Go big. Go bold. Go radical. Or you may as well go home.

Is the Pengetahuan Moral subject taught in schools ineffective in instilling moral values into the heart of our youth? Most would say yes, Hishammudin said yes. Because it is too narrowly structured, students could memorise the answers and regurgitate them in exam, which is useless. So the government is thinking of reviewing it, maybe adding some 'kerja khusus', reducing some of the nilai(s) and wa-lah. There you go, the 'modified' version of Pengetahuan Moral is ready to rumble. But how different could it be? No matter how you dress the syllibus with, teaching moral is still teaching moral.

Malaysia is not the only country facing this dilemma of how to teach moral values to its citizens. Many other developed countries, like Britain, Australian and New Zealand are in similar situation as well, though the scenario is somewhat different.

The lack of moral values among Malaysians is causing corruptions to happen. Leaders are practicing cronyism and nepotism, civil servants especially the police are taking bribes, business entities causing pollution to the environment, drivers are impolite, teenagers indulge in drugs, alcohol and adultery, and the overall citizens are hopelessly civic-minded creatures with negative habits like littering everywhere especially the river...

Tags: ethic

Petronas has been under great public scrutiny after the sudden rise in oil price last month. Petronas Financial Statements would be the first target where most people would rush to. Here is the breakdown of Petronas's profit worth RM600 billion.

There are arguments saying that Petronas does not do justice to the Rakyat as it doesn't lay out the exact figures pertaining how its profit is being spent. But the reality is, this is how business is run. You cannot expose too much information to the public as these information could be taken advantage of by Petronas competitors. Henceforth, only the summary is being revealed to us.

But I do agree that Petronas financial statements should be tabled in the Parliament where it will be subject to scrutiny by our MP's, after all Petronas belongs partly to the government and therefore it belongs partly to us. We deserve the right to know and to be given justification on the result of Petronas' performance. Petronas is too precious to us - it is the backbone of Malaysia. We can't afford to have any misconduct to happen, nor can we allow any act of asset misappropriation or any negligent business decision to...

Tags: ethic

Catlett once claimed that the accounting community has constructed and developed a motivated notion called accounting – it is designed to accomplish certain objectives; not the objective per se.

CSR is provision of information about various facets of an organization social performance, including information about its environment performance, health, support of local community etc. Unlike financial reporting, it is largely unregulated. It is done on a voluntary basis. 

The core issue in CSR is the openness of the CSR definition. Because CSR is largely unregulated, managements can take a variety of interpretations. They can report anything they wish, from receiving minor environmental award to paying billions of dollars of environmental fines. They can even choose to report only favorable information and omit unfavorable information, and claim themselves as CSR.

There is a question of substance over form and reliability in CSR reporting. For example, McDonald’s CSR reports about its efficient water usage at its outlet but did not report that each of its quarter-ponder requires 600 gallons of water. It also reports about its practice of recycling paper but did not report about the bacteria-infested waters caused by its large-scale pork production in Southeast U.S. This...

Tags: accounting, ethic

The Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at McDonald’s has just started blogging. In his blog, he claimed that the driver that motivates them to adopt CSR is doing the right thing and because it is part of their company ethic and identity. But is McDonald’s really doing the right thing? For decades McDonald's has been criticized for selling unhealthy food, exploitative advertising targeted at children, production of packaging waste, and ecological damage caused by industrial processing of its products. One could argue that the CSR programmes that McDonald’s have undertaken are actually done to distract the public from the ethical questions posed by their core operations. I agree with this because most of the changes that McDonald’s had introduced for the past decade has not been successful in addressing the main concern of the public i.e. the food it serves still harms people, promotes obesity among children, and has detrimental effects on land and water.

On May 1 2002, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report stating that childhood obesity and related diseases had doubled in the past 10 years, specifically citing high-fat fast-food as a cause. If McDonald’s is truly concern about...

Tags: ethic

We live in a world of society who reveres intelligent people. This is the reason why we perceive intellectualism as the one sure thing that can lead us to success.

Talking about intellectualism itself is an area of subjectivity. I am in no position to either define or classify what intellectualism is. Everyone is free to label anyone as intelligent; no one is ever going to be bothered to check or verify his/her IQ test scores, exam result, how many books he has read, how many quizzes he has won so on and so forth.

I have no problem with the fact that society cherishes smart people, as they deserve the credit for their hard work, and most importantly it is gift from God. My worries are on how a person’s attitude towards acquiring knowledge can be damaging to the individual itself as well as the society as an aggregate. A person who places extremely high emphasis on ‘gaining knowledge’ will somehow unable him/her from reacting to the world in a more 'fair' manner. It follows, by having intense desire to become smart or knowledgeable, there will be other aspects of life that has nothing to do with intellectualism, to...

Tags: academic, ethic, university