FRGS Research Proposals - Still Counting

The university's Research Management Institute (RMI) did a great job in creating excitements among UiTM members to submit the FRGS proposals which will be evaluated in early 2010. As at the deadline on 29th December, RMI had reviewed a total of 630 research proposals. This is indeed impressive considering that the university had only submitted 315 proposal for the first cycle in 2009. Congratulations everyone.

Nasty Road Accident

It was a shocking accident. One of our ex-Master student, Mohd Razip Fadzir was travelling in the fateful bus on 26th December 2009 which skidded on the North-South Highway in Ipoh and killed ten passengers. Mohd Razip was travelling with his wife, Siti Mulina on the noth-bound bus.
An exceprt from the New Starits Time newspaper indicated that "the metal railing which tore into the left side of the express bus slashed the left side of his chest. He and Siti Mulina Hashim, 30, were among the 12 passengers who had sat on the left lower deck of the bus. Razip was admitted to hospital with broken bones on the left side of his rib cage. Siti received outpatient treatment. This picture is taken from NST. ARI and the faculty members wish you both well...

Siti Noorhayati VIVA VOCE

Siti Noor Hayati (CTN) had her PhD viva this morning. Insyaallah after completing her corrections (which will be soon) she will be the 53rd PhD qualified lecturer at the faculty.
As her phd thesis is on forensic accounting, she would certainly be a good asset to ARI's unit of excellence - Asia-Pacific ForensicAccounting Research Centre. Congratulations

Snowing in Korea

The ICIMT 2009 conference which ended yesterday had brought many hopes and excitements to all participants. Certainly, a lot of participants have forged some form of networking with one another.
ARI will be inviting ICIMT 2009's Chairman, Prof Venkatesh Mahadevan, from Swinburne University of Technology Australia to come to UiTM in 2010 so that he can share his expertise and research experience with all of us. Prof Mahadevan is currently lecturering in Information Systems (IS) and eBusiness at the Faculty of Higher Education at Lilydale campus of Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He has extensive research experience in the different phases of the usability design lifecycle, from user research, requirement specifications and conceptual design through to usability attributes testing of a Telecollaboration (TC) business system. The weather continued to be cold and it was snowing today....

More from Korea

THE ICIMT Conference proceeding is indexed with SCOPUS and ISI Thomson. Most papers are related to either IT/IS or engineering. Accounting lecturers like us can learn a lot of new things from this kind of conferences. Apparently, there's a lot of new knowledge from the ICT and engineering areas that we could adopt. Participants discussed a lot about the e-learning mode as a way of promoting creativity to students.
Explore "Second Life" and "Link in" websites or virtual classroom with our students. Start the "program philosophy" initiative for our undergraduate program and many more... I will be leaving Jeju Island Sunday afternoon. Seen here are some participants..

Greeting from Korea

I am writing from Jeju Island Korea. Been attending and presenting a paper at the ICIMT 2009 conference. The conference is actually focussing on Information and Multimedia Technology. A lot of great concepts that could be applicable to accounting-related research. For example, there's a NLP Algorithm statistical procedure that could be used to analyse texts (as in annual reports, financial statement) that accounting researchers could apply....The temparature has been -10 degree celcius for the past few days.

Presentation to KPT

As a newly recognized Centre of Excellence by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), Prof Rashidah, Prof Rozainun and I were asked to present our strategies and deliverables for the next three years (2010-2012).
So the three of US made our presentation to the COE panels this afternoon. Basically MOHE has requested that ARI focuses on forensic accounting and financial criminology projects for the next three years. So we will see a lot of local and international collaborations to pursue our strategies.
We will be submitting the paper works to MOHE by the end of this year. Congratulations everyone for all your proposal submissions and feedback. Another detailed presentation will be made on 14th January 2010. Certainly we will deliver...

Meeting with MSWG

Associate Professor Dr Wee Shu Hui attended the meeting with MSWG to discuss on the interim report of ARI's collaborative research with the Minority Shareholders Watchdog Group (MSWG). A seminar to present the research findings is expected to be held towards the end of January 2010. It is normal practice that ARI will present various interim reports to MSWG before both parties agree on the format of presenting the research findings. As an applied research project, it is important to make sure that we are able to disseminate and convince our audiences of our research findings. In this respect, our audiences are mainly practitioners and top management.

Pre-Graduation Dinner for the Forensic Group

The Master in Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology Students & graduates are forming an association and they are planning to organise a pre-graduation dinner cum reunion with all students and alumni sometime in May 2009. Well done everyone. The formation of the association is indeed timely. As a CoE for MOHE, ARI's niche area will be financial criminology and governance. Certainly the association members and ARI can work together in promoting new ideas or proposing new policies in mitigating financial fraud in this country.

