Integrity failures within public sector institutions remain a major governance challenge, often resulting in corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and weak accountability systems. Although many governments have introduced ethical frameworks and anti-corruption strategies, translating these initiatives into effective administrative practices remains challenging. In Malaysia, strengthening integrity within the public service has become a national priority. In 2024, the Director-General of Public Service introduced the HEMAT framework to reinforce ethical governance and integrity-driven public administration. However, limited empirical research has examined how such integrity frameworks are implemented and operationalized within public sector organizations. This study examines how HEMAT values are internalized and operationalized within the Malaysian federal public service and how these values contribute to strengthening regime accountability, personal responsibility, and prudential governance. Adopting a qualitative case study approach and purposive sampling, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with five senior officials from federal ministries and agencies. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis guided by Dobel's (1990) integrity framework. The findings indicate that HEMAT values have been institutionalized through leadership directives, organizational alignment, and procedural reforms that strengthen regime accountability. Personal responsibility is reinforced through recognition programs, training initiatives, and human resource interventions, while prudential governance is strengthened through monitoring systems, digitalization, enforcement practices, and performance management mechanisms. These findings demonstrate how integrity frameworks can be translated into practical governance and management practices within public sector organizations.
This paper aims to examine the moderating effect of the board gender diversity in explaining the relationship between the corporate governance mechanisms, innovation, and the extent of strategic management accounting disclosures in the Malaysian public listed companies' annual reports from the perspective of the research-based view theory. The content analysis technique was employed to collect data (dependent, independent, moderating, and control variables) from 180 public listed companies for the year 2021. The extent of strategic management accounting disclosure in annual reports of the Malaysian public listed companies revealed a 'marginally satisfactory' level at 46%. The hierarchical regression analysis revealed that board size, board independence, foreign ownership, and innovation significantly influenced the extent of strategic management accounting disclosure in Malaysia. The study found that board gender diversity moderated the relationship between board size and SMAD in 2021. The resource-based view theory has been successfully used in this study in conceptualizing the board size, board independence, foreign ownership, and innovation as companies' unique resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable. This study contributes to the improvement in strategic management accounting disclosure amongst the publicly listed companies in Malaysia for business sustainability. In response to MCCG 2021 calls for informative and valuable disclosures, disclosing strategic management accounting information helps to instil trust and confidence in the various stakeholders that companies can sustain its business despite the impact of any future crises.
The Shari'ah-based and Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-driven Microfinance Model (SIMM) represents a community-oriented initiative designed to combat severe poverty within society. A notable limitation of existing microfinance institutions (MFIs) is their inability to incorporate extremely impoverished individuals into their client base. This longitudinal study employed a quantitative methodology to assess the internal processes of SIMM through a pilot study involving 421 rural households in Kalainagar village, Bangladesh. The evaluation of SIMM's internal processes was grounded in five critical factors: microfinance model (MFM), ICT utilization, investment values (IV), entrepreneurial values (EV), and business values (BV). To explore the interrelationships among these factors, Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed. The findings revealed significant and positive relationships among the constructs. Additionally, a robustness test was conducted to further substantiate the internal processes of SIMM. As a community-based microfinance model, SIMM exhibits substantial potential for alleviating extreme poverty in rural communities.
This study offered an integrated bibliometric and thematic analysis to map the intellectual and practical landscape of risk disclosure research. Drawing from literature in Scopus and Web of Science, the study applied co-citation, keyword co-occurrence, and content analysis to explore trends, citation dynamics, emerging themes, author networks, and regional research distributions. Seven major thematic clusters were identified: (1) board characteristics and risk disclosure readability, (2) regulation, climate risk disclosure, and firm value, (3) cybersecurity risk and integrated reporting, (4) institutional investors and enterprise risk management (ERM), (5) financial instruments, compliance, and value relevance, (6) risk disclosure, firm performance, and cost of capital, and (7) ownership structure and corporate governance. To enrich the analysis, insights from two practitioners-an enterprise risk officer and a compliance manager from IDX-listed firms- were incorporated through semi-structured interviews. Their perspectives validated key bibliometric themes and added practical depth. The results highlighted evolving priorities in risk disclosure, shifting from regulatory compliance toward value-relevant, stakeholder-driven narratives. This study offers critical implications for researchers, practitioners, and regulators seeking to enhance transparency, accountability, and decision-making in corporate risk communication.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance has become a key determinant of corporate sustainability and reputation. This study examined sector-specific ESG trends among Malaysian listed companies using Glassdoor ratings, offering a novel approach to understanding employee perceptions of ESG practices. The study employed a cross-sectional analysis of 93 Malaysian listed firms for the financial year 2023. ESG scores were obtained from the Refinitiv Eikon dataset, while employee perceptions were measured using Glassdoor ratings. Multiple regression analysis was conducted across nine industry sectors to evaluate the influence of firm size, total assets, and market capitalization on ESG performance. Findings revealed that the consumer services sector demonstrated a significant positive relationship between ESG performance and market capitalization, indicating that larger firms tend to have stronger ESG commitments. The result highlighted the role of sectoral differences in ESG adoption and emphasized the importance of employee perspectives in evaluating corporate sustainability efforts. Future research should explore longitudinal data and incorporate qualitative methods to gain deeper insights into the evolving impact of ESG initiatives on workplace culture and employee engagement.
