Second NAfMA Workshop in UiTM

Today, ARI and the CIMA-UiTM Asian Management Accounting Research Centre (AMARC) hosted the second NAfMA workshop in UiTM. We received participation of ten companies who are mainly those from the public listed company category. Mr Yeo Teck Ling, the NAfMA Organising Committee chairman himself made the presentations on NAfMA assessment process and NAfMA assessment criteria. Thanks to our PhD students and RA for organising the event.

IIM Integrity Circle Program

ARI has been invited to nominate suitable candidates for the Tan Sri Azizan Zainul Abidin Integrity Circles for Young Professional Program to be held in Semporna Sabah on 18-25 July 2009. The invitation is extended to the high potential leaders below the age of 35, with demonstrated leadership in their respective fields and having a keen desire to actively contribute towards the objectives of the National Integrity Plan. ARI and faculty members can suggest names to ARI office by 30th June 2009.

ARI Updates 2008

ARI has recently published its ARI Updates 2008 Bulletin. Basically, the bulletin captures important events such as conferences, workshops, paper presentations and lists important researches, publications, products innovation, consultancies, trainings. Faculty and ARI members who wish to get a copy of the bulletin, please contact Ms Wan Mariati at wanmariati@salam.uitm.edu.my. We are also in the process of accumulating news and photos for the forthcoming ARI Updates 2009. Please forward me relevant photos and description of events.

Books of Readings

ARI is looking for faculty members who are keen to become editors to books of readings. You need not necessarily be an active researcher. What is more important is your deep knowledge in specific areas such as public sector accounting, ethics, taxation, auditing issues etc. Premised on a chosen theme, each book should contain at least ten chapters contributed by different authors. It is best if 2-3 people get together to edit the books. For 2009, ARI is planning to publish at least ten books of readings. If you are interested, please contact me at normah645@salam.uitm.edu.my

Courtesy Visit to UPM

Thanks to Prof Mohd Adzir (the one in light yellow shirt), Deputy Director of the Research Management Centre (RMC) at UPM and his team for spending time with the UiTM team this afternoon. He gave a briefing and a demo of UPM's Knowledge Portal. UPM has one of the finest knowledge portals amongst the public universities in the country. It was a worthwhile trip as our team learned a lot from the briefing. We were also shown UPM's Research University Monitoring System. Very impressive indeed....

RU Briefing

There was an RU briefing today. All deans and deputy deans (Research & Networking) were invited. The DVC (Research & Innovation), Assistant VC of the Research Management Institute (RMI) and the Director of the Strategic Planning unit briefed those who were present on the RU data verification process. Faculty deans were asked to update their faculty's databases on research, publication, commercialization, innovation and networking.

Professorial Lecture

ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy will be hosting the forthcoming professorial lecture on 14th July 2009. The lecture will be delivered by the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic & Internationalisation) Prof Dr Mustafa Mohd Zain who is also our colleague from the faculty.

Congratulations Intan & Norzaidi

Congratulations to both Intan and Norzaidi for winning the "Best Paper" catergory during the recent international conference in Prague. Both Intan & Norzaidi are research associates with the Accounting Research Institute. We are proud of both of you. The next natural step is may be to publish in either Scopus or ISI Thomson journal.

Innovation Blueprint

In our quest to become a Research University (and to sustain it), there's a lot of initiatives that need to be planned and implemented. Today, the Deputy Vice Chansellor (Networking and Community) had invited a group of professors and the CEO of UiTM Holding for a whole day meeting to discuss on strategies to enhance innovation and to facilitate the commercialisation of research products. As a director of ARI, I was also invited. It was indeed a very fruitful meeting. More meetings and workshops will be held in the very near future so that the university' Innovation Blueprint could be drawn.

RU Data Gathering

The RU committee is targeting to complete the RU data collection for years 2004-2008 by August 2009. The Data Collection Committee is chaired by Prof Dr Abu Bakar Majeed, Assistant Vice Chansellor (RMI). For the next two weeks, some members of the RU Promotion Committee will be visiting faculties and centres of excellence to remind everyone of the deadline and the need to update one's CVs. We can also expect some new written policies on publications in Scopus and ISI Thomson journals to be announced by the top management.

