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The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of intensity of market competition and strategic orientation on the adoption of green initiatives among public listed companies (PLCs) in Malaysia.

A questionnaire survey was distributed to all 921 PLCs, and 120 samples were analysed. This study used a statistical tool named partial least squares – structural equation modelling (PLS–SEM) for data analysis. Interviews were also conducted with a few selected companies to obtain in-depth information on green practices.

The findings of this paper reveal that strategic orientation significantly influences the adoption of green initiatives in Malaysian PLCs while the intensity of market competition does not. Competition on green products or services is not prevalent yet in Malaysia; hence, PLCs are reluctant to make huge investment in green activities. The extent of green initiatives adoption in Malaysian PLCs is just at a moderate level, suggesting that Malaysian PLCs are not so proactive but in the progressing stage of practicing green. PLCs still need some incentives to adopt more green initiatives.

The present study only focussed on the green initiatives adoption in Malaysian PLCs; hence, the research findings may not be generalizable to other countries. This study only considered the contingency theory and stakeholder theory. Due to the time and cost constraints, the data were collected at only one single point of time; thus, it may inherit the usual limitations of cross-sectional data.

The findings of this study also give empirical evidence to the practitioners that their decisions to adopt green initiatives are significantly influenced by certain factors. Companies need to understand the key drivers of their green initiatives in order for them to meet the green challenges and to ultimately derive performance from their implementations. Regulatory authorities and financial institutions could facilitate and encourage for the effective implementation of green initiatives by providing more incentives and facilities.

The findings of this study that provide the forces of green initiatives would arouse more environmental concerns among individuals, organizations, and society. The findings of this study also open an eye to the society that commitment of everyone, including upper and lower level of position, is needed in order to create the culture of green for the benefit of society as a whole.

This study contributes to the environmental management literature in the context of green and sustainable development, and to nurture green practices among industries and society for the aims to achieve the sustainability agenda. This study is conducted to explain the motivation behind the proactive decisions on sustainability practices. The current literature on green issues and sustainability provides limited evidence on what really drives companies to practice green.

Based on the knowledge sharing model by Nonaka (1994), this study examines the relative efficacy of various Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) applications in facilitating sharing of explicit and tacit knowledge among professional accountants in Malaysia. The results of this study indicate that ICTs, generally, facilitate all modes of knowledge sharing. Best‐Practice Repositories are effective for sharing of both explicit and tacit knowledge, while internet/e‐mail facilities are effective for tacit knowledge sharing. Data warehousing/mining, on the other hand, is effective in facilitating self learning through tacit‐to‐tacit mode and explicit‐to‐explicit mode. ICT facilities used mainly for office administration are ineffective for knowledge sharing purpose. The implications of the findings are discussed.

This study aims to investigate the effects of individual knowledge/experience on the audit expectation gap of loan officers in Malaysia and the subsequent effect of the audit expectation gap on their loan decision quality. In addition, the mediation role of the audit expectation gap is examined.

Copies of a structured questionnaire were randomly distributed to three hundred and twenty loan officers of the top four commercial banks in Malaysia. A total of 212 completed questionnaires were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The findings indicate that the knowledge/experience factors could significantly mitigate the audit expectation gap. More importantly, the audit expectation gap is found to adversely affect the loan decision quality. The mediating role of the audit expectation gap is also supported.

The findings of this study may not be generalizable to other economic, cultural and political settings.

Banks may narrow their loan officers' audit expectation gap and hence, their non‐performing loans through selective recruitment or appropriate knowledge/skill enhancement in‐house training programmes.

This study provides the needed empirical evidence of the adverse effect of audit expectation gap on the loan decision quality of bank officers in Malaysia. Unlike the 2009 findings of Noghondari and Foong, which was based on an Islamic banking context in Iran, this study, which was based on the conventional banking context, found that accounting‐related and job‐related work experience of bank officers had significantly mitigated the audit expectation gap. The findings have important implications on the recruitment and training of loan officers by banks.

This study examines the extent and nature of voluntary intellectual capital (IC) disclosure by public‐listed companies in Malaysia and how the disclosure may be explained by the economics or other rationale of corporate disclosure. Those intangible assets that are required to be disclosed under the extant accounting standards were specifically excluded from this study. The top 30 and the bottom 30 companies were selected from the list of top 100 largest public‐listed companies by market capitalization at the end of 2003. Content analysis was used to measure the extent of voluntary IC disclosure in the 2003 annual reports of the selected companies. This study found that the voluntary disclosure of IC information is generally not extensive among the publiclisted companies in Malaysia and narrative description of their IC attributes is the most often adopted format. The findings suggest that the IC disclosure behaviour of the sample companies may be explained based on both economic and non‐economic rationale. Implications of the findings are discussed.

As the number of international students increases globally, non-traditional destinations have emerged in the global higher education arena, despite the long-lasting dominance of traditional destinations, such as the United States, the UK, Australia, France, or Germany. In search of the causes of the change in the number of international students favoring non-traditional destinations, this study focuses on the Turkish case and identifies the macro-level efforts to increase the enrollment of international students in Turkish higher education institutions by utilizing the theory of new institutionalism and theories regarding the college choices of international students. As an upper-middle-income, developing country and an emerging non-traditional destination, constituting a regional hub for international students in the last decade at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe, the case of Turkey would give unique examples of macro-level strategies for increasing the enrollment of international students in other higher education systems.

The purpose of this paper is to present a study on relationships between the design of management control systems (MCS), the use of MCS and organisational learning (OL).

