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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.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

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

The succession phenomenon in family-owned businesses (F-OB) determines their future viability and success. This study aims to provide insight into key research areas related to F-OB’s succession and identify gaps in current literature that can be explored in future research.

The research article analysis was conducted using bibliometric techniques with VOS viewer and R-Studio Software. This study analyzed 799 articles from the Web of Science (1993–2023) to assess succession in F-OBs and future research directions.

This bibliometric study provides evolutionary publication trends on the succession of F-OBs. It also identified journals, universities, future trends, thematic maps, cluster networks, authorship countries, theoretical lenses and research gaps linked with F-OB’s succession.

This study focuses on the trends and research themes that have influenced and progressed the comprehension of succession phenomena and dynamics associated with the survival of F-OBs. By conducting a bibliometric analysis of these influential studies, the research provides an overview of significant advancements. It highlights gaps that can be addressed as future research opportunities to enhance the succession processes of F-OBs.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the elements of family-centric non-economic goals, such as socioemotional wealth (SEW) of family business owners, that drive family commitment. The empirical study further tests whether such relationships are impacted by the aspect of ownership, that is, who controls the firm: founder generation or subsequent generation of owner managers.

Deploying the SEW and stakeholder theories, this study proposes a conceptual link between soecioemotional wealth dimensions and family commitment. The study is based on a survey of 357 private family firms in Bangladesh involved in manufacturing ready-made garments. The respondents are all in senior-level management positions in their respective firms and are members of the dominant owning family.

Prior to considering the moderating effect of controlling generation, the results indicate that four out of five FIBER dimensions of SEW affect family commitment, except for binding social ties. The study also finds that when a comparison is made between the founder generation and the subsequent generation of family firm managers, it is the latter that manifests significantly higher levels of family commitment when the focus is on the two FIBER dimensions of SEW: binding social ties and identification of family members with the firm.

Although the cross-sectional nature of the study exposes the study to the specter of common method bias, procedural remedies were initiated to minimize the likelihood. Furthermore, data were collected from a single key informant in each organization. Therefore, both a longitudinal study and corroborating data from more than one individual in each firm would possibly provide a more robust picture.

Key decision makers from within the family who wish to see their subsequent generation remain engaged and committed to the family firm may find cues from the fact that focusing on binding social ties and identification of family members with the firm play an important role in ensuring continued commitment to the business by their successors.

Family businesses are recognized to be vital contributors to most societies around the globe, both as employment generators as well as catalysts of economic activities. Hence, policy makers may derive pertinent information from the study in adopting policies to nurture and ensure survival and continuity of family-owned businesses, by understanding how family-centric non-economic goals impact family’s desire to commit resources, time and effort to the enterprise from generation to generation.

Determining the factors that drive continued engagement and commitment of family members to the business enterprise is a phenomenon that needs to be better understood in order to ensure continuity and survival of family enterprises across generations. This study attempts to provide a more nuanced understanding of how different components of family-centric goals, such as SEW, impact family commitment. The study contributes to theory building by providing a conceptual link that demonstrates the components of SEW that are most pertinent in terms of ensuring higher levels of family commitment to the family-owned business.

Socioemotional wealth (SEW) has emerged as a defining concept that distinguishes family-owned business organizations from businesses that are not exclusively controlled by family coalitions. This empirical study expands the literature by presenting a more nuanced understanding of how individual dimensions of socioemotional wealth interacts with firm performance outcomes. Deploying the stakeholder theory, the purpose of this study is to propose a research model linking the five dimensions of SEW with firm performance to propose and test a set of hypotheses.

To test the hypotheses, data were collected through a survey of 357 medium-to-large private family firms in Bangladesh that were involved in export-oriented production of ready-made garments. Based on structural equation modeling, the data were analyzed using SmartPLS.

The results indicate that out of the five dimensions of SEW, three dimensions – family identification, emotional attachment and renewal of bonds through dynastic succession – have a positive and significant impact on firm performance. On the other hand, family control and influence have a significant but negative impact on firm performance. The only exception is in the case of binding social ties, which indicate a non-significant relationship.

