Tahfiz education is one of the popular streams of education in Malaysia and well accepted by Muslim community. Originally the education is being offered in "pondok", a traditional religious school. Developing through times, it is now also being offered in tahfiz centers as well as in modern tahfiz institutions. These entities specialize in producing tahfiz graduates who can memorize and recite the whole Al-Quran and more than 91% of them are privately owned. The applicability of good governance and accountability measures is indeed highly desirable in these Islamic entities as it deals with the responsibility in fulfilling sacred religious obligation. Though the number of tahfiz education providers (TEP) has grown up tremendously from only 58 in 1999 to 278 in 2011, literatures on governance and accountability of TEP are still lacking as the areas are rarely examined directly. The lacking may lead to unfavorable inferences that TEP are behaving in the manners contrary to the interest of the stakeholders. An ideally accountable governance of tahfiz centers will gain trust from parents and various stakeholders and will indicate the achievement in fulfilling one of the objective of Maqasid Shariah to preserve and promote the religious faith through preserving the memorization and knowledge of Al Quran (the primary source of Islamic Law) by the huffaz. The objective of this research is to investigate external governance mechanism and the accountability of Tahfiz centers as viewed by religious regulatory bodies. A qualitative research approach is undertaken by interviewing representatives from selected State Islamic Religious Councils, State Islamic Foundation and National Religious Departments in Malaysia. Using thematic analysis, findings of this study revealed that there are two-tier governance infrastructures of tahfiz institutions in Malaysia. However, the enforcement of the governance structure is still at infancy level. The accountability frameworks of TEP management divulged in four dimensions; ultimate upwards, upward, parallel and downwards in organizing, teaching and learning, and compliance activities and legal requirements. The accountability can be measured using five accountability mechanisms namely report and disclosure statements, performance assessment and evaluations, participation, self-regulation, and social audit.

Nowadays, technology has affected all sectors. Many companies have taken serious initiatives to transform their businesses into digital business models. For good communication with investors, a well-governed company will voluntarily disclose how it integrates digitalisation into the business. This study explored how Malaysian public listed companies from the consumer sector, had voluntarily disclosed information related to digitalisation in their annual reports. A qualitative research is employed, and a content analysis was utilised to examine the annual reports. Malaysian listed companies from the consumer products and services sector were selected based on a purposive sampling. A content analysis was also employed to analyse the data manually. This study finds the most common sections used for the disclosure of digitalisation-related information are management reports, corporate information, and sustainability reports. The other sections are corporate governance report, digital governance, and risk management. Disclosures of digitalisation-related information mostly involved several business themes such as marketing, business strategy, business process, product offered and corporate sustainability and governance. The research findings provide insights into voluntary disclosures related to digitalisation among Malaysian listed companies.

The emergence of Islamic education, especially tahfiz schools in Malaysia, is an alternative to the national-based education system that envisions creating a better Muslim generation to fulfill the role of viceregency on earth. However, the concern is that the mushrooming of these religious schools, especially tahfiz schools, may compromise the quality of education and may hinder the objective of providing future leaders. As such, this study examined leadership elements as part of the shariah governance framework of tahfiz schools in Malaysia to help in understanding the emphasis on such elements by tahfiz regulators and operators. The respondents from the state Islamic religious council (SIRC) and tahfiz schools in Selangor, Johor, Melaka, and Perak were interviewed, and the data were analyzed using Atlas.ti by focusing on the quotations made by both parties. The results showed that the leadership element is being emphasized by the regulator and operator of tahfiz schools in Malaysia, where the sub-element of roles and responsibilities was among the highest numbers quoted by the regulator and implementation was the highest quotation by the tahfiz operator. This indicates that good leadership elements are being emphasized and practiced by both regulators and operators of tahfiz schools in Malaysia.

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This study is intended to gauge the elements of performance measurement framework for private tahfiz schools (PTS) in Malaysia and to determine the expectation gap between regulators and tahfiz operators on the performance measurement. Series of interviews were conducted with the representatives from the State Islamic Religious Council (SIRCs) and tahfiz school operators. The thematic analysis using Atlas.ti revealed that there are four (4) main elements of PTS performance measurement identified namely, school infrastructure, students' achievement, students' evaluation, and clustering. These elements are essential principles to be used in evaluating PTS capability in providing tahfiz education. Future research could focus on quantifying the quality indicators of PTS performance measurement.