ARI's Two Newly Qualified Polygraph Examiners

The Accounting Research Institute (ARI) congratulates two researchers: Associate Professor Dr Rohana Othman (ARI Research Fellow) and Ms Munirah Morad (ARI Research Officer)for successfully completing a six week plygraph training at Malaysia's only Polygraph Science Academy. Both of them are now Qualified Polygraph Examiners. Since ARI is in the final stage of establishing its own polygraph laboratory, their certification is just timely. More researchers will be trained this year and we hope that through our polygraph lab, we will be able to train more forensic accountants to be competent with the polygraph machines. According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, a polygraph machine(popularly referred to as a lie detector measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions. The belief is that deceptive answers will produce physiological responses that can be differentiated from those associated with non-deceptive answers. ) ARI Polygraph laboratory is a contribution from the HICoE funding and will be fully operational by early 2012. Through our own Polygraph laboratory, we hope to be able to train as many people (especially forensic accountants and financial fraud investigators) as possible in the usage of polygraph machines as an investigative tool. Surely we will offer the study polygraph science as a possible elective for our Masters students. Research experiements can also be conducted to examine the incidents of lying by perpetrators and witnesses...

2011 IFCTF

In its effort to drive research programs in the area of financial criminology, the Accounting Research Institute (ARI) will be collaborating with the industry to organize an International Conference on Financial Crime and Terrorism Financing. 2011IFCTF will be held on 19-20 September in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Themed "Raising the Bar in Compliance and Enforcement", the organizers anticipate the number of participants to exceed five hundred. Several renowned speakers have indicated their agreement to participate. 2011 IFCTF showcases interesting current issues in the areas of financial crime and terrorism financing and highlights practical solutions...

External Appointments

As part of the university's effort to encourage participation of external experts (both at national and international levels) with the university's own scholars, a committee has been set up to come up with criteria, proposed activities and deliverables.
The committee headed by the deputy vice chancellor (academic and internationalisation) Prof Dr Azni Zain Ahmed is assisted by professors and selected senate members. ARI director, Prof Dr Normah Omar is a member of this committee. Following through a draft working paper prepared at Frasers Hill early this year, the committee met today to finalize the proposed criteria, activities, expected outcome and quantum of honorarium payment for these experts. Within the ambit of these external appointments are positions for visiting noble laurettes, distinguished visiting professors, distinguished visiting scholars, distinguished visiting scientists, distinguished creative artists, industry panel experts, visiting fellows, external examiners, academic advisors, visiting research fellows, adjunct professors and many others. The finalized draft will be deliberated at the senate meeting for subsequent approval.

JFRA Special Issue

The Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting (JFRA), which is indexed with the UK-based Emerald Publishing International will have a special issue publication in 2012 with the theme "Islamic Financial Criminology". Specifically, the guest editor invites both conceptual and/or empirical papers in the areas of Islamic Accounting & Finance and Financial Criminology. Papers could incorporate contemporary issues such as counter human trafficing, counter financing of terrorism,sukuk, Islamic microfinancing, zakat invesment, waqaf and many other related areas. All papers can be submitted to normah645@salam.uitm.edu.my for initial review.

Research Talk on Strategic Management Accounting

The Asian Management Accounting Research Centre (AMARC), one of ARI's research cluster group organized a research talk for students and staff today. The speaker, a renowned researcher and author, Emeritus Professor Dr Michael E. Tayles from Hull University Business School. Prof Tayles's talk titled "Strategic Management Accounting Practices: Sharing of Empirical Evidences" compares practices in the UK, USA and Australia. Effectively, there is implication showing: (i)a significant shift on the role of management accounting from operational focus to strategic focus and
(ii) the increasing use of management accounting principles to evaluate intangible items rather than just focusing on tangibles. Today, the role of management accounting has shifted from the traditional "providing financial information to management for control and decision making purposes" to that of a business partner and helping the organizations towards value creation.

External Research Grants for ARI

The Accounting Research Institute congratulates the following researchers for securing new research grants from external sources: (1) Prof Dr Rashidah Abdul Rahman and her PhD student Wan Mohammad Taufik Wan Abdullah obtained research funding from the Institut Bank-Bank Malaysia (IBBM) for a project titled "Social Networks, Performance and Directors Remuneration Determination: Malaysian Evidence"; (2)Two research projects received grants from CIMA (UK) - (i) PhD student Norlaila Md Zin with her supervisor, Prof Dr Suzana Sulaiman for project "Role of Management Accountants in Enhancing Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Implementation" and (ii) Dr Sharifah Norzehan Syed Yusuf for project titled "Information System and Decision Making in Non Profit Organisation"; (3) Associate Professor Dr Wee Shu Hui and her team members obtained a research grant from INFORMM, USM for their project titled "Cost Effeciency Model in Harm Reduction Methadone Treatment". Congratulations all for job well done...

Meeting with Research Delegates from Iran

In its effort to increase research collaboration with various international universities, the Accounting Research Institute (ARI)held a research meeting with delegates from universities in Iran. The Iranian delegates were headed by the Iranian ambassador himself. Meanwhile ARI was represented by its deputy director, Prof Dr Rashidah Abdul Rahman and two research fellows, Associate Prof Dr Mohd Azam and Associate Prof Dr Ezani. The discussions mainly focused on collaborative research related to Islamic Accounting & Finance as well as shariah auditing. Both Associate Prof Dr Azam and Dr Ezani have recently participated in an international conference related to Tadlis in Home Financing in Iran.

Visiting Professor Dr Sakthi Mahenthiran

ARI wishes to welcome and thank visiting professor Dr Sakthi Mahenthiran for spending two weeks at the university. Whilst here, he visited few state campuses which included Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang. He also gave talk on publishing in high impact journals, organized a research seminar, evaluated phd students' progress presentations, gave a one-on-one consultation to PhD students and attended research meetings with his co-researchers. Prof Sakthi who specializes in corporate governance and operation management is from Butler University, Indianapolis, USA. His initial contact with Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)dated way back in 2001/2002 when as a Fullbright scholar, he spent several months here at the university. To date he has successfully supervised three PhD students from UiTM. Today, on his last day at the university, he gave his exit report. Many thanks Prof Sakthi...

Strategic Planning Interim Review

Today, heads of research centres and SIGs presented their actual achievements - in terms of research grants, research publications, number of post graduate students (enrolled, supervised and graduated), number of paper presentations, innovations as well as number of linkages. Seven strategic planning initiatives, code-named as "C-Cure" : C-Cure Publication, C-Cure Principal investigators, C-Cure Post Grad, C-Cure Grant, C-Cure Training & Gifts, C-Cure Innovation and C-Cure Collaboration were also presented by respective project managers and further discussed and deliberated by all participants. All in all, the retreat was very fruitful and effective in delivering the intended objectives. By the 10th of August 2011, a total of 37 papers would be submitted by ARI HICoE researchers as part of their year 1 deliverables. Congratulations

ARI Research Progress Presentation

ARI publication workshop which was facilitated by Dr Rashid continued this morning. In view of new information needed for journal submission, participants have been given until 10th August 2011 (two weeks) to submit their edited articles to indexed journals. Nevertheless, by the end of the workshop this afternoon, several researchers have successfully submitted their papers online. The second day of the retreat was also used to evaluate research progress. Since most research projects cover a period of two years to complete, some have progressed very well. Many have produced good journal publications from their study. Three new research proposals were also presented by ARI's newly appointed research fellows.