On Thursday 26 August 2021, the Accounting Department held Webinar Series #1 with the theme "Research Trends in Public Sector Accounting and Auditing" with speaker Prof. Nafsiah Mohamed and Dr. Noor Marini Hj Abdullah from Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia moderated by Dr. Devi S. Kalanjati, Lecturer in Accounting, Universitas Airlangga. This webinar was attended by around 200 participants from students and practitioners.
Prof. Nafsiah Mohamed discusses the latest public sector accounting research themes and future theme trends. Prof. Nafsiah stated that the current theme is more about forms of accounting, monetary measurement and more about numbers. Meanwhile, regarding future trends, Prof. Nafsiah said that the themes of the digital world, financial criminology and the Covid-19 pandemic would be discussed a lot in the future. For example, for the digital world , Prof. Nafsiah discusses how currently the government is spending the budget on technology, we need to know who is monitoring the use of the budget and knowing whether the public is getting the benefits they should get. He also emphasized that both directly and indirectly, research in the public sector needs to address financial and non-financial aspects, and answer "why" and "how"; why a case occurs and how research results can provide input for regulations. Prof. Nafsiah also underlined that the future trend is not only to focus on facts and figures, we need to discuss whether the public sector is serving the community well ( citizen oriented ).
Meanwhile Dr. Marini presented the results of her research entitled "Non-Audit Services, Audit Opinion, Cultural, Affiliated Directors and Fragitant Financial Reporting: Evidence from Malaysia". This study examines four factors related to financial reporting fraud (Fragitis Financial Reporting - FFR) at the Malaysian Public Company (PLC). This study suspects that the non-audit services (NAS) provided by the auditor, audit opinion, composition of the Director of Bumiputra in the Council and the Director of affiliated related to FFR. The sample studied consisted of 41 companies affected by Hukukman sanctions due to securities fraud and 41 companies that were not affected by fraud cases, all registered in the Malaysian exchange and have a complete set of financial reporting data from 1999-2009. The results of the study revealed that audit and NAS services provided together were significantly related to FFR. With regard to audit opinion, companies that receive in addition to the Fair Audit Opinion without Exception (WTP) before the year of fraud have a positive relationship with FFR. This study also revealed that the proportion of affiliated directors in the council had a significant negative relationship with FFR. However, this study also showed a significant positive relationship between the composition of Bumiputra Directors in the Council and FFR.
Watch this webinar again on our YouTube channel!
