Vol. 17 No. 3(I)S (2025)

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is a framework for businesses to assess their business practices and performance on various ethical and sustainability issues. Over two decades of global prominence, the ESG concept is now rooted across sectors, including education. In the context of higher education, embedding ESG into the curriculum is essential to equip students with a deeper understanding of ESG principles and related issues. This study explores undergraduate students' perceptions of ESG principles within the context of higher education. This study employed a quantitative research design, and 174 responses among undergraduates accounting students were collected using a survey questionnaire. The findings reveal that while ESG elements are addressed within the academic syllabus, they are not delivered systematically, highlighting the need for deeper integration and clearer curriculum alignment. Overall, student responses across all three dimensions, Environmental Awareness, Social Awareness, and Governance and Ethics, were generally positive. Among these, Governance and Ethics recorded the highest mean score, suggesting that students strongly perceive ethical behavior and see it as a crucial component in implementing ESG principles within higher education. Furthermore, awareness of climate change and its effects needs to be highlighted among students. Embedding ESG into the curriculum will help to produce environmentally conscious and socially responsible students. In addition, regulators and practitioners can play their role in jointly educating students on ESG. Future studies could consider expanding the sample size by including research universities and further examining the ESG relationship comprehensively within the context of higher education. These findings enhance the current literature on ESG in education by highlighting students' perspectives on ESG implementation, offering valuable insights for policymakers and universities to strengthen the integration of ESG into the curriculum and to cultivate socially and environmentally conscious graduates prepared for global change.

Normalizing in adoption of digital payment will contribute to a digital economy environment. This conceptual paper describes the literature review on a proposal for a study of the parents’ behavior towards the use of digital payment by their primary school children. The proposed factors derived from the TAM and UTAUT model that would explain the adoption and non-adoption factors. The main objective of the study is to investigate the relationship between parents’ readiness and the factors influencing their acceptance of technology, especially the use of digital payment systems by their primary school children. The proposed research method uses convenience sampling. The questionnaire will be disseminated to parents who have primary school children aged 6 to 12 years old. The response of 200 questionnaires was assumed as suitable for drawing a conclusion for the study. The findings aim to provide insight into the various factors, including digital literacy, financial awareness, and accessibility of technology, that influence parents’ readiness to adopt digital payments. The result of this study will assist the banking industry in improving its facilities and strategies in its digital payment. The result would also help government agencies (such as schools and the education ministry) in improving their policy and management.

This paper examines the relationship between GDP, FDI and inflation rate and energy consumption by analyzing time-series data from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Data sources include the World Bank, the Malaysia Energy Information (MEI), and the World Development Indicators (WDI) from 2003 to 2023 and were examined by multiple regression analysis. The findings show that energy consumption in Malaysia is significantly impacted by GDP, FDI, and the inflation rate. Energy usage in Indonesia is significantly influenced by both GDP and FDI. In contrast, the GDP and inflation rate are the main variables that have a major impact on energy use in Thailand. These findings have important implications for policymakers that provide insights into the trends in economic development across different countries. Policy makers must develop coordinated energy usage and economic policies to achieve resilient and long-lasting economic development.

This study examines the gap between awareness and actual zakat payment among Muslim employees in private universities and colleges in Kedah, Malaysia. Despite recognizing zakat as a religious obligation, many do not fulfil it due to misunderstandings about calculation methods, misconceptions regarding its benefits, and practical challenges in the payment process. The study aims to assess the influence of motivation, commitment, and awareness on zakat payment intention. Data were collected through a snowball sampling technique, yielding 147 valid responses from academic and administrative staff in private higher education institutions. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLSSEM). Motivation significantly influences both awareness and intention to pay zakat, while commitment affects only awareness. Awareness fully mediates the relationship between commitment and intention and partially mediates the relationship between motivation and intention. This study highlights the critical role of awareness in translating knowledge into zakat-paying behavior. It also underscores that while motivation is essential for fostering intention, commitment alone is insufficient without adequate awareness. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and institutional leaders to design targeted strategies that enhance zakat compliance among employees in the higher education sector.

Many studies have indicated the significance of trustworthiness in alternative dispute resolutions (ADR) and how it protects consumer rights. Studies on trustworthiness in online alternative dispute resolutions (ODR) have received extensive attention, while traditional consumer ADR (CDR) has received less attention. Additionally, a few studies have claimed that consumer familiarity with CDR may affect the measurement of trustworthiness. Thus, this study aims to examine the relationship between accountability and three dimensions of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity) in consumer ADR. This study also seeks to compare the relationship between initial and repeated consumers. A total of 323 sets of data were collected and analysed from consumers who filed their claims with the Tribunal Consumer Claim Malaysia. Using path analysis, this study supports the relationships between accountability and both ability and benevolence; however, it rejects the relationship between responsibility and integrity. Additionally, this study found a significant difference between initial consumers and repeated consumers in the three relationships. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by adopting and testing a relationship suggested in the Causal Attribution Model of Trust Repair (CAMTR). The ADR platform should have a strong ability to organise and coordinate with consumers who have prior experience because they attribute their experiences differently from initial consumers.

