Purpose This paper aims to provide a proper understanding of corruption in the private sector, also known as the supply-side of corruption. It also presents the causes of corrupt practices and points out the corporations’ actions to mitigate corrupt behaviour in the business environment. Design/methodology/approach This study reviews the prior literature on the phenomenon of corruption in the private sector, its causes and the preventive measures that should be implemented. Findings Corruption in the private sector was associated with a firm’s interaction with the public sector, and the most common corruption in the private sector is grand corruption, which is improper contribution made to high-level public officials and politicians. The causes of corruption in the private sector can be explained from several dimensions: economy, psychosocial and legal and regulation. Preventative measures encompass both internal strategies, which are endogenous to business and external strategies like exogenous legislation and restrictions enforced by the government or outside organizations. Originality/value The efficient strategies in combating corruption need active cooperation and participation from the supply-side of corruption. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on the theoretical understanding of the corruption problem from the supply-side and responsibility play by the private sector in global anti-corruption initiatives.

This paper investigates the pattern of capital structure of 4,127 Malaysian companies from 2005 to 2015. We, then specify the sample into two periods, the pre-recession period from 2002 until 2007 and post-recession period from 2009 until 2015, to determine whether there is any significant different in term liabilities between the two periods. For the third objective of this paper, we examine the impact of base lending rate (BLR) in the capital structure between pre-and post-recession periods, indicating the companies drastically change their capital structure after recession occurs. In this paper, we find a sharp downwards movement in long-term debt and total debt after 2008 year of recession. We also document the level of total debt and long-term debt to significantly higher before the recession hit. Interestingly, we find base lending rate to have negative relationship with long-term and total debts only after recession has occurred but not during the economic expansion (pre-recession period), thus supporting the study's hypotheses.

Tax avoidance may result in a substantial loss of government revenue and detract from the planning of national growth. Companies employ a variety of tax avoidance schemes to evade tax, and companies from different industries may have varying tax incentives and degrees of tax avoidance practices. Therefore, this study investigates tax avoidance activities among companies in different sectors in Malaysia. It also seeks to examine the impact of the code of corporate governance on tax avoidance activities. This study uses four proxies to measure tax avoidance; Accounting ETR (AETR), Cash ETR (CETR), Tax Expenses to Operating Cash Flow (TECF), and Cash Paid to Operating Cash Flow (CPCF). Using a sample of listed companies in Bursa Malaysia from 2005-2015, this study discovers that tax avoidance activities are significantly affected by the industrial sectors. The result finds that manufacturing companies, Infrastructure Project Companies (IPC) and hotels pay significantly lower effective tax compared to the other companies in different sectors. Additionally, the study also finds evidence that the code of corporate governance in 2012 has significantly been successful in mitigating the tax avoidance activities among listed companies in Malaysia. It contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the influences of Malaysian Industrial Master Plan 3 on companies' tax avoidance activities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the director's work ethics particularly on Islamic perspectives and prophetic character towards sustaining the performance of the Islamic business organisations. The paper highlights the corporate scandals that occurred in Malaysia. Then, it examines and reviews prior studies on directors' work ethics, ethics from religious viewpoint and Islamic work ethics. Next, it also discusses the directors' work ethics based on prophetic characters and present a theoretical framework for directors' work ethics that applicable in modern business activities. The proposed theoretical framework contains four fundamental characters of directors which are siddiq (truthfulness), fatanah (intelligent), tabligh (deliver) and amanah (trustworhtiness). This framework is hoped to increase the integrity and moral behaviours of the directors and eventually preventing them from involve in various unethical conduct especially in business activities that will tarnish the economic development and growth of a country.