More from Vietnam

Apart from traffic, another interesting pont about Vietnam is shopping. There's a lot of tailoring services available and the tailors can do the tailoring job within two days.
The prices are very reasonable and you can get a good quality service. Our fresh graduates should be exploring this kind of business in Malaysia. 2-day tailoring services to our tourists. I am sure this sort of business will flourish in Malaysia,
The idea is get high volume by charging low fees. Profitability can still be maintained with high volume. It's a blue ocean strategy that our graduates should consider exploring....

Vietnam- an Upcoming Economy

In one wants to learn about survival, persistence and preserverance, Vietnam is the best place to go.
Imagine, barely forty years ago, Vietnam was involved with the Vietnam war. Practically the whole country was affected by the war. Roads, buildings and their own livelihoods were damaged and destroyed. Now, forty years later, Vietnam is an upcoming economy. The people are basically "fighters" who are willing to work hard to earn a living. During the war, the Vietnamese people had to dig holes and lived under ground to avoid being bombed.
Today, some war-torn places are still preserved to showcase their struggle to visitors and tourists. It is beyond one's imagination how the Vietnamese survived the war by barely using rudimentary weapons. It's worth researching....

Congratulations Prof Dr Rozainun Abdul Aziz....

She is the latest addition of professors at ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy. Prof Rozainun's specialisation is in management accounting and risk management. Currently she is the head of the Asia-Pacific Forensic Accounting Research Centre (AFARe)at ARI. Congratulations.

The Vice Chancellor Excellence Awards 2009

Congratulations to all winners of the Vice Chancellor Quality Awards. This year, the Faculty of Accountancy in collaboration with ARI had won four awards namely: the best faculty, stakeholders relation, staff satisfaction and data analysis. Fourteen staff: Shimah, Zuraidah, Tew You Hoo, Che Ah, Norliza, Indra Devi, Azizah, Ahmad Shameer, Bedah, Rosni Muda, Adnan, Nurharyati Jamaluddin, Haifa and Mohd Junaidi were selected as excellence award recepients this year. Well done...

Educational Reform for Engineering Program?

At teh two-day ICEED 2009 Conference I presented a paper (co-authored with AP Dr Zuraidah) entitled Reengineering the Engineering Education: The Need for Management and Accounting Courses, the abstract of which is attached.

Abstract— Many technically-based professionals such as engineers and other technical managers would often feel inadequately equipped in their understanding of certain important management and accounting concepts. Such knowledge can be crucial when one is called upon to financially justify engineering-based projects, request funding, or effectively develop, manage or influence departmental budgets. In an effort to enhance the financial literacy of engineering students, this paper examines 97 undergraduate engineering programs from fifty universities globally. Specifically the paper evaluates the inclusion of management and accounting courses in the programs and it was found that the percentage is currently very low. Moving forward, this paper proposes options available to engineering departments and faculties on how best they can integrate management and accounting knowledge into their curriculum

ICEED 2009 and the Rasch Model....

The 2009 IEEE International Congress on Engineering Education (ICEED 2009) was officially launched today. The Two-Day Congress focuses on Eight themes namely (i) Accreditation and Evaluation; (ii) Industry and Education Collaboratyion; (iii) New Technologies in Education; (iv)Academic Knowledge VS Industrial Needs (v)New Technologies (vi)Outcome-Based Education (vii) Engineering Education Reforms and (viii) Research & Development in Engineering Education. With some very interesting set ups, the Congress began with some keynote addresses in the morning. This is followed by parallel paper presentations based on the eight themes. Then, there's tutorial on OBE. The paper titled "Modern Measurement Paradigm in Engineering Education: Easier to Read and Better Analysis Using the Rasch-Based Approach" by Hamzah Ahmad and Mohd Saidfudin Mas'odi won the overall best article. Seriously, a lot of the papers could easily be adopted by other accounting and management-based programs.

Budget Planning for ARI

In view of the MOHE's recent budget being allocated to ARI, the ministry is calling for all six COEs to present their respective budget planning on 17/12/09 in Putrajaya. 55% of the allocated budget should be used as research grants for projects that have significant impacts to the society.
This morning ARI called all heads of its various research centres to discuss both short and long term strategies. From 2010 onwards, ARI has been mandated to promote research collaborations with national & international universities and the industry.

For the Sake of Quality Control...

