lending decisions of fund managers and bank officers. A laboratory experiment was used to collect the data. Twenty-three subjects volunteered in each experimental group, totalling 69 responses from fund managers and bank officers. The subjects were Master of Administration (MBA) students in universities located in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to proxy for real practitioners.

The results reveal that fund managers and bank officers do not incorporate environmental information in their investment and lending decisions. Thus, the normative pressure of institutional theory is supported.

Acknowledging the limitations of data generalisability using student surrogates, future research utilising real practitioners is proposed.

Recognising the importance of environmental information to be incorporated in investment and lending decisions of these major stakeholders, the results suggest universities, professional bodies and companies need to raise awareness concerning the importance and relevance of environmental information in various decisions.

The study offers some preliminary insights into the use of environmental information by fund managers and bank officers in Malaysia.