Religiosity as a source of influence on work engagement: a study of the Malaysian Finance industry

Abstract

The majority of work engagement studies have been conducted using a quantitative approach with limited attention to the institutional and social contexts. Meanwhile, the role of religion in shaping people’s philosophy and behaviour in life and work has been gaining attention from management researchers. Studies have revealed the positive impact of religiosity on a number of human resources and organizational outcomes. However, few studies treat religious belief as a job or personal resource from a HRM perspective. This study fills part of this research gap by focusing on the relevant factors that may affect work engagement in the Malaysian Islamic context. Drawing on data from 41 semi-structured interviews with mid-ranking professionals from the finance sector, this study responds to calls for more focus on contexts and for deeper qualitative investigations into individual dynamics that concern religiosity and work engagement. It provides evidence that religiosity plays an important role in work engagement. Our findings have implications for people management in organizations that have a diverse workforce representing multiple religions.     

Auditee Perceptions of External Evaluations of the Use of Resources by Local Authorities

The research reported in this paper takes up Michael Power's challenge that accounting researchers should pay more attention to the perceptions of auditees and how they respond to audit regimes. The setting of the study is the intense performance assessment regime imposed on local authorities in England from 2002 to 2009, one part of which – the Use of Resources (UoR) assessment – rated the financial management capability and performance of each English local authority. The perceptions of senior local authority finance officers within the Yorkshire and the Humber region are reported, using a written questionnaire and an interview to explore the reasoning behind the chosen responses. The results are more nuanced than suggested by either the official rhetoric justifying the UoR system or by those critics who view such systems as dysfunctional. Respondents portray themselves as intelligent actors, not as passive recipients. Most learned to use the UoR process to drive performance improvement, though there is some ambiguity as to whether the improvements were genuine or solely a product of the scoring system. Though adding to workload, UoR was regarded as one of the external pressures to be managed and its requirements largely represented professional views of best practice. Three of the types of control that characterise ‘regulation inside government’ (Hood et al., 1999) – oversight, competition and contrived randomness – are seen through the perceptions of the auditees. There is some evidence of the fourth style, mutuality – working through professional networks to help local authorities improve their actual and reported performance.     

Financial development and economic growth: an empirical evidence from the GCC countries using static and dynamic panel data

This paper contributes to the existing empirics of finance-growth nexus of all GCC countries with new results based on a larger dataset and longer time period 1975–2012, incorporating additional control variables, FDI, interaction term of FDI & financial development variables, and oil production. We employed four estimation techniques, Pooled OLS, Fixed effect estimation, Random effect estimation, and the system GMM estimation and used static and dynamic panel data. We obtain a robust finding of consistently a positive effect of financial sector development (FSD) on economic growth of GCC region with implication that a substantial improvement in FSD was in place. The results indicate that FDI, Fixed capital formation and oil production contribute positively to the economic growth of this region. The study results signify for a continuity of the on-going financial reform process, supervision & monitoring exercises to bring hitherto more dividends to the GCC economies.     

Activity-based costing user satisfaction and type of system: A research note

This paper examines user perceptions of Activity-based costing (ABC) performance for three different types of system in a major information and communication provider in South East Asia. Few prior ABC studies have considered the effect of system type on ABC performance. The study draws on a survey of 54 developers and 181 users of 16 different ABC systems within the organisation to produce five performance constructs (cost accuracy, cost-benefit trade-off, ABC impact, information use, and decision action). The results show that both the development inputs and user performance perceptions varied with the type of system (embedded, stand-alone, ad-hoc). While embedded systems enjoyed far stronger inputs (e.g. top management support, rewards and recognition, task significance) and greater development team cohesion than stand-alone systems, they were perceived by users to perform significantly less well. These findings suggest that system type is an important factor in assessing ABC performance.     

A new measure of financial development: Theory leads measurement

This study presents a new measure of financial development that is directly derived from theory. Our measure, the Marginal Utilization of Debt (hereafter, MUD) comes from the seminal work of Myers (1984), Myers and Majluf (1984) and Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999). Further, it is directly related to the development facts of Gurley and Shaw (1955). MUD is a global measure that reflects conditions in both debt and equity markets. It varies enormously across nations; from 0.23 in Australia at one extreme to 0.96 in Turkey at the other. Cross‐country variations in MUD are not random; they are related to special‐purpose measures of debt and equity market advancement from the financial development literature. Richer, more advanced nations have smaller average MUDs. We argue that the MUD may be useful for a variety of purposes and provide three example applications.     

Profitability analysis of foodgrain in the Sudan's irrigated agricultural sector

This paper discusses the situation of irrigated sorghum and wheat with respect to their financial and economic profitability and international competitiveness in use of domestic resources, in light of declared government policy which emphasizes shifting from traditional rainfed sector to irrigated sector for production of staple foodgrain. Domestic resource cost analysis has been employed using official and shadow exchange rates. Measures of domestic resource cost ratio, international value added, international competitiveness, nominal and effective protection coefficients were also estimated. Results indicate that the economic profitability has been significantly higher than the financial one due mainly to variability in international prices, yields and overvalued exchange rates; but devaluation of the currency is not a sufficient condition for paying higher prices to farmers.     

Critical accounting research in Africa: Whence and whither

This paper provides a review of the critical accounting literature on Africa highlighting the paucity of studies in this area and outlining the objective of this special issue of Critical Perspectives on Accounting. The paper also provides some directions for future critical accounting research focused on Africa, arguing that the continent presents significant research opportunities for the critical accounting community and therefore joins the chorus for more scholarship in this area.     

Tool path of lathe machine in flexible transfer lines by using genetic algorithms

In this paper, we present a new approach for tool path generation of numerical control (NC) lathe machine tools during the development of flexible transfer lines (FTL). The approach that uses a genetic algorithm (GA) can automatically generate a tool path of the NC lathe machine tools and decides the part reverse position by just giving the dimensions of a cylindrical type of the work piece. Conventionally, this reverse position is decided by an experienced operator because it was difficult to decide automatically in the FTL. The GA approach of our system adopts the moving points of the tool path as an individual. We propose two individuals expressions. The first expression is defined by adopting an absolute value of the tool path as absolute individuals expression (AIE) and the second expression is defined by adopting the incremental value of the tool path as incremental individuals expression (IIE). After some simulations, it is ascertained that our system is useful.     

The Grameen Bank and Poverty alleviation in Bangladesh

A bstract . The Grameen (grameen means rural) Bank of Bangladesh has innovated a mechanism under which credit can be provided to the poorest of the poor on a group liability basis instead of any collateral. Based on this principle, over the last decade, the bank has been successfully operating with an unprecedented loan recovery rate. Although from the point of view of profits, the Grameen Bank is not yet a viable institution, empirical evidence suggests that the bank's credit program has significantly improved the socioeconomic conditions of its borrowers. The Grameen Bank's success story in the alleviation of poverty in Bangladesh has resulted in widespread attempts of its replication in many other countries including the United States and Canada. The spread of the Grameen Bank idea around the world has drawn keen attention from researchers, policy makers and agencies interested in rural development.