ARI HICoE Site Audit

Members of the Accounting Research Institute (ARI) thank the site audit team from the Ministry of Education Malaysia.  In particular, we appreciate all feedback given by the two auditors, Professor Dr Muhamad bin Jantan and Professor Dato' Dr Muhammad bin Muda.  It is common practice that every year, a Higher Institution Centre of Excellence (HICoE) undergoes two types of assessments: (i) document audit, (ii) site audit.  Today, it was a special site audit which aims to evaluate the performance of ARI after its three years establishment as a HICoE.  The assessment was on four main dimensions namely (i) Human capital development.  For ARI, it was number of postgraduate students enrolled & graduated as well as number of individuals or professionals successfully  trained as fraud investigators; (ii) Publications in high impact indexed journals and number of citations derived from such publications; (iii) IPR in the forms of patents, trademarks and copyrights for original writings.  Due to the nature of ARI research projects, our focus on IPR has always been on the number of copyrights obtained from research book publications; (iv) Networking and international collaboration.  Over the 3-year HICoE periods, ARI/UiTM has signed more than 30 MOUs and MOUs signifying research and publications in the niche area Islamic Financial Criminology.  At the exit meeting, ARI received some very commendable results where we have mostly surpassed the set targets.
Congratulation all and well done.

Establishing Social Enterprises

As a strategic partner to the Malaysian Registry of Societies (ROS), the Accounting Research Institute (ARI) has been invited to participate in ROS's latest initiative to encourage societies that are currently registered with the agency to set up Social Enterprises as an alternative mean of sourcing funds for their activities. As a general definition, social enterprises are revenue-generating businesses,  operated mainly by non-profit organizations (NPOs).  Premised on two specific goals, a social enterprise firstly wants to achieve social, cultural, community economic or environmental outcomes; and secondly to earn revenue. To ensure long term sustainability, anon-profit organisation must not rely mainly on government grants to carry out its activities.  In many developed countries, NPOs through the establishment of social enterprises, provide huge employment opportunities for their community.  Known as a third sector, NPOs could contribute significantly in a country's effort to achieve a "high income" status.  In a sharing session during the workshop, the CEO of a social enterprise SCOPE, shares the benefits and challenges of operating his enterprise.

ARI's Indexed Conference in Manchester

The Accounting Research Institute (ARI) will be co-organizing an international conference - International Conference on Corporate Governance & Strategic Management (ICGSM 2014).  Other co-organizers of the the conference will include the Malaysian Association of Statutory Bodies (PBBM), AKEPT, Institute of Public Enterprise (India), University of Chullalongkorn (Thailand) and the Teeside University (UK).  Themed "Untangling the Divergence", ICGSM 2014 will be held on 14-16 April 2014 in Manchester, United Kingdom.  Proceedings of the conference will be indexed by Elsevier through the PROCEDIA publication.  Interested researchers are encouraged to submit their full papers latest by the 5th of March 2014. For details, please visit ARI website at http://ari.uitm.edu.my/conference/2014.html. ICGSM 2014 welcomes papers covering areas such as: Corporate Governance, Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship management, Risk Management, Performance Management, Forensic Accounting, Financial Criminology, Accountability and Ethics, Internal Control System, CSR, Earning Management and Microfinance stakeholder protection.

Two international collaborations for ARI

Universiti Teknologi MARA through the Accounting Research Institute (ARI) signs two memorandum of understanding (MOUs) with (i) University of Tunis and (ii) Tunisia Institute of Islamic Finance (TAIF).
The MOU with the University of Tunis signifies international recognition of ARI expertise as severall ARI research fellows have been appointed as international supervisors for several PhD students in the university, Meanwhile, TAIF is interested to set up Islamic Microfinance projects in Tunisia which is similar to ARI's microfinance project with Mydin and AIM in Tanjung Karang.  Prof Dr Normah and Prof Dr Rashidah from ARI were invited by the two agencies to share their expertise in Tunis.

International Sharing Session with the University of Manouba in Tunisia

As part of its internationalisation agenda, the Accounting Research Institute (ARI) has accepted the invitation by the University of Manouba in Tunisia to share its niche research in Islamic Finance and Financial Criminology.  On the first day of their visit, Prof Dr Normah and Prof Dr Rashidah shared their respective research findings on "Anti Money Laundering Regime for Financial Institutions" and "Governance of Microfinance Programs" with staff and post graduate students of the university.  In the discussions with top researchers of the university, they have indicated interest to collaborate by extending the usage of ARI's research instruments in the two research projects on Tunisia sample.  The top management of the university has also proposed for an MOU signing with Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in the later part of 2014.  As a developing country located in between the most vibrant parts of North Africa, Middle East of Asia and Europe, there's a lot of prospects to set up microfinance programs in Tunisia.  There's already in existence suitable "community" appropriate for a successful microfinance projects in this country.  Apart from tourism, Tunisia is also hugely popular for its citrus, dates and olives plantations.