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The Accountability Index is typically used to scrutinise and assess the organisational accountability level. Accordingly, this study explored the various contexts of the accountability index and investigated its function in controlling organisational behaviour towards good governance related to management and reporting. Hence, this study adopted a thematic review based on searches of past publications on the accountability index in Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and Mendeley Web databases using specific keywords. A total of 203 published articles were identified in the first step, but only 29 papers were thoroughly reviewed upon screening the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results from the code-to-document reports using ATLAS.ti 9 software revealed patterns, trends, and mapping of the accountability index contexts in various forms of study. This study employed descriptive and thematic analysis. The descriptive analysis discusses the source title, research countries, research setting, and methodology. Through thematic analysis, this study highlighted the following themes: index development, index elements, and evaluation. These themes are interrelated, which enables monitoring of the strengthening of accountability in organisations. As a result of this thematic analysis, practitioners and academics can use it as a guideline to draw up an accountability index to assess the level of accountability in the scrutinised context. This study also highlighted academic information gaps for future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthy corporate governance is necessary for attracting investor participation and alleviating corruption. Akin to other developing nations, two major challenges arise. First, Increasing foreign direct investments (FDIs) and second, controlling corruption are faced by all countries in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) for their economic development. Phenomenal practices of whistleblowing policies in developed countries, especially in Europe and the US, have become crucial elements for modern corporate governance. Such practices also play important roles in detecting fraud and enhancing FDI and GDP growth. The aims of this study are twofold: to uncover the extent of the effects of whistleblowing disclosure quality on cost of equity (COE) and to propose whistleblowing disclosure scoring index as a new mechanism to integrate whistleblowing disclosure policy in the ASEAN region. Furthermore, a proposal for promulgating a comprehensive whistleblowing policy with inclusive internal and external programmes, which are necessary for establishing strong corporate governance, is presented. Empirical results confirm that whistleblowing disclosure quality has a significant negative relationship with COE. Our finding suggests that a uniform and comprehensive whistleblowing policy is needed to strengthen the best practices of ASEAN Corporate Governance Codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims at exploring the needs of a broad group of stakeholders of Malaysian public universities with respect to information items that should be disclosed in the university annual report, and their views on the disclosure importance of the items. This is a preliminary study towards the effort to develop an accountability reporting framework for Malaysian public universities. A questionnaire survey on the universities' stakeholders representing each stakeholder group which include policy makers, students, parents, employers, the public, university management and employees, suppliers and oversight entities was carried out in order to identify and confirm the stakeholders' disclosure needs. It is expected that the needs of the stakeholders in terms of information to be reported are comprehensive which include financial and non-financial information; and there are differences in the views on the disclosure importance of information among the stakeholder groups. The findings of this study provide a clear understanding of the information that should be disclosed in the annual reports of Malaysian public universities for accountability purpose. The findings may potentially assist the public universities to improve the way they discharge their public accountability through annual reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the influence of the ASEAN cooperation on firm value. As far as the cooperation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is concerned, one aspect of geopolitical mechanisms is ASEAN's smart power which combines hard and soft power. This smart power is considered an important mechanism for corporate strategies. Any changes in geopolitical decision between the ASEAN members will affect firm value especially firms segmented in the ASEAN countries. From a geopolitical perspective and by using data from public listed firms in Malaysia that were actively traded in ASEAN countries from 2009 to 2013, the study examined the influence of hard power indicated by military power, and soft power which refers to material resources and social power in terms of the relationship of political elites. The study found that the soft power of the ASEAN cooperation is positively associated with firm value. In contrast, the social power of political elites is negatively related to firm value, while the hard power fails to show any influence. Overall, the evidence suggests that corporate strategies should consider the benefit of ASEAN's material resources and the risk of forging relationships with political elites when designing market penetration strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]