Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis examines the accounting policy and financial reporting changes made by Malaysian telecommunications between 1957 and 1994. During this period, the telecommunications sector moved from being a government department to being a government-owned company in 1987 and a partially privatised company in 1990. A periodisation analysis method (Tinker and Neimark, 1987) is adopted to divide the time frame into three discrete periods: Period 1 (1957-1970) when the Malaysian Telecommunications Department pursued the cash basis of accounting; Period 2 (1971-1986) when the Department was supposedly changing to the full accruals basis of accounting; and Period 3 (1987-1994) when the corporated Syarikat Telekom Malaysia achieved full compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Practice as an essential preliminary to flotation as Telekom Malaysia. Lüder's (1992) contingency model of public sector accounting innovations is used as a framework to analyse the stimuli to accounting change in Malaysian telecommunications, their effect on the expectations of change of users of accounting information and the behaviour of the producers of accounting information. The barriers to accounting change before corporisation are identified and the outcome of the process is evaluated. The discussion of privatisation as policy innovation stresses the importance of policy transfer from developed countries to developing countries and, in particular, the role model offered by experience in the United Kingdom to countries such as Malaysia. While acknowledging the importance of the influence of early experience of privatisation in developed countries, it is revealed that Malaysia had its own political and economic context which shaped privatisation policy and the manner in which it was implemented. Liberalisation of the market and regulation of telecommunications especially developed in a different way from that of the United Kingdom.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Göttingen.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 1996. / Title from web page (viewed on Mar. 4, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-97).

Thesis (MRek)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

The purpose of financial reporting is to provide information that is useful for decision making. Recently, however, there has been a systematic decline in the usefulness of such information. Indeed, the current reporting model seems to be no longer sufficient mainly due to the fact that it ignores many of the nonfinancial intangible factors which are increasingly becoming important in determining corporate value and performance. That is, there is a need for the traditional reporting model to be modified or at least broadened to reflect Intangible Assets (IA) in order to enhance the usefulness of information being provided to different stakeholders. In the absence of mandatory reporting requirements, one alternative way of disseminating information regarding IA is to engage in voluntary disclosure practices. It has also been suggested that companies which would benefit the most from such practice are those originating from emerging economies looking to expand into international markets. While there exists an array of empirical studies which have examined the voluntary disclosure practices of corporations from developed economies, less considered are the reporting practices of emerging market companies regarding their IA. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voluntary disclosure practices of the top 200 emerging market companies regarding the variety, nature and extent of IA and to consider some of the factors that may be associated with the level of such disclosure. Using a disclosure index based on the Value Chain Scoreboard??? (Lev, 2001), narrative sections of the 2002 annual reports of the top 200 emerging market companies are analysed. The findings indicate that emerging market companies engage in voluntary disclosure practices in order to disseminate different varieties of mainly quantitative IA information to their global stakeholders. Further, the variety and the extent of IA disclosure are associated with corporate specific factors such as leverage, adoption of IFRS/US GAAP, industry type, and price to book ratio. Contrary to the existing literature on voluntary disclosure, however, firm size and ownership concentration are not found to be associated with the IA disclosure level. Country specific factors such as the level of risks associated with economic policy and legal system are also found to be significantly associated with the IA voluntary disclosure level.

The purpose of financial reporting is to provide information that is useful for decision making. Recently, however, there has been a systematic decline in the usefulness of such information. Indeed, the current reporting model seems to be no longer sufficient mainly due to the fact that it ignores many of the nonfinancial intangible factors which are increasingly becoming important in determining corporate value and performance. That is, there is a need for the traditional reporting model to be modified or at least broadened to reflect Intangible Assets (IA) in order to enhance the usefulness of information being provided to different stakeholders. In the absence of mandatory reporting requirements, one alternative way of disseminating information regarding IA is to engage in voluntary disclosure practices. It has also been suggested that companies which would benefit the most from such practice are those originating from emerging economies looking to expand into international markets. While there exists an array of empirical studies which have examined the voluntary disclosure practices of corporations from developed economies, less considered are the reporting practices of emerging market companies regarding their IA. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voluntary disclosure practices of the top 200 emerging market companies regarding the variety, nature and extent of IA and to consider some of the factors that may be associated with the level of such disclosure. Using a disclosure index based on the Value Chain Scoreboard??? (Lev, 2001), narrative sections of the 2002 annual reports of the top 200 emerging market companies are analysed. The findings indicate that emerging market companies engage in voluntary disclosure practices in order to disseminate different varieties of mainly quantitative IA information to their global stakeholders. Further, the variety and the extent of IA disclosure are associated with corporate specific factors such as leverage, adoption of IFRS/US GAAP, industry type, and price to book ratio. Contrary to the existing literature on voluntary disclosure, however, firm size and ownership concentration are not found to be associated with the IA disclosure level. Country specific factors such as the level of risks associated with economic policy and legal system are also found to be significantly associated with the IA voluntary disclosure level.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-128).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.