Qualified audit reports of local authorities in the northern states of Malaysia

The reliability of information presented in the financial reports of local authorities is of utmost importance to enable the public to measure their performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness in using public resources. The task to provide such an assurance lies with the Auditor General, who has been entrusted to enforce the auditing compliance regulations. A certificate in the form of “unqualified,” “qualified,” “adverse,” or “disclaimer” accompanied by a report on the financial affairs of the local authorities concerned will be issued after the Auditor General completes the audit of the local authorities’ financial statements. Our study on 14 local authorities comprising municipal and district councils in the Malaysian States of Perlis, Kedah and Penang found that the Qualified Certificate is the common type of audit certificate issued to the local authorities concerned during the period 1997-2001(inclusive of both years). Discrepancies in “Fixed Assets Register” ranked first among the audit incidents that led towards non-compliance to the audit procedures. This was followed by discrepancies in “Other Receivables” and “Cash Flow Statements” which ranked second and third positions respectively. Our finding also shows that size does not grant any advantage to the bigger local authority in reducing the number of audit incidents

Pengasingan pekerjaan dan perbezaan upah jantina di Malaysia

Artikel ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis perbezaan upah jantina di Malaysia berdasarkan data yang dikutip melalui kerja lapangan pada tahun 2012 di lima buah negeri, iaitu Selangor, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Johor, Kedah dan Terengganu. Sejumlah 1,274 ketua isi rumah telah dipilih bagi analisis artikel ini. Secara lebih spesifik, kajian ini memfokus kepada perbezaan upah jantina mengikut kategori pekerjaan, iaitu pekerja mahir, pekerja separa mahir dan pekerja tidak mahir. Kajian ini melibatkan dua model utama, iaitu model multinomial logit dan model upah. Di samping itu, persamaan pengasingan upah digunakan bagi menentukan peratusan sumbangan pemboleh ubah terhadap perbezaan upah jantina. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan peratus sumbangan pemboleh ubah yang terdapat dalam model upah atau dirujuk sebagai sumbangan faktor yang dapat dijelaskan adalah lebih rendah daripada sumbangan faktor yang tidak dapat dijelaskan yang dirujuk sebagai diskriminasi majikan. Di samping itu, sumbangan bias sampel yang dikaitkan dengan diskriminasi majikan dalam pengambilan pekerja yang bias terhadap wanita juga didapati penting dalam menentukan perbezaan upah jantina. Berdasarkan dapatan kajian ini, kerajaan perlu lebih tegas dalam melaksanakan undang-undang kesamaan upah yang terkandung dalam Akta Buruh negara. Bagi pihak majikan pula, mereka perlu lebih telus dalam mengambil pekerja berdasarkan merit dan bukan berdasarkan jantina

A proposed model of non-compliance behaviour on excise duty: A moderating effects of tax agents

Taxation became a source of revenue in most of the developed and developing countries. However, tax non-compliance remains as a serious issue around the globe.The negative impact of tax non-compliance on economy and evolving nature of indirect tax in Malaysia have induced this study.The smuggling activities involved cigarettes, liquor and imported vehicles have caused a great loss to the tax revenue in Malaysia.Hence, this study attempts to propose conceptual framework by integrating tax agents as moderating effects between tax rate, penalty rate, tax fairness and peer influence with non-compliance on excise duty

Managerial Coaching in Enhancing Employees’ Motivation

This study aims to measure the relationship between managerial coaching and employees’ motivation. Survey method was employed to collect survey data via questionnaires distributed to mid-level officers at a military training center in Peninsular Malaysia. The results of hypothesis testing using SmartPLS path model analysis showed two important findings. First, communication did not significantly correlate with employees’ motivation.  Second, management support was significantly correlated with employees’ motivation. These findings confirmed that communication is not an important determinant of employees’ motivation, and management support is an important determinant of employees’ motivation in the studied organizations. Furthermore, discussion, implications and conclusions are also elaborated