By attempting to provide a clearer and predictable link between family-centric non-economic goals and firm-centric business goals, the study contributes to theory building and attempts to address the conflict in the literature in the study of family involvement in management and performance of the business enterprise.

For industry practitioners and family business owners, it could provide guidance on which family-centric goals would maximize benefits to the firm and address the family-based utilities. Future strategic plans aimed at growth and sustainability of family firms can derive important clues from the findings of this study and design actionable goals that leverage those dimensions of socioemotional wealth that have a positive impact on firm performance.

Social implications of ensuring survival of family businesses are significant because of their role as one of the largest sources of employment generation in most societies. Policymakers and regulatory authorities would be able to frame customized initiatives to foster growth and sustainability of family enterprises that have such large impact on the economy.

Theoretical contribution of the study comes from a more nuanced understanding of relationships between the individual dimension of SEW and firm performance, which will delineate a more consistent and predictable link between family-centric goals and firm-level outcomes. From the perspective of practical contribution, this may provide useful guidelines to industry practitioners and policymakers to frame initiatives that enable growth and sustainability of family firms that are typically the largest employment generators in most economies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potentials of spiritual leadership in maximizing the triple bottom line (TBL) (people, planet, and the profit) of the telecommunication industry in Malaysia. The research was conducted as a quantitative study based on the SEM Smart-PLS on four telecommunication organizations in Malaysia that represent the Malaysian telecommunication industry. The research was intended to prove that organizations can still develop a business model that adopts and adapts to spiritual, ethical, and moral leadership style as well as guarantees employees’ well-being, organizational sustainability, and social responsibility without sacrificing its profitability by acknowledging the spiritual impact on management and employees’ performance.

The research was conducted using the spiritual leadership survey developed by Louis W. Fry (2010) called the spiritual leadership balance scorecard that measured the spiritual leadership dimensions, spiritual well-being against the measure for TBL of productivity, organizational commitment, and life satisfaction (Fry and Altman, 2013; Fry et al., 2010). A set of questionnaire was developed that combines prior established instruments, and sent to 140 employees working in the telecommunication organizations in Malaysia on a purposive sampling method, based on the SEM-PLS approach (Hair, 2010).

The research has proven that organizations can still boosts its profitability by adopting to business models that acknowledge the importance of human values, the emotional part and the spiritual part. As the research has surprisingly proven that by having spiritual leaders on premise, a telecommunication provider will be able to awaken a sense that one’s life has meaning, not just to his or her own selves, but to the community at large as well. The spiritual leaders are able to influence a sense that one’s life has meaning and wanting to make differences in others life as when the employees, through the inner life, hope and faith given by the leaders in striving for the visions with altruistic love.

The limitation of the study to include cultural values as a contributing factor to the spiritual values could have been an avenue for future research on the influence of spiritual leadership on the TBL of such organizations. As such, this may be the reason why the employees of the telecommunication organizations in Malaysia are scoring low in developing a sense of calling, when due to the culture of being Malaysian, scoring high in Hofstede’s theory of culture on uncertainty avoidance and power distance (Ting and Ying, 2013).

Adapting to spiritual leadership facilitate employee engagement by tackling the soft part of human resources, the inner sense. The inner sense is able to awaken the conscience and compassion, which can lead to effective working attitude, commitment, and engagement as reciprocal effects.

Spiritual leadership is the agenda to win back employees’ trust and confidence to the organizations which have proven to cause mishap in the current economic trend. The values brought by spiritual leadership are able to balance between work and life and in fulfilling the human needs to feel appreciated, regarded and respected and that being human, the urge to be connected to a community is unavoidable and to feel happy with what they are doing is the food for the soul.

No study has ever been conducted in the Malaysian context with regard to spiritual leadership and at the same time employing the balance scorecard developed academically into a practical context. On the other hand, the study also proved to be the first with regard to scientifically proving the importance of spiritual values to leadership style, workplace experience as well as to organizational performance in terms of job satisfaction, productivity, and satisfaction in life.