Zakiah Saleh

Accruals Accounting in Government – Developments in Malaysia

Accruals accounting by governments has been successfully adopted in several countries. This study examines the move to accruals accounting in the United Kingdom and compares this with developments in Malaysia. In the UK, it is argued that the principles of accruals accounting were introduced primarily for managerial accounting and control purposes. Malaysia has also focused primarily on management accounting initiatives for the development of governmental accounting and is now considering the use of accruals accounting in an attempt to improve further its financial management procedures. The work draws on the results of a questionnaire survey of government accountants in Malaysia.

Intellectual capital disclosure in the context of corporate governance

The study uses content analysis to explore the relationship between board features, audit committee and ownership structures on intellectual capital (IC) disclosure whilst controlling for firm specific characteristics such as firm-size, profitability, leverage and type of auditor. This study also attempts to provide empirical evidence on the influence of corporate governance on voluntary IC information in a developing nation drawing from both the agency and institutional theories. It was found that ownership structure (family-controlled, government-owned and diffused ownership) and audit committee (size of audit committee and financial experts of audit committee members) are able to explain the behavioural practices of the voluntary disclosure of IC. Audit committee and ownership structure were found to influence IC disclosures, suggesting IC disclosures among Malaysian companies can be enhanced by incorporating such information in the corporate governance report. This paper also suggests that guidelines on IC disclosure can perhaps be initiated as a complement to the existing corporate governance report.