Alumni Listing

UiTM has produced some 350,000 graduates so far. Of this number, at least 10 percent are accounting graduates. But where are they now? None of us can really tell with confident simply because we do not have a complete alumni members database. So long as such database is not developed, the "guessing game" continues. ARI will commission an internal research grant for its members who are keen to do a profiling of accountancy alumni. We need to know some basic facts about them such as (i) Job position, (ii) workplace (iii) Job Sector (iv) Area of expertise and (v) training needs. It would be great if we could go beyond "dinner functions". Some alumni members are very successful and we want to kow details about them. Those interested to do such profiling, kindly contact ARI director for details.

National Seminar on Sustainability

ARI through its Asia-Pacific Centre for Sustainability (APCeS) will be co-organising a National Seminar on Sustainability with the Faculty of Accountancy and ACCA on 2nd July 2009. The one-day seminar will be held at the Grand Blue Waves hotel in Shah Alam. The keynote speaker will be the renowned Professor Roger Burrit from the University of South Australia (UNISA)

Purchase of ISI Thomson Database

Our request that UiTM purchases the ISI Thomson databases has been approved by the university's Executive Committee (JKE) in its recent meeting. This is great news. The PTAR library will be the process owner of this initiative. Now everyone must start thinking in which ISI journals you will be publishing your next paper.

Dana Kecemerlangan for Post Graduate Students

All post graduate members of ARI must take the opportunity to apply for the Dana Kecemerlangan research grant with your supervisor(s). The Dana grant is to facilitate post graduate research. You can use the grant to finance the cost of instrumentation (e.g questionnaire survey)for your data collection.

The Closing Ceremony

After two full days plus a dinner night, the International Conference on Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology drew its curtain today. It was an interesting event with a good mix of academia and practitioners exchanging ideas. The papers were very good. At the end of the day, there were more questions raised, more thought provoking discussions and more challenging researches that need to be conducted. In a nutshell, everyone benefits. The next year conference would hopefully attract more international participants

International Conference on Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology

Themed "Financial Crime and Fraud - Key to Mitigating White Collar Crime", the International Conference on Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology 2009 was successfully launched at the Kuala Lumpur Tower today. The two-day international conference is jointly organised by Universiti Teknologi MARA, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) and the Centre for Fraud and Financial Crime, University of Teeside (UK). Keynote speakers include Professor Zabihollah (Memphis University), Prof Glen Moyes (University of Texas-Pan American), Mr Rob McCusker (University of Teeside, Dato Raymond Liew (Parker Randall International), Mr Liew Kim Yuen (Securities Commission)and Tuan Haji Adzhar Sulaiman (Inland Revenue Board Malaysia).

PhD Colloquium....

The PhD colloquium was held today at UiTM Shah Alam Campus. Almost 100 PhD students attended the sessions. Among the facilitators who attended the discussions were Prof Zabi from Memphis University, Professor Moyes from University of Texas-Pan American, Prof Maunders & Prof Rob McCuscer from UK, Prom Takiah from UKM, Prof Fauziah from USM, Prof Syed Noh, Prof Ibrahim Kamal, Prof Zubaidah & Prof Suzana from UiTM. Hopefully PhD students have benefited from the colloquium.

Know Your Target Journals

Three of our visiting professors: Prof Binshan, Prof Zabi & Prof Moyes from the US said of the same thing about journal publications: "identify your target journal, find the journal's mission statement, match your paper with the mission statement". By doing this, we reduce the likelihood of our paper being rejected by the journal publisher, simply because of a mismatch....

And Another Great Author ...

Another great opportunity to meet another great author. Prof Glen D. Moyes is a Professor in Accounting from Texas whose research interest is in fraud risk red flags. He is here to participate in an international conference on Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology organised by ARI through its Asia-Pacific Forensic Accounting Research Centre. Prior to that, he will be meeting our PhD students on Monday, 15th June 2009. He is co-authoring several journal papers with ARI and they will be published in the US & Europe. Prof Moyes has indicated interest to work with ARI in the Summer of 2010 for six weeks..

Meeting a Great Author

Meeting Prof Dr Zabihollah Rezzae in person is a previlige. Despite his busy schedule, he made time to meet ARI members today. His advise was simple, we need to produce research products and graduates that other universities are not focussing right now. Forensic accounting should remains our forte and as such we should strengthen our publications and phd program in this field.

Welcome Prof Zabihollah Rezzae....

