Upon entering the workforce, accounting graduates in Malaysia face significant challenges, including a slight decline in graduate employability from 90.2% in 2022 to 89.8% in 2023. This study examines how skills development (technology and interpersonal skills) and internship programs affect the employability of Malaysian accounting graduates. Grounded in Human Capital Theory, this study uses a quantitative design and an online survey distributed to accounting graduates across Malaysia. The study used SPSS to analyse a final sample of 390 valid responses. The study found that employees had a high level of technical and experiential preparedness. While technology skills, interpersonal skills, and internship programs are strongly and positively associated with graduate employability, interestingly, interpersonal skills exhibited the strongest predictive contribution. These findings show that while technology competencies and hands-on internship experience are essential in the digital era, interpersonal soft skills primarily drive graduate marketability. Higher education institutions (HEIs) must proactively reform accounting curricula, in collaboration with professional bodies, to integrate advanced digital technologies, communication workshops, and structured internship models.
The authors conduct a financial statement analysis of two corporations: Pepsico and Coca-Cola. We use financial statement data derived from the SEC Form 10K documents for each company and Yahoo Finance was used for earnings per share data. We conduct the analysis for the years from 2021 to 2025. Using detailed financial statements, this paper will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each company. Financial ratio analysis will be used as the basis for these comparisons.Pepsi has higher Revenue but Coca Cola’s Net Income is larger. Pepscoi has higher COGS which reflects the larger size of Pepsi and has higher Gross Profit, Depreciation, and SG&A Expenses. Coke has higher liquidity and lower financial leverage. Both companies have similar turnover ratios except for Inventory Turnover and Total Asset Turnover which are higher for Pepsi. Coke had higher Net Profit Margin but Pepsi has higher return on equity. Both companies have similar Price Earnings ratios but Pepsi has a slightly higher Market to Book Value ratio. Dividend Payout Ratio for Coke is higher. Funds from operations for both companies were similar. Overall capital expenditure for Pepsi was three times capital expenditures for Coke. Coke pays a higher total dividend than Pepsi. Average net cash outflow for Pepsi was roughly equal to that for Coke.
This study examines the association between government subsidy intensity and a proprietary Wind-based proxy for environmental disclosure quality in Chinese listed firms. Using 20 713 firm-year observations from 2020 to 2024, the analysis employs firm and year fixed effects with province-clustered inference. Government subsidy intensity is positively associated with the Wind environmental score (coefficient = 0.0218; wild-cluster p = .0014). The association remains positive after zero scores are excluded, but subsidies do not predict whether a positive score is observed. A lagged specification is not statistically significant, whereas future subsidy intensity predicts current scores, indicating that subsidy allocation may partly respond to firms' existing disclosure characteristics. Subsidies are not associated with reported carbon-emission intensity or total emissions among positive reporters. Supplementary evidence shows a small analyst-attention component and a stronger association among non-state-owned firms. The results establish an economically modest association, not a causal effect.
Reviewer Acknowledgements for Accounting and Finance Research, Vol. 15, No. 3, August 2026
This study examines two distinct forces behind the adoption of international accounting standards by West African countries. We treat the 2019 OHADA mandate as the regional force and use the three pressures of institutional theory to proxy for country-level factors. Examining 16 countries over 2009–2022, we do not find support for coercive or mimetic pressures, though the proxies for these two constructs are indirect. The findings support a significant role for normative pressures and, most strongly, for the 2019 OHADA mandate. The concentration of IFRS adoption among common-law countries, documented in prior research, does not persist after the mandate. Nine civil-law countries in the region adopted IFRS in 2019. In short, the 2019 OHADA mandate and country-level normative pressure are the two determinants of IFRS adoption we document in West Africa. For IFRS for SMEs, we find that none of the institutional theory pressures is associated with adoption; instead, the strongest predictor is a country’s adoption of full IFRS.