ARI in collaboration with the Association of Malay Certified Accounting Firms (AMCAF) and the Malaysian Accountancy Research & Education Foundation (MAREF) organized a one-day seminar on Implementing ISQC 1, especially for the small and medium practitioners (SMPs).
The seminar which was held at the Putra Hotel Kuala Lumpur was attended by 250 participants. ISQC 1 which stands for the International Standards on Quality Control was issued by the International Federation of Accountant (IFAC), of which Malaysia is a member country.
The emphasis of ISQC 1 is on the documentation and communication of internal quality procedures and policies. Auditors must ensure that they have in place written and communicated policies on a) Leadership, b) Ethical requirements, c) Acceptance and continuance of client relationships, d) Human resources, e) Engagement performance and f) Monitoring. Policies and procedures need only be sufficiently detailed to provide clarity of purpose and to ensure consistency of application, given the size and nature of the firm.
These established procedures should demonstrate compliance with the principles of ISQC 1 and the auditor should also ensure that the procedures are carried out in practice. For sole practitioners, it is important to be confident that the policies and procedures adopted are both technically sound and appropriate in the circumstances. Once an auditor or audit firm has developed its quality control policies and procedures, one needs to comply with those policies and procedures and be able to produce documented evidence of the operation of its quality control system.
This will facilitate the monitoring element of quality control required by ISQC 1. The most interesting aspects of the seminar is the unexpectedly high number of participants. That shows that people are eager to learn something new... Congratulations to all.

Time to Consolidate....

For universities in Malaysia, we had just completed the students examinations and we have approximately one month to consolidate other "unfinished business" before the new term begins after the new year. ARI hopes that all members will make time to write articles for possible publication in indexed journals. On 7-9 December, ARI will be organising a workshop on Writing Books of Readings. Researchers can contribute a few chapter to a themed book. By the end of the workshop ARI hopes to publish at least ten books of readings in the areas of managerial accounting, financial reporting, public sector accounting, forensic accounting, corporate governance, accounting education, auditing/internal auditing, Intellectual Capital/talent Management, Sustainability and SME-related studies. Researchers from other universities are also invited to participate.

ARI-MOHE Centre of Excellence

It's now official. ARI received a letter from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) today confirming our status as the ministry's centre of excellence (COE).
With it comes a budget allocation of RM3 million a year for three years until 2012. The six COEs recognized by MOHE are namely (1) Centre for Research Power Electronics, Drives, Automation & Control (UMPEDAC)- Universiti Malaya; (2) Pusat Penyelidikan Dadah & Ubat-ubatan - Universiti Sains Malaysia; (3) Institut Perubatan Molekul (INFORMM) - Universiti Sains Malaysia; (4) UKM Medical Molecular Biology Institute (UMBI) - Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia; (5)Institut Biosains - Universiti Putra Malaysia and (6) Accounting Research Institute (ARI) - Universiti Teknologi MARA. MOHE hopes to recognize 20 COEs by the year 2020.

Vice Chancellor Quality Award Finalist

ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy took part in the Vice Chancelor Quality Award presentation which was held today at the Bistari Hall Intekma Resorts Shah Alam. Eleven teams made to the final round.
They are namely: UiTM Perak, UiTM Johor, UiTM Kelantan, UiTM Pahang; Faculty of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Accountancy, Faculty of Computer Science and Quantitative Analysis, Faculty of Accountancy, Faculty of Allied Health; Student Affairs Department and the Tun Andul Razak Library. It was indeed a very stiff competition with participants trying to showcase their strengths and initiatives. The winner will be announced at an annual Quality Award event to be held on 9th December 2009. ARI wishes to congratulate all members who have contributed so much for this event.

Forensic Accountants - New Professionals

In view of the current fraudulent landscapes involving financial statements, ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy are working very hard to produce a new breed of professional investigators. Through our very own Master in Forensic Accounting and Financial Criminology and supported by our Centre of Excellence Asia-Pacific Forensic Accounting Research Centre (AFARE), Universiti Teknologi MARA is producing highly talented forensic accounting investigators and criminologists.
In ensuring that that our graduates are marketable the curriculum have been designed to incorporate both theory and practice into the classrooms. Forensic practitioners have been invited to share their experiences with the students. By the end of 2009, we hope to produce fifty (50) forensic accounting professionals.
In addition, we are also working very closely with regulatory agencies such as the Inland Revenue Board, Royal Malaysian Police, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commissioner, Central Bank, Malaysian Institute of Accountants and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in training professionals.

Audit Quality Workshop for Small and Medium Practitioners (SMP)

A one-day seminar cum workshop on the need for Malaysian Small and Medium accounting firm practitioners to adopt the International Standard on Quality Control(ISQC 1)will be co-organised by ARI, MIA, MAREF and AMCAF. The seminar will be held on 1st December 2009 at the Putra Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. About fifty SMPs have registered for the event. More seminars on ISQC 1 will be organised nationwide in 2010.

