The region of Southeast Asia had already experienced rapid urbanization and cultural change before the East Asia region did. None the less, nowadays shophouses and rowhouses still form the major portion of streets in Chinese town in Southeast Asia countries. The purpose of this study is to examine the adaptation process of shophouse and rowhouse in the Southeast Asia region and the architectural characteristics between the middle of 18th and the early of 20th, which Chinese people of the region inherit and develop, for more thorough understanding of cultural adaptability and regionalism of Chinese architecture in Southeast Asia. The common fact found in the Southeast Asia region is that Chinese people in countries of this region gradually started to live densely as a group in a certain zone in city area since they got to play important roles in commerce, trade and service works related with cities, due to European countries' advance into Southeast Asia and their construction of colonial cities in the region. Chinese people in the region utilized residential rowhouse and special shophouse, which is a kind of shop adapted from rowhouses' sitting room or storage, for their commercial and industrial activities in urban areas, which had problems of limited space. They also realized high densities through vertical expansion of space in order to adjust to changing urban structure under execution of urban planning in cities of colonial area and rapid urbanization. Even though residence of Chinese in Southeast Asia was influenced by new political, social, economic and cultural rules of European colonies in Southeast Asia, it has continuously succeeded to the cultural tradition of China, their home country, in terms of planning principle which puts air well in the middle and hierarchial spacial construction method. Appearance of the open connected verandah, designed by Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, can be regarded as one of the architectural characters. Hence, Chinese residence in cities of Southeast Asia can be understood as a new regional architectural culture in the context of European countries' urban planning and urbanization of colonial areas, Immigrants from southern China and their role, their adjustment to urban areas by utilizing mixed type houses of residence and business, cultural tradition of Chinese home country.

This research investigates the explanatory factors governing the dividend payout to shareholders of blue-chip companies listed on Bursa Malaysia. In spite of continuous attention offered by empirical research on dividend payout of publicly-listed companies, paradoxically only few studies exclusively examined the explanatory factors from the perspective of blue-chip companies. Recognizing the capability of bluechip companies to serve as a stalwart indicator of stock market condition as well as a consistent income source to shareholders, more research should be carried out for better inference on the companies’ dividend payout decision. This research is using 522 observations from a sample of 18 Malaysian blue-chip companies over a 29-year period (1990 to 2019) and utilizes a panel data regression analysis for the estimation of the impact of eight factors, namely, systematic risk, leverage, free cash flow, lagged dividends, market-to-book value, profit growth, total asset turnover, and company size. Measuring dividend payout using two specifications (dividend/earnings and dividend/total assets), this research reveals that systematic risk and free cash flow have a significant and negative impact on dividend payout. Meanwhile, past year dividends, market-to-book value, profit growth, total asset turnover and company size have a significant and positive impact on dividend payout.

This study examines factors of unemployment and career path challenges commonly faced by youth in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The study employed a quantitative approach which involved a total of 1,083 youths in Kelantan, Pahang and Terengganu selected at random. Descriptive and multiple regression analysis (OLS) methods were used to analyze demographic distribution of youth in determining factors influencing unemployment among them. The results reveal that the majority of youth respondents in the East Coast states of Malaysia are still unemployed and actively seeking employment. Demographic profiles are based on the survey results, youths seeking employment with 36 per cent distribution in Kelantan, 34 per cent in Pahang, and 30 per cent in Terengganu. Majority of the respondents were youths aged 20 to 24 years with a 40.9 percent percentage. The findings show that there are differences in factors affecting youth unemployment in the three states of East Coast, Malaysia. For Kelantan (age, experience, work mobility, marital status), Pahang (experience, marital status) and Terengganu (experience, gender, marital status, training). This study suggests that youths should be wise in preparing for their career by choosing the right career as well as doing side jobs to gain experience before they pursue for a real job.

The aim of this study is to find out the time-series nexus of public debt and economic growth in Malaysia. For an upper-middle income country, Malaysia had experienced over 50% ratio of debt to GDP since 2009 until now. The question arises is whether this trend is healthy to the economy. With a focus into the debt-to-GDP ratio from 1970-2015, this study investigates the short-run and long-run relationship between public debt and economic growth in Malaysia. This study used secondary data by collecting time-series data (1970-2015) from the World Bank Data and Bank Negara Malaysia. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is applied in this study to examine the relationship between debt and economic growth. Based on ARDL framework, it shows that there is a long-run effect between the debt and economic growth in Malaysia. While the significance value of Error Correction Term shows that there is a long-run adjustment in the short run. Generally, this study found government expenditures, in the long run, strongly influence the GDP per capita. Through the findings, the government expenditures could increase the GDP per capita. The study also reveals that any increment of the debt ratio will result in reduction of the GDP per capita.

