Nahariah Jaffar

Employee perceptions of workplace theft behavior: A study among supermarket retail employees in Malaysia

Employee theft is costly to any business, especially to big retail chain organizations. This research is to study the perception of retail employees on the impact of the individual and organizational factors contributing to workplace theft behavior in supermarkets in Malaysia and to study the mediating effect of intention to steal and the moderating effect of internal control systems. The results proved that individual and organizational factors do influence workplace theft behavior. It is also established that internal control systems moderate the relationship between the intention to steal and workplace theft behavior.

Using EAO model to predict the self-employment intentions among the universities' undergraduates in Malaysia

The statistics have shown that the market is oversupplied with young and inexperienced graduates as the number of graduates has been increasing over the years. At the same time, the growing funds created to assist small enterprises in Malaysia have steadily increased. Hence, to solve the unemployment issue among graduates, there is a potential to make this self-employment an option for graduates to start on their careers. Entrepreneurial Attitude Orientation (EAO)scale was used to measure the students’ entrepreneurial attitudes. A survey approach was adopted by sending questionnaires to 2000 students of the public and private universities. The results show that personal control, self-esteem and innovation were found to have significant and positive relationships with self-employment intention. Meanwhile achievement was found to have no significant relationship with self-employment intention. These findings provide important insight to promote and produce a positive image of entrepreneurship as a career.

Tracking the cyber entrepreneurial intention of private universities students in Malaysia

Cyber entrepreneurial interest is a term used to describe the readiness and willingness to become an internet-based self-entrepreneur. Cyber entrepreneurship is a new source of economic growth and development. With an increase in number of students graduated, opting cyber entrepreneurship as a career is essential not only to reduce unemployment rate but it can also provide additional source of income in line with an increasing cost of living. We believe the individuals utility from any particular job including cyber entrepreneurship depends not only on income but also on the interest and working conditions such as decision making control, risk exposure, work effort, etc. Thus, this paper reports preliminary results of an ongoing project to track cyber entrepreneurial intention of private universities students. The study used a self-administered questionnaire to capture the extent to which private universities students might wish to create their own cyber business upon graduation. The findings reveal that only risk attitude contributes to the prediction of self-employment intention and strong levels of self-employment intention are related to low levels of cyber entrepreneurial intention.

Determinants of Audit Fees in Malaysia's Top 100 Listed Companies: An Empirical Study

This paper examines the determinants of audit fees in a sample of top 100 companies listed in Bursa Stock Exchange in Malaysia; market capitalization of these companies is about 85% of the total market capitalization at the end of 2012. The authors collected data from the annual reports of the companies for the year 2012, and analyzed it using a multiple regression model. The authors report that firm size, profitability, and ownership structure are the main determinants of audit fees in Malaysia. Additionally, profitability shows a negative and significant relationship, which is also in line with findings of the most recent studies. The results also indicate that there is no Big 4 premium in audit fees in Malaysia; interestingly, the relationship though insignificant is negative. The adjusted R square is approximately 47% and there were no multicollinearity issues among the variables. The study makes an incremental contribution to the literature on audit fees in the Malaysian context.

SMALL MEDIUM ENTERPRISES’ FINANCIAL REPORTING IN MALAYSIA

This study investigates the financial reporting practices of the Malaysian SMEs. Mailed questionnnaires were sent to loan officers and SMEs’ owners. The findings showed that size of SMEs, industry type, owner’s awareness about financial reporting regulations and academic qualification of the SMEs’ owners have positive associations with the nature of financial reporting of the Malaysian SMEs. In addition, the loan officers and SMEs’ owners perceived most of the information presented in the SMEs’ financial statements are useful and that they perceived all sections in the financial statements, except income statement, are important for their decision making process. Results may provide insight on the nature and adequacy of financial reporting of the Malaysian SMEs. Besides, the findings may contribute better understanding to the SMEs’ managers on the informational needs of the users of their financial statements.

RISK ATTITUDE AND FRAUD DETECTION: A MALAYSIAN CASE

Fraud is an important issue in many countries such as in the United States, United Kingdom, including of Malaysia. Malaysian Approved Auditing Standards, AI 240 “Fraud and Error” was established to provide guidance on the auditor’s responsibility to consider fraud and error during the audit of financial statements. The auditors are required to appropriately assess fraud risk during the planning of the audit work so that they can provide reasonable assurance that any material misstatement in the financial statements has been detected. If the external auditors are not able to detect fraud, this may expose them to litigation. The present study aims to examine whether risk attitude has an effect on the external auditors’ ability to detect the likelihood of fraud. An experimental approach is adopted by sending case materials to audit partners and audit managers attached to auditing firms operating in Malaysia. The result shows that means difference exists on the ability to detect the likelihood of fraud between the external auditors who are risk averse and those who are risk taker.