Road to NAfMA 2009 Excellence

Today the assessors met for the second moderation meeting of NAfMA 2009. The competition is getting better year after year. The national award for management accounting (NAfMA) was introduced in 2004 and this is the 6th year competition. NAfMA competition is basically divided into five phases. In the first phase, interested companies from three categories - public listed, non-listed and SMEs submitted their self assessment questionnaire. If they obtain at least 70% of the allocated points, they will be invited to the next phase. Phase two invites qualified participants to submit a written report known as NAfMA Submission Report (NSR). Assessors review the NSR and shortlist companies that would be selected for the first NAfMA site visits. Phase Three involves the first site visit. The visit normally will take the whole day and participants are to make a presentation and assessors will review evidences. Once the visits are completed the first moderation meeting would be held. Another shortlisting exercise will be made and selected companies would be informed of a second site visit. The fourth phase is the second site visit and the visits would be reviewed by the same team of assessors. The second visit would be for half a day. Once the second visit assessment is completed a second moderation meeting is held to nominate companies who are potential winners in different categories of the award.
The final stage is the deliberation by the judges (who are key industry players) and they will decide on the winners. The whole process is very stringent. The penicle event is the award ceremony. This year it will be held on 8th December 2009 at the One World Hotel in Bandar Utama. Congratulations to all who participated or are involved with the NAfMA 2009 activities.

Discussion with the Institute of Journalism Studies

ARI was invited to give a talk to members of the Institute of Journalism Studies (IJS) today.
IJS was having its two-day strategic planning workshop at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies. The talk was mainly an experience sharing session. The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research & Innovation) was also there to give his keynote address. The potential for IJS to grow is great.
It just needs to decide which thrust it wants to focus on as a centre of excellence: Research & Innovation; Services or Academic Programs?. Perhaps focussing on research and innovation is not a bad idea at all....

Surveilence Audit

ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy underwent the surveilance audit today. This time around, the assessment theme was on Risk Management. Our ISO 9000 team came up with a framework to compute risk assessment in terms of likelihood and severity. MR Ramli from Lyods Registry came for the audit. Thank you to all ISO team members.

Two New Deputy Presidents

The Chartered Institute of Practising Accountants (CPA Australia) Malaysian Divisional Council elected two new Deputy Presidents for next term.
The election was conducted at a monthly meeting held recently. All council members had to choose two out of four candidates who were nominated for the position. Congratulations Ms Josephine and Mr Alex our brand new deputy presidents.

Young Entrepreneur StartUP (YES)

ARI was invited to attend the Red Carpet Event which was organised by the Money Tree Young Entrepreneur Start Up Challenge.
The Red Carpet Event is an annual event organised by Monet Tree to recognise five teams of young entrepreneurs whose products have great potential for commercialisation. Fourteen institutions of higher learning participated in the year-long competition. ARI and the faculty hope to participate in the forthcoming events. Prof Dr Normah brought along four Bachelor of Accountancy students to attend the award ceremony which was held at the Eastin Hotel, Petaling Jaya. This year's winner named their project as "Try This Out!". Basically the idea was to marry three marketing avenues - sampling, advertising and market research - into a single platform targetting youth. To date, the project has successfully developed an online data pooling, statistical enabled reporting system.

Visits to Sime Darby Property and Alliance Bank

The NAfMA second visits came to a closure today with two corporate visits to Sime Darby Property in USJ and Alliance Bank in Kuala Lumpur.
From both visits, we the assessors saw it very clearly that management accounting is very much alive and MA tools have been strategically and successfully utilised in all shortlisted companies. In that sense, NAfMA has been successful in promoting management accounting tools. It is also through NAfMA that the CIMA-UiTM Asian Management Accounting Research Centre (ARI's unit of excellence) has successfully completed the write up of several case study books.
It is indeed a win-win situation for the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA), the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), Malaysian Productivity Corporation (MPC) and UiTM.

NAfMA Visits to Bank Islam & Faber Medi Serve

Today we (NAfMA Second Visit Assessors) visited two more shortlisted companies namely Faber Medi Serve and Bank Islam Berhad. Both companies underwent some form of a corporate Reengineering or corporate rationalization exercise and management accounting techniques have been showcased as playing a significant role in both companies. It is interesting to note that traditional management accounting techniques such as financial statement analysis, standard costing and budgetary control are still very much used in today's organisations. Similarly, the usage of contemporary tools such as Balanced Scorecard, Lean Six Sigma and Risk Management have been adapted by companies to suit their own organizational environment. Another non-financial measure often cited by the participating companies is "talent management".