This study adopted a survey method. A written questionnaire was prepared and mailed out to collect quantitative data. After analysis of the empirical results, follow-up interviews were conducted to develop a deeper understanding of the empirical results.

Findings of the study show that both the design and use of MCS are significantly associated with levels of OL activities in organisations, and the use of MCS is found to be a more influential factor in OL.

This paper contributes to the accounting literature by providing empirical evidence on the relative impacts of the design and use of MCS on OL activities in organisations and the interaction between the design and use of MCS in influencing OL.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of leverage on the financial performance of general insurance companies in Malaysia, and investigate whether the leverage‐performance relationship is a function of or contingent on the extent of product diversification.

The sample consisted of the entire population of authorized general insurance companies operating during the period from 2006 to 2009 in Malaysia. A total of 94 observations were analysed. All the data used were sourced from the Malaysian Central Bank's (BNM) database.

It is found that leverage is negatively associated with firm performance. However, there is a significant interaction effect between leverage and product diversity on firm performance. The finding indicates that leverage could be beneficial or detrimental to the financial performance of general insurance firms, contingent on the extent of product diversity of the firm.

As the scope of study is limited to the general insurance industry and the sample size is small, the findings of the study must be interpreted with caution and the results may not be generalizable to the life insurance sector or other industry.

Findings of prior empirical studies on leverage‐performance relationship and effect of insurance product diversification are rather mixed and inconclusive. Based on analysis of a single insurance (general) sector that is highly regulated, the paper provides empirical evidence that the benefits of product diversification strategy are contingent on level of the firm's leverage. The paper hence, enhances understanding and contributes to the existing literature on impact of leverage, product diversification on performance of the highly regulated general insurance firms in a developing country.

The emergence of consumerism has led to regulatory measures being integrated into business practices, but the influence of consumers in developing countries remains limited, resulting in businesses being less responsive. The digital retail landscape is undergoing a transformative revolution, driven by Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI), wearables, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and blockchain technology. This development focuses on convenience, personalisation, and emotional connections. Companies are adapting to modern consumer behaviour through various strategies, including online shopping, mobile commerce, data analytics, technology integration, user reviews, and contactless payments. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this seismic shift in the retail industry, and online retail is expected to continue to grow post-pandemic, driven by these technologies. AI enhances the customer experience, wearables provide interactive engagement, VR offers immersive shopping, AR merges online and physical shopping, and blockchain ensures secure transactions in the emerging metaverse. As retail converges with the metaverse, the potential for borderless and personalised shopping experiences is enormous. Advances in VR technology could lead to interconnected virtual spaces that seamlessly connect physical and digital retail, providing immersive and personalised shopping experiences. However, challenges such as cost, learning curves, digital security, legal ambiguity, data privacy, financial risk, and ethical considerations need to be addressed through vigilant and informed consumer engagement in this evolving digital landscape.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between cost‐system functionality and the performance of oil‐palm enterprises in Malaysia, as well as whether manager's perceived usefulness of cost information mediates the cost‐system functionality‐performance relationship.

A structured questionnaire is used to gather data from oil‐palm enterprises located in Sarawak.

The results indicate that the cost relevance/timeliness dimension of cost‐system functionality significantly enhances the performance of oil‐palm enterprises. However, manager's perceived usefulness of cost information only partially mediates the cost‐system functionality‐non‐financial performance relationship, and this is possibly due to the nature of control over the estate operations by the head office.

Owing to the small‐sample size and because the oil‐palm enterprises are located only in Sarawak, the generalisability of the results may be limited. Besides, the findings are based on the estate setting whereby decisions made are relatively structured and therefore, they may not apply in less‐structured decision‐making settings.

Past findings on the causal link between cost‐system functionality and performance are mixed. However, high‐functional cost systems are expected to be more cost beneficial when environment is highly uncertain. The palm oil industry operates in a highly turbulent economic environment due to serious external challenges and it is expected to benefit from high‐functional cost systems. Unlike previous studies based on firms from diverse industries, the operational homogeneity of the oil‐palm enterprises in this paper enables the effects of cost‐system functionality on performance to be examined in a more controlled setting. By analyzing the attributes of cost‐system functionality into two major dimensions, this paper shows that performance could be enhanced only through provision of relevant and timely cost information.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how decision rationality affects ERP adoption extensiveness and subsequently, organization performance. The mediating roles of system usage and user satisfaction on the relationship between adoption extensiveness and organizational performance are also examined.

This study was based on a questionnaire survey of 976 public-listed companies and 200 unlisted manufacturing companies. Responses of 93 ERP adopters were analyzed.

ERP adoption extensiveness is significantly affected by the overall measure of expected economic benefits, but not by any of the economic benefit type individually. On the other hand, mimetic pressure individually affects ERP adoption extensiveness, but not the overall measure of institutional pressures. ERP adoption extensiveness is significantly associated with organizational performance, and the mediating roles of system usage and user satisfaction are supported.

This study has the limitations associated with questionnaire-based research and its small sample size may also limit the generalizability of its findings.

The high emphasis on operational benefits of ERP adoption and the significant effect of mimetic pressure on ERP adoption extensiveness imply that organizations in Malaysia are largely “followers” of the technological innovation and generally have yet to exploit the full potentials of their ERP systems. Government agencies may need to play a more active role to facilitate fuller utilization and adoption of the higher end ERP applications. Vendors of ERP systems may need to review their strategies to increase their sales of ERP systems to the smaller business enterprises.

The paper addresses the relatively void in literature on the link between decision rationality and technology adoption extensiveness and the subsequent organizational performance in the context of an emerging economy.