Professor Karl L. Bang

Professor Karl Bang is a UiTM Distinguished Visiting Professor who is currently attached with the Malaysian Institute of Transport (MITRANS). Prof Bang is a professor from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
Today he gave a professorial talk on "The Role of Centre of Excellence - The Swedish Experience, Bridging Postgraduate Research Programmes with Industry and Securing International Research Grants". He particularly cited the case of the Transport Research Commission (TRC), a centre of excellence at his university that has successfully work collaboratively with major Swedish transport related "actors" (government agencies shippers, forwarders, transport equipment producers, traffic authorities and universities) in order to achieve a common goal of "promoting efficient, safe and clean transport.
MITRANS should take advantage and synergize with TRC in order to play a more significant role in improving road safety and the public transport system in this country. Thanks Prof Bang for a very insightful feedback...

Get Well Soon Dr Wee Shu Hui

ARI wishes a Get Well Soon to one of its research fellows Associate Professor Dr Wee Shu Hui.

Seminar Sitting Layouts

What is the best sitting layouts for effective conferences? Yes, we want to deliberate our research findings, yet, most of the time we spend a lot of time and efforts trying to satisfy everyone, at least in term of sitting arrangements. Sometimes a lot of money is spent to cater for "good" breakfasts and lunches. In some others, a lot of time is "wasted" because we are allowing for too many tea and lunch breaks. In her recent encounters, Prof Normah saw these two sitting arrangements that were both cost and time efficient in nature. The first seminar was in Japan where participants are given lunch boxes and during lunch or tea break they can eat their foods in the seminar room itself. The second one was in London. Participants are seated in a roundtable format.
Tea/lunches were available at the foyer and participants can bring their foods to the table. No food or time wastage - seminar programs were kept as scheduled...just some "foods for thought"

Detection & Investigation Strategies

The third day of the training saw key fraud investigators sharing their own experiences through deliberation of their case studies: Volvo, Procter & Gamble, VMW, India Petroleum Company and many others. Investigators shared the need to instill the sense of urgency among employees that fraud means reduction of revenue and an escalation of cost. In the end, not only will fraud affects organisational performance, it will also eats up potential bonuses to be shared among employees of organisations. We were also told that fraud prevention mechanisms need not necessarily only in the forms of expensive tools or gadgets, in some cases, it could just be going to the ground and asking people questions; being more observance of the work ing environment; heightening responsibility and doing simple analysis of the expense trends..

Real World Cases

The second day of the training focussed on discussing real world detection and deterrence of fraud & corruption. Speakers are mainly fraud investigators or anti-fraud specialists and they shared their own experiences.
Among them were Peter Tickner who was formerly the director of internal audit of the Scotland Yard: Simon Scales is the director of global investigation TNT Express; Crawford Robenson, director Global Compliance Investigations Astrazaneca and Dave Verma, audit investigation manager, Brent Government UK. Two workshops were organized in the afternoon: Nigel Iyer and his team from the Septia Group on "How to Spot the Fraudster"; Bob Kendall and his team from TNT Express on "Informant, Evidence, Investigation, Breaches of policy and Dilemms in Between". The Fraud Summit is indirectly a place where those interested to fight fraud & corruption, meet and discuss prevention, deterrence, detection and investigation strategies.

MIS Training on Fraud

First day of the fraud summit 2010 course: A good attendance of about 120 participants from 27 nationalities. This year’s 4th annual summit is held at the Victory Services Club (VSC), Marble Arch London. VSC is the British Army’s prestigious club. The key themes and learning format over the next three days are as follows: Day One – A strategic Approach to Preventing, Deterring and Frustrating Fraud & Corruption; Day Two – Real World Detection & Deterrence of Fraud & Corruption and Day Three – Investigation, Enforcement & Recovery of Fraud & Corruption. In addition, the summit is introducing a new “Dramatic Pub Quiz”. Well perhaps ARI can co-organise the Fraud Summit 2012 with MIS in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. MIS is willing to consider the proposal

Down Memory Lane....

Prof Normah's next visit was to Manchester Metropolitan University Business School (MMUBS), her alma mater. In a lot of ways, MMU is very much like uitm. Formerly a polytechnic, it was upgraded to a university in 1992. Then the need to highten the research culture began. The MMUBS's transformation is now very much visible both physically and culturally. Today, there are many renowned professors and researchers at the Business School. Prof Normah's supervisor, Graham Holt is now the head of department.
Discusssions during the meeting included students excahange program, internship in Manchester during the summer holidays, "top up" master programs (MMUBS currently has special master programs in collaboration with ACCA, CIMA and ICAEW) and research collaboration in the area of forensic accounting.

Interview Sessions and CoE Launching Meetings

The Dividend Policy research group will be organising two very important interviews with the top management of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and SOCSO. The main objective of the interviews is to obtain first hand information from institutional investors on their views of companies, particularly public listed companies (PLCs) having written dividend policy for their shareholders. The dividend policy research is a collaborative project with the Minority Shareholders Watchdog Group (MSWG). In addition to the interviews, another ARI group members will be attending meetings with the Ministry of Higher Education to discuss details of the forthcoming launch of HICoE on 1st April. Thanks guys for such great teamwork.

Greetings from Teesside University

As part and parcel of the UK visit, Prof Dr Normah visited the Forensic Science unit of the University of Teesside in Middlesborough UK. The Forensic Science unit is working very closely with the police department in the North Eastern area of the UK. The unit is supported by two amazing Crime Scene houses and an independent Digital Computer Forensic laboratory. There are a number of very experienced researchers who were formerly police officers. Currently, one of the faculty's staff is pursuing her phd program in forensic accounting at Teesside University.

Hello from London...

Prof Dr Normah is attending the Fraud Summit 2010 to be held in London on 17-19 March 2010. In addition to the summit, she will also be visiting some professors in the United Kingdom for possible research collaboration in the areas of Islamic Accounting & Financial Criminology. Some postings of this blog will be made from there this week...