A renowned US professor, Dr Zabihollah Rezzae from the University of Memphis arrived in Malaysia safely today. Professor Zabihollah Rezaee is the Thompson-Hill Chair of Excellence and Professor of Accountancy at the University of Memphis. He holds CPA, CFE, CMA, CIA. He is here for a week to participate in our PhD Colloquium and the International Conference on Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology

Prof Suzana's Visit to CIMA (UK)...

On her capacity as a CIMA (Malaysia) council member, Prof Dr Suzana had a meeting recently with CIMA (UK) in London. She had brought with her some proposals from her CIMA-UiTM Asian Management Accounting Research Centre (AMARC) with the prospect of getting some international grants. We hope to hear some good news from her soon.

More Publications Needed in Forensic Accounting...

Good news for those researchers whose research interest is in the areas of forensic accounting & financial criminology: there's a lot of demand for articles in these areas. Recent papers produced by some of our Master in Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminologyly students have been accepted for publication in North America and Europe. We are looking foward to more papers from the Asia-Pacific Forensic Accounting Research Centre (AFARe)members. ARI's target is to get ten international publications in forensic accounting by December 2009.

Collaborations with Edith Cowan University...

During his recent visit to Australia, Prof Dr Ibrahim Kamal Abdul Rahman, the Dean of the Faculty of Accountancy and a research associate with ARI had a fruitful discussion with few professors from the Edith Cowan University (EDU) with respect research and publication collaborations. Both universities (UiTM & EDU) will sign an MOU soon to signify the partnership. Well done Prof Ibrahim.

3 Products for PECIPTA 2009

Three of our products have been selected for the forthcoming PECIPTA Exhibition which will take place at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) on 8-10 October 2009. Congratulations, please arrange to have your products copyrighted before the event.

Congratulations Tan Sri Vice Chancellor

On the ocassion of His Majesty Yang Di-Pertuan Agong Al-Wathiqu Billah Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin's birthday today, our vice chancellor has been conferred the Panglima Setia Mahkota (PSM) award which carries the "Tan Sri" title. Congratulations Tan Sri Dato' Seri Prof Dr Ibrahim Abu Shah.

Farewell Discussion...

Before he leaves for the USA, we also brought Prof Binshan to meet the vice chancellor today. The two gentlemen had a good discussion on the need to set clear policies on publishing in Scopus and ISI journals. The VC was agreeable in principle to formulate such policies in UiTM very soon. This is more important especially as UiTM aspires to become an RU in the near future...

Going for E-Book?...

Like it or not, this is going to be the new scenario. Libraries and researchers will be looking and using e-books rather than just relying on physical imprints of books. Beside being efficient and cost effective, e-books also allow companies such as Sciencedirect and Scopus to track citations from the e-books. We had the opportunity to discuss with Sciencedirect officers on the possibility of collaborating with ARI and UiTM.

Final Bid....

To wrap up it all up, we invited Prof Binshan to give his thought to ARI's journal administrators and the librarians from the PTAR library. In a nutshell, we need policy on publishing in Scopus and/ISI for the followings: teaching downloads, international travels, teaching graduate courses and promotion. Prof Binshan is also confident that at least 20 papers could be published in Scopus journals from the current workshop.

So What is Fundamental Research???

Year in, year out, so many research proposals had to be turned down simply because the criteria of fundamental research is not met by these proposals. The four criteria are: first, basic research that could produce new ideas, new concepts, new theories & new policies; second, the research output has potential to produce extended research, extended technology and new processes; third, the research is able to improve existing methodology, existing theory and concepts; fourth, research that can contribute towards new facts, new information and new knowledge.

Prof Binshan Luncheon with the VC

Prof Binshan was invited to have lunch with the vice chancelor today. That allows them to discuss strategies on how to improve further UiTM publication and citation rate. Since the writing workshop organized by ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy has been successful, it can certainly be emulated by other faculties and centres of excellence in UiTM.

FRGS Meeting

This year's FRGS evaluation takes place in Port Dickson on 2-5 June 2009. As announced earlier, the grant available is only RM9 million but the number of applications to be evaluated was 2500. The competition is so great that ARI just need to identify alternative sources of research fundings. Whilst the size of the "cake" remains the same (or smaller), it has to be shared by so many people. We still nevertheless have to conduct research and produce a lot of publications from them.

Dinner with Prof Binshan

He must have been experiencing jetlag after travelling for more than 20 hours from Lousiana, USA. But we must give a Malaysian welcome. So Dean Prof Ibrahim Kamal was kind enough to host dinner for Prof Binshan.