A Day at MIDF

The Malaysian Industrial Development Finance (MIDF) is one of the shortlisted companies for the NAfMA second round visits. MIDF is a development bank which had recently completed a merger exercise with Amanah Capital Berhad. Currently MIDF is wholly owned by the Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB). The company was delisted and taken private in October 2009. Our visit was hosted by both the CFO and COO. MIDF had recently signed an MOU with UiTM. It was indeed heartwarming to see MIDF showcasing and displaying so many of UiTM's art works as part of its corporate interior decoration.

External Examiners Meeting

Three external examiners: Mr Hamid Ghows, Ms Habibah and Mr Raub are all from the industry.
In a meeting with the management team today, they highlighted some very interesting feedback related to the curriculum contents of our accountancy programs. The need to be at par with what the industry wants is extremely important if we wish to lead the accounting profession in term of knowledge creation.

We are in the AKNC Final....

Congratulations to all members of the Faculty of Accountancy for making it to the final round of the Vice Chancellor Quality Award (AKNC). The final presentation will be held on 30th November 2009 and the faculty will be given fifteen minutes to showcase its achievements throughout the year 2008. Today, the faculty management team held a meeting to discuss the best strategy for the presentation. Congratulations and Good Luck everyone...

Management Best Practice Competition

Thirteen teams from various departments of the university entered the final stage of the competition which was held today.
Innovative practices range from migrating data management system (from manual to digital) to cost saving measures through the invention of electronic device for early detective of computer malfunctions.
All in all, each of these innovative practices should be adopted throughout the university system so that our aspiration to embrace a paperless management environment could be realized.

MORPA Competition

This year, the MAREF Outstanding Research Paper Award (MORPA)will be co-organized by both MAREF and the Malaysian Accounting Academic (MyAA) Association. All ARI members are encouraged to submit their research papers for the competition. Beside receiving cash prizes, the papers will also be publish in the forthcoming publication of the Malaysian Accounting Review (MAR) Journal.

ARI November Meeting

Today ARI held its monthly meeting to discuss improvement strategies on some important activities which include international research funding, FRGS & escience proposals, publication in ISI-indexed journals, innovation participation in the university's forthcoming exhibition,the publication of books of readings and COE launching by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE).

NAfMA Visit to MAB

Malaysia Airport Berhad (MAB) is one of the NAfMA finalists shortlisted for the second round visit.
MAB chose the theme "MAB Transformation Agenda" for its presentation to NAfMA assessors. Basically the visit was to confirm management accounting practices that have been effectively utilised for the transformation agenda. The presentation was headed by Encik Faisal, the company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Practices include effective use of the Value Management Team (VMT). One of the main tasks of the team is to evaluate core practices of the company and isolates "value added" versus "non-value added" activities. By getting rid of non value added activities, the company was able to improve efficiency of its practices, increase saving and profits as well as minimize waste. The four NAfMA assessors assigned to evaluate MAB were Prof Normah, Mr Abd Hamid Ghows, Mr Lim Kian Hui and Mr Robert Lam.

Greetings from Saigon

I am writing from Saigon, Vietnam. Gone for a short holiday here with my family and some friends. I can see that Vietnam is an upcoming economy in Asia. Almost everyone in this country is involved in some kind of business. Most shops are open at 7.30 am and close at 11.30 pm. Saigon is a city with eight million population and four million motorbikes (so I was told by the tour guide).
Tough the population is high, the traffic jam is bearable as the motorbikes help to reduce traffic congestion. Moreover, I am fairly impressed by the high level of tolerance (to others) shown by the drivers here. As a result, there's not much traffic accident. ARI should certainly do a research on this topic: traffic accidents and drivers' tollerance?,,, just a thought.

NAfMA 2009 Second Round Visits

The NAfMA second round visit will commence on 12th November 2009 (Thurs). Nine companies have been shortlisted with two groups of assessors. One group headed by Prof Dr Ibrahim will visit the SME finalists and another group headed by Prof Dr Normah will assess the PLCs and non PLCs. The final moderation meeting will be held on 25th November at the Malaysian Institute of Accountants office in Kuala Lumpur.

Journal Consolidation Meeting

As the Research Management Institute is now entrusted to monitor the progress of university's journal publications, there will be a monthly meeting of all managing editors of journals with the PNC (Research & Innovation), Prof Abu Bakar Majeed and his publication coordinator Associate Prof Dr Razidah Ismail. The main purpose of the meeting is to ensure that all fifteen UiTM-indexed journals are published on time.
All managing editors are to ensure that all articles will go through stringent double-blind review process before they are published.