Modelling of water supply cost for offshore platforms

An offshore platform like other industries requires water resources to support daily operation and activities. Supplying water to offshore platform mainly executed in two conventional ways: transported using offshore supply vessel and self- produced onboard platform using seawater desalination process commonly known as a freshwater generator. An alternative method such as water reuse or water recycling also received growing attention as one of a promising integrated solution for improvement of water resources. However, each water supply options have different characteristics and limitations in term of supply capacity, cost associated and level of water quality. Hence, it’s difficult to identify which water supply sources that fulfil the demand and cost-effective. This paper proposes a new mathematical model namely Economic Water Supply Model (EWSM) for the operating cost function that includes the most representative variables in the process. This model enables decision-makers and owners to assess the economic value from the different sources of water supply for the offshore platform. The calculation of these extended cost function also enables a detailed comparison to be made of the various water sources from an economic of view in order to analyze the effects of supply capacity for costeffective of various suppliers. In this sense, a model of the structure costs associated with each of the available water supply technologies can be useful input for future design, planning and operational stage of offshore water supply process

Program pembangunan kepimpinan meningkatkan pemindahan latihan dalam Tentera Darat Malaysia: kajian empirikal

Tujuan kajian ini adalah untuk mengukur perhubungan di antara program pembangunan kepimpinan dengan pemindahan latihan. Kaedah tinjauan telah digunakan menerusi borang soal selidik yang diedarkan kepada para pemimpin tentera darat yang bertugas di Semenanjung Malaysia. Analisis model laluan Smart Partial Least Squares (SmartPLS) telah dilaksanakan untuk menguji hipotesis-hipotesis kajian dan keputusan pengujian ini menunjukkan tiga penemuan penting; pertama, kandungan kursus mempunyai perkaitan yang positif dan signifikan dengan pemindahan latihan. Kedua, peranan jurulatih mempunyai perkaitan yang positif tetapi tidak signifikan dengan pemindahan latihan. Ketiga, sokongan pengurusan mempunyai perkaitan yang positif dan signifikan dengan pemindahan latihan. Dapatan ini mengesahkan bahawa kandungan kursus dan sokongan pengurusan telah bertindak sebagai pemboleh ubah peramal yang penting kepada pemindahan latihan. Sebaliknya, peranan jurulatih tidak berupaya bertindak sebagai pemboleh ubah peramal yang penting kepada pemindahan latihan di organisasi kajian. Justeru itu, artikel ini turut menghuraikan perbincangan, implikasi dan kesimpulan kajian

An Empirical Study of the Relationship between Performance Appraisal Politics and Job Satisfaction

Performance appraisal politics are viewed as a vital human resource management issuewhere it consists of two salient features: motivational motive and punishment motive. The ability ofappraisers (e.g., immediate bosses/managers) to properly implement such appraisal politics inallocating performance ratings may have significant impact on job satisfaction. Although the nature ofthis relationship is important, little is known about the role of performance appraisal politics as apredicting variable in the performance appraisal models. Therefore, this study was conducted toexamine the effect of performance appraisal politics on job satisfaction using 150 usablequestionnaires gathered from employees who have worked in a national postal company in Sarawak,Malaysia. In initial data analysis, the results of exploratory factor analysis confirmed that themeasurement scales used in this study satisfactorily met the standards of validity and reliabilityanalyses. Further, in hypothesis testing, the outcomes of stepwise regression analysis showed thatperformance appraisal politics (i.e., motivational motive and punishment motive) significantlycorrelated with job satisfaction. Statistically, this result confirms that performance appraisal politicsact as important predictors of job satisfaction in the studied organization. In addition, discussion,implications and conclusion are elaborated

Preparation and characterization of hydroxyapatite from black tilapia fish scales using spray-drying method

Black tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) fish scales were used as a source of natural hydroxyapatite (HAp) since it is cheaper than synthetic hydroxyapatite and safer than animal origin such as bones. This study investigates the preparation of natural hydroxyapatite from tilapia fish scales (FsHAp) by thermal technique followed by ball milling and spray dried to produce FsHAp powder. The effect of milling time on the particles size of FsHAp was investigated. In this study, Mastersizer 2000 was applied to measure the particles size of FsHAp. Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) was used to investigate the morphology of the FsHAp powders whereas x-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) were used to verify the presence of FsHAp. From the experimental results, it was found that the optimum milling time is 48 hours which produced smallest particles of FsHAp at about 1.86 µm. The spray-drying method produced different sizes of FsHAp ranging from 2.18 micron to 6.36 µm. The FESEM analysis revealed that the FsHAp particles agglomerated in the spray dryer. FTIR and XRD analyses have showed the prominent peaks corresponding to high quality of FsHAp from fish scales