Financial literacy is one of the sustainable development goals of huge concern of governments. Governments explore solutions addressing policies to improve financial literacy. Nevertheless, financial management has such a broad scope and is not just limited to knowledge. As human nature, individuals are born with different confidence levels that include various financial abilities. This study aims to investigate the household-financial efficacy through the application of psychometric instruments, risk preference, and demographic characteristics toward consumption decision behavior. The research is based on a survey 479 households in the peninsular Malaysia, and utilizes the structural equation model, cluster proportional and systematic random sampling, and two measurements – composite reliability and average variance extracted. Results show that households’ financial efficacy is one of the critical factors that explain the households’ consumption decision behavior. Also, risk preference, gender and area location (rural or urban) of the household determined the consumption decision behavior of the household. The effectiveness of consumption decision is not only determined by financial literacy, but also financial efficacy. The implications of this paper may help to design policies in narrowing the broad gap between the rural and urban level of financial efficacy. The government needs to take appropriate actions to fix it.

This paper investigates the effect of the involvement of the board chairman in the audit committee (AC) on earnings management (EM). It examines Bursa Malaysia-listed companies with the lowest positive earnings for the years 2013 to 2015. The Modified Jones Model by Kasznik (1999) was used to determine discretionary accruals. An AC that includes its board chairman as an ordinary member is associated with greater discretionary accruals. However, a board chairman who is also the chairman of the AC does not seem to influence discretionary accruals. This paper supports the agency theory and policy-makers’ efforts to prevent board chairmen from sitting on ACs. It is the first study that uses the agency theory to describe the association between the board chairman’s involvement in the both AC and EM. This study alerts policy-makers, stakeholders and researchers to the influence of a board chairman serving on the AC in curbing EM. Furthermore, it provides empirical evidence that the majority of Malaysian companies whose board chairmen are involved in the AC appoint the chairman as an ordinary member of the AC. This indicates that executive directors may affect such actions. Hence, more policies are needed to improve AC independence.

Purpose: Islamic banking products and services have always claimed to be unique from its traditional interest-based counterpart. However, in practice, many Islamic banks are alleged to have drifted away from its paradigm version. The purpose of this study is to gauge the perception of university students in Malaysia towards Islamic banking products. Research design, data and methodology: Data were collected from 250 Malaysian university students. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was performed to test proposed hypotheses to identify factors influencing customers‘ perception toward Islamic banking products. Results: The main finding indicates that most of the respondents are familiar with Islamic banking products and consider Islamic banking products as useful as it s conventional counterparts. The regression results show that respondents are less convinced of adherence to Shari‘ah, efficiency and helpfulness of existing Islamic banks. Conclusions: This is a cue to the Islamic banks‘ stakeholders that they need to realign their practices in an ethically responsible way in accordance with Shari‘ah if they wish to secure existing customers and attract potential ones. In a competitive banking environment, most banks provide efficient and readily available service; thus, focusing on this as a strategy hardly distinguishes an Islamic bank from an interest-based bank

Inter vivos in the context of wealth and estate planning can be generally defined as a transfer that takes place between the livings. Parents are motivated to transfer for altruisme and exchange. In this context, this study aims to explore another potential motives of inter vivos, which is „affection‟. Data is collected through semi-structured interviews with inter vivos experts who have published articles in this area. The interview is encoded and thematic analysis is carried out to classify themes and subthemes that exist in the inter vivos transfers. This study discovers four main themes, which indicate that inter vivos transfers based on affection can be enlightened by the relationship between parents and children, responsibility for children, types of inter vivos, and effects to other heirs. Relationship between parents and children can be explained as parents transfer their wealth to the closest children, children who care for them and to family members only. Parents also are responsible to protect their children after they die and assist them who are in need. Types of inter vivos are considered as boundless inter vivos and without any material return. Inter vivos based on affection also aims not to abuse other heirs.