Sustainability leaders in Malaysian higher education navigate paradoxes embedded in institutional efforts to implement sustainability agendas. By drawing on comparative case studies of two public and two private universities, it reveals how leaders confront multi-level tensions ranging from macro-level policy ambitions to individual-level ethical dilemmas. These tensions include national policy ambitions versus limited support, organizational growth imperatives versus environmental commitments, and individual ethics versus pragmatic workload demands. Using semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and limited observation, this study investigates how these tensions are nested and cascading in nature: contradictions at one level intensify dilemmas at another. Leaders adopted dynamic strategies (e.g. symbolic gestures, temporal and spatial separation, and integrative reframing) to cope with or manage paradoxes. Notably, public and private universities differed in these tensions and the dominant logic driving responses: Public institutions leaned toward symbolic and compliance strategies due to bureaucratic constraints, while Private institutions pursued integration framed within market imperatives. The findings contribute to paradox theory by illustrating how sustainability tensions are experienced and managed across institutional levels. The study also offers practical insights into developing leadership capabilities, aligning HRM systems with sustainability goals, and fostering multi-level coherence in sustainability governance. These insights are especially pertinent for universities seeking to advance meaningful sustainability transformations amid persistent structural and ideological contradictions.

Technology has significantly enhanced access to education, enabling students to benefit from lower costs and higher productivity. This advancement has been further expedited by the incorporation of AI, especially through applications like AI chatbots. Despite these advancements, students in higher educationespecially those enrolled in public universities in developing countries- often exhibit skepticism toward adopting AI chatbots for academic assistance. Thus, the main goal of this study is to find out how students in public universities in developing nations plan to use AI chatbots as teaching aids. The study will use a purposive sampling strategy to gather data from students at different public universities, with a focus on Malaysia. To construct a robust conceptual model that explains students' behavioral intentions toward AI chatbot usage, this research adopts an integrated framework combining the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Task– Technology Fit (TTF) theory. For data analysis, the study will use the PLS-SEM approach, a well-regarded regression technique suitable for examining complex relationships in structural models. The research's conclusions are anticipated to provide theoretical and practical insights. This study may theoretically add to the body of knowledge on AI chatbot adoption by illuminating the complex human behaviors linked to the adoption of new technologies. Practically, the findings may give governments, university administrators, and AI chatbot developers important information on how to work together to create AI chatbots that are more dependable, user-friendly, and attractive to students, especially in developing countries.

Mental illness has been posited as one of the leading factors of online impulse purchases. The impact of impulse purchases caused by borderline personality disorder (BPD) is not clearly established in Malaysia, although Malaysia has among the highest spending consumers in the region, with mental illness increasing steadily in the community. The importance of identifying the effect of BPD on impulse buying is important because there is a need for intervention to eliminate the negative impact impulse buying has on finances, relationships, hoarding problems, wastage, and mental health in a person with BPD. The objective of this conceptual paper is to investigate existing literature on the level of impulse purchases of Malaysian consumers and their relation to mental illness, specifically borderline personality disorder (BPD), and propose a framework to depict the relations of selected factors. Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) Theory is adopted as the underpinning theory for the conceptual framework. The stimulus element is online shopping usage, the organism element is BPD, and the response element is impulse buying. The lack of research in Malaysia, despite the dire consequences of impulse buying by a person with BPD, points out that future empirical study is needed with progression to the development of intervention and prevention policies. Finally, the success factors for implementing the proposed framework and some thoughts on future research directions have been discussed.

Most of the existing studies primarily focus on the impact of ESG and Shariah-compliant on the financial performance instead of the share price performance. The objective of this study is to investigate the share performance of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and Shariah-compliant stocks in the Malaysian equity market, which is benchmarked against the FBMKLCI from the period of 2019 to 2023. It evaluates the ability of the stocks to surpass the benchmark and outperform the FBMKLCI by 5% and 10% respectively. This study examines the share price performance which leverages the Stata software to identify p-values (<0.1) as indicators of marginal statistical significance. The results demonstrated a mixed performance for ESG-rated stocks, with social and governance variables emerging as a more consistent driver of outperformance compared to environmental dimensions. Even though the ESG and Shariah-compliant combination demonstrated a mixed set of results in the outperformance of the stocks, it has provided some evidence that the integration of ESG and Shariah-compliant stocks may enhance the equity market returns. It promotes the alignment of ESG and Shariah-compliant stocks to institutional investors, policymakers, and retailers who strive to achieve better equity market performance. This research underscores the pivotal role of integrