Segment Reporting Practices and Determinants: Evidence from Malaysian Public Listed Companies

Abstract

This study aims to examine the extent and variety of operating segment disclosure among Malaysian public listed companies following the adoption of a new standard MFRS 8 Operating Segment. It further investigates the associations between firm characteristics (firm size, profitability and industrial membership) and the level of compliance to MFRS 8. Using content analysis on a final sample of 97 public listed firms on Bursa Malaysia, the results show that the average level of disclosure on operating segment is 73% and that the most reported items are both profit and loss, and external revenue at 8.56% respectively. Meanwhile, the highest segmental information disclosure variety is found to be 11 out of 16 items with only 20.62% firms found to comply with such disclosure variety. The results also indicate that industrial membership affects the level of segmental reporting compliance. The research outcomes serve as a valuable benchmark for comparison with other emerging nations in terms of the level of compliance to segment reporting practices and provide more insights into the interactions between the level of compliance and firm characteristics.

Herding Trend in Working Capital Management Practices: Evidence from the Non-Financial Sector of Pakistan

“…The gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has a positive and significant t-stat value of 1.891. A high GDP growth rate promotes business activities in a country because the production capacity of business increases, which in turn speeds up the cash conversion cycle (Mohamad and Elias 2013). The significant impact of macro-economic factors indicates the role of economic conditions and policies in determining business efficiency.…”