The paper aims to examine the association between information and communication technology (ICT), economic growth and population health based on health production model in Malaysia. This theoretical health production function is represented as follows: where the output is an individual health outcome, and the inputs are determinants of health, such as income, education, health care costs, medical facilities, the environment, and lifestyle. The development of information and communication technologies are represented as of mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100) and fixed telephone subscriptions (100) using time series data from 1993–2017 from the World Bank database. Using the bound testing technique of cointegration, this study finds that ICT affects population health significantly and positively in the long- and short-run. This is because ICT inclusion improves human health and longevity. Whereas, economic growth has no significant impact on the population‟s health both in the short- and long-run. The findings indicate that a weak global economy affects Malaysia‟s economic growth and reduces the health expenditure per capita. The results of this study suggest that policymakers must develop policies that improves public health by increasing health literacy, disseminating health information and facilitating medical facilities. This study also suggests that health care systems should to concentrate on digital inclusion.

The paper investigates the factors affecting the profitability of commercial banks in Asian developing countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. We use panel data of four entities; ten banks in Vietnam, eight banks in Malaysia, nine banks in Thailand and all 27 commercial banks from the period 2012 to 2016. Particularly, Return on Asset, Return on Equity and TOBINQ are defined as profitability indicators, which are impacted by three main types of independent variables, namely bank-specifics, which include CAR, NPL, Cost to income, Liquidity ratio and Bank size, industry-specific variable-concentration HHI and macroeconomic-specific variables, which consist of GDP growth and Inflation. Using panel data regressions, the paper identifies several similarities and differences among empirical results on the models of four entities, each of three countries and the overall sample. The most outstanding similarity is that all entities record the significantly negative relationship between operational risk and banking profitability. Likewise, the significantly negative influence of bank size to profitability is found on models of Vietnam and Thailand and no significant effect on the model of Malaysia. Meanwhile, the most controversial result comes up with the negative relationship between CAR and profitability indicators as well as the positive association between credit risk and banking profitability.

The study aims to investigate factors that determine dividend payout policy using 336 non-financial firm year observations covering the period 2005 to 2016 in Malaysia. We found a significant positive relationship between corporate board size, board members average age, board tenure and dividend payout policy. We also found a strong negative effect and statistically insignificant relationship of board diversity, board independence, CEO duality and dividend payout policy. Additional, financial leverage has a negative effect on dividend payout policy. It is also noticed that firms with diverse boards are more likely to pay dividends and tend to pay larger dividends than those with non-diverse boards. Our results suggest that board diversity has a significant impact on dividend payout policy. Impact of board diversity on dividend payout policy is particularly conspicuous for firms with potentially greater agency problems. Our findings are consistent with the argument that corporate board traits enhancement positively affect the dividend payout policy which is beneficial for shareholders. This study offers useful insights into the current global debate on board traits and its implications for firms. The dividend payout policy signals good news to investors. Corporate board traits and firm’s financial decision are the factors that disrupt the dividend decision.

A series of corporate failures and financial crises have raised attention to organizational governance issues, especially for financial institutions. In the banking system, corporate governance further plays a unique role because of the uniqueness of the banking organizations. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of corporate governance disclosure on bank performance by building a corporate governance disclosure index (CGDI) for 10 Islamic banks operating in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The data used in this study are secondary data taken from annual reports and sourced from the official websites of each banks include Iran Exchange, Stock Market Quotes and Financial News, and Bursa Malaysia. This study uses content analysis of the annual bank report within five years (2014-2018). The results show that Islamic banks comply with 72.4% of the attributes discussed in the CGDI. The most frequently reported and disclosed elements are board structure and audit committee. The regression results provide evidence that Islamic banks with a higher level of corporate governance disclosure reported high operating performance measured by ROA. In contrast to the expectation, the financial performance of ROE and Tobins'q are not significantly related to the disclosure of sharia bank governance.

The study aims to provide some evidence of the effects of CSR practices on financial-based brand equity in Malaysia. Nowadays, many companies have embraced corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices because CSR is a vital component of the current competitive and complex business arena. It contributes greatly to social, environmental, and economic condition. With CSR practices, companies are able to achieve many benefits and there is evidence that CSR practices predict higher brand equity. However, little evidence has been produced concerning the effects of CSR practices on financial aspects of brand equity in developing countries such as Malaysia. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the effects of CSR practices on financial based brand equity among Malaysia Top 100 brand. A CSR checklist instrument was used in the current study to examine the extent of CSR practiced. The results indicated that PLCs that were actively involved in CSR practices such as environmental, community, workplace and marketplace, found that this involvement enhanced their brand equity. The findings provide useful support and evidence for the management of PLCs in Malaysia, as well as companies in other developing countries, to engage more in CSR practices as a core element of their strategic and brand management.

