The Assessment of Digitalisation Among Malaysian Public Listed Companies in Consumer Product and Services Industries Using Business Process Management in the Pre- and Post-COVID-19 Situations

Abstract

The adverse impacts of COVID-19 towards the performance of the business sector have forced companies around the globe to realise the importance of digitalisation in business strategic planning. Subsequently, sustaining bottom-line has become a major driving factor for companies to integrate digitalisation into business operations in addressing and overcoming negative effects of COVID-19 especially on key financial matters such as company's sales and expenses. To date, there is a dearth of studies that measure to what extent consumer product and service companies have applied digitalisation. Therefore, using a content analysis of selected companies' disclosures in their annual reports, this present study aimed to assess how much Malaysian public listed companies from consumer product and service sectors have embraced digitalisation. The assessment of those disclosures was done using the Business Process Management (BPM) Model involving two dimensions: ordinary and dynamic capabilities. The findings suggest that the application of digitalisation was much higher after the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study is crucial and relevant as it does not only substantiate existing literature related to digitalisation, but it also provides the latest insights and evidence of the digitalisation activities among consumer product and service companies in Malaysia. This study also signifies the importance of digitalisation to address the impacts of disruptions to the global economy.

The Assessment of Corporate Social Responsibilities Reporting among Malaysian Public Listed Companies in Consumer Product and Services Industries based on Bursa Malaysia CSR Framework

“…The CSRR in a company's annual report was examined in this study using a qualitative method. The research approach and design were chosen by referring to current studies on corporate social responsibility (Bakar et al, 2019;Nurul et al, 2023) and voluntary disclosure among PLCs in Malaysia (Michelion et al, 2021;Ibrahim et al, 2022;Mohd et al, 2022). According to these studies, the most popular technique for analysing and extracting data from annual reports is content analysis.…”

“…The study population was 20 companies that were involved in consumer products and services listed on Bursa Malaysia from 2020 to 2022. Purposive sampling was used in this study and selected based on predetermined criteria to maintain the quality and validity of the sample: companies from the chosen industry with publications of three consecutive annual reports from 2020 until 2022; and to be consistent, only companies that close their accounts on December 31st annually were selected (Mohd et al, 2022;Ibrahim et al, 2022).…”

“…To determine the frequency, presentational techniques, and theme of disclosures, key terms like "corporate social responsibility," "CSR," and "CSRR," as well as "workplace," "marketplace," "community," and "environment," were employed. This study used the same techniques as recent studies on voluntary disclosures of non-financial information, such as (Ibrahim et al, 2022;Mohd et al, 2022).…”