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Continue reading →: Literature Review: Beyond Sustainability Reporting
1. Introduction In Beyond Sustainability Reporting: The Pathway to Corporate Social Responsibility (2020), Gerald Trites provides a practitioner-focused analysis of the evolution of corporate disclosure. Trites, a Chartered Professional Accountant and retired KPMG partner, argues that many organisations mistakenly view the publication of a sustainability report as the endpoint of…
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Continue reading →: Literature Review: The Triple Bottom Line
1. Introduction The revised and updated edition of The Triple Bottom Line: How Today’s Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social, and Environmental Success – and How You Can Too (2014), by Andrew W. Savitz and Karl Weber, provides a foundational guide for integrating sustainability into core corporate strategy. The authors…
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Continue reading →: Literature Review: Sustainability Accounting and Accountability
1. Introduction The third edition of Sustainability Accounting and Accountability (2021) by Matias Laine, Helen Tregidga, and Jeffrey Unerman provides a comprehensive and critical examination of the relationship between accounting practices and the pursuit of a sustainable society. This edition extends beyond the description of reporting standards to analyse the…
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Continue reading →: Literature Review: Accounting for Social and Environmental Sustainability
1. Introduction Accounting for Social and Environmental Sustainability: A Multi-Capital Approach (2025), edited by Delphine Gibassier, calls for a major change in how companies view and record their roles in the natural and social environment. Gibassier and the contributors argue that current sustainability accounting fails to prevent ecological decline. This…
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Continue reading →: Literature Review: Gold Standard Sustainability Reporting
1. Introduction The second edition of Gold Standard Sustainability Reporting: A Step-by-Step Guide to Producing Sustainability Reports functions as an operational manual for organisations in the “Age of Transparency.” Kye Gbangbola and Nicole Lawler contend that, in an era of instant information access, corporate claims require substantiation through reliable data.…
About Me
Welcome to my research notes.
This site is a space where I document my PhD journey, particularly my reading notes, literature review reflections, and thoughts that arise in the course of research. Rather than keeping these notes privately in folders and documents, I have chosen to write them here as a way to think more clearly, track my progress, and cultivate a more disciplined research habit.
I am an in-house lawyer by profession, an accountant by training, and a lecturer by passion. I hold a Master of Laws from Nottingham Trent University (UK), a Master of Business Administration from Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (Malaysia), a Master of Corporate Law and Governance from Veritas University College (Malaysia), and a Master of Accountancy from SEGi University (Malaysia).
My Research
I am currently pursuing a PhD in Accounting at Management and Science University. My proposed research theme is “The Disciplining Effect of Malaysia’s National Sustainability Reporting Framework (NSRF) on the Substantive Integrity and Quality of Sustainability Disclosures.”
My research interest centres on whether Malaysia’s transition from voluntary sustainability reporting to a mandatory disclosure regime aligned with IFRS S1 and S2 will enhance transparency, accountability, and reporting credibility. Specifically, I aim to examine whether the NSRF exerts a substantive disciplining effect on corporate behaviour or, alternatively, fosters more advanced forms of symbolic compliance and technical obfuscation.
A central theme of my research is the “connectivity gap” between sustainability disclosures and financial statements. While companies increasingly address climate risks and sustainability commitments in narrative reporting, these disclosures are frequently not reflected in financial outcomes such as impairment assessments, provisioning, fair value measurements, or cost structures. My study examines whether sustainability-related disclosures are integrated into financial reporting and whether external assurance and emerging reporting infrastructure, including Malaysia’s Centralised Sustainability Intelligence platform, can enhance the substantive integrity and reliability of corporate sustainability reporting.
Research Notes 