The objectives of this study are to propose the Integrated Waqf Environmental Protection Model (IWEP) and investigate the farmers’ intention to adopt it. In developing the IWEP model and investigating farmers’ willingness to adopt it, this study surveyed 400 farmers in Kedah. The intention of the farmers to adopt the proposed model was analysed by adding perceived barriers and socioeconomic variables into the theory of reasoned action (TRA) model. The collected data were processed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The SEM results show that the subjective norm is positive and has a significant impact on the intentions of lowincome farmers to accept the IWEP model. This indicates that the decision of the low-income farmers to accept the IWEP model is significantly influenced by their family members, neighbours and friends. Furthermore, awareness and perceived barriers have a greater impact on the elderly, highly educated and wealthy farmers. The findings indicate that the elderly, highly educated and wealthy farmers are aware of climate change and they perceive higher risks or barriers to climate change. As a result, they are more likely to have an adaptation intention. If we encourage people to create waqf fund, we can increase the value of the farmer and the country’s total GDP.

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirical evidences of productivity of life insurance institutions in Malaysia. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the productivity of the life insurance institutions in Malaysia. The overall findings show that the total factor productivity (TFP) has progressed by 2.5% per year during the study period from 2012 to 2016 in the Malaysian insurance industry. However, TFP change has declined from 2012 to 2015 and observed a negative growth in 2015-16 (3.3%). The highest productivity progress was documented during 2012-13 at a rate of 11.7% while the minimum productivity progress was during 2014-15 (only 0.2%). The results also indicate that the decomposition of TFP found that overall progress could mainly be attributed to technological change (TC). However, technical efficiency change (TEC) and pure technical efficiency change (PTE) have negative impact on TFP. The findings also show that most of the insurance companies have a steady growth. Therefore, this study will contribute new insights for the policy makers and insurance institutions to take appropriate steps in developing relevant policies for increasing productivity of insurance institutions in Malaysia

Service quality has been a point of discussion from the decades as it is important for customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. Various models have been proposed to measure the quality in the service sector. Models are modified in accordance with context and geography to assess the quality of service better. This study aims to investigate the impact of the modified e-SERVQUAL model on the customer perception about the existing relation and potential scope of doing business with a bank which in-turn will decide the performance of the bank. Statistical data was analyzed through various tests like reliability analysis, correlation and regression analysis using SPSS 25.0. The primary data of e-SQ and performance was gathered from 721 internet banking users using 32 item questionnaire, representing 72% response rates, of four selected Islamic banks of Malaysia. E-SERQUAL was modified by adding Shariah Compliance information about banks and products for Islamic banking customers. The finding specified that efficient & reliable services, fulfillment, security/trust, and Shariah compliance information have a significant association with the performance of Islamic banks. The research is original and its implications will be helpful for Islamic banks across the world to enhance the online experience of customers, which will help them to retain the customers in the rapid changing virtual environment.

The Malaysian biogas upgrading technologies and policies were examined. In Malaysia, the regulation of palm oil mill effluent (POME) has been enforced to reduce the biochemical oxygen demand to 20 ppm and the biogas capture in the palm oil mills have been recently enforced for renewable energy. A huge amount of organic waste is produced from POME, and 80 million tons from palm oil trees, every year. Due to the renewable energy trends, the Malaysian government is modifying the use of biogases as fuels in favor of their conversion into compressed natural gas (CNG) and other chemicals; various green policies are being promoted because of many advantages of the organic substances. The Korean policies for biogas are a good model for exporting environmental plants after upgrading the digestion and purification technologies. Therefore, this article introduces the current status of POME and biogas production in Malaysia, it could encourage creating a new market for biomethane.

While the number of women labor force in Malaysia is increasing, only a few of them make it to the top. For many reasons, some women turn down top position offer and some of them refuse to stay working. Commitment to the family, work-life conflict and lack of support from the family and the colleagues are among issues that caused women to have less interest to pursue career advancement. This article examines the role of work-life balance and its relationship to women career advancement, and why both are important in Malaysia. The arguments are arranged based on a review of the previous literature to conceptualize the relationship between work-life balance and career advancement. It is found that both work-life balance and women career advancement are important to retain women in the working world as well as to motivate them to pursue promotion to a higher position. Even though some researchers agreed that the relationship between work-life balance and career advancement is mostly negative, others found positive relationship between both constructs. At the end of the paper, some suggestions on how to improve work-life balance and career advancement are presented as well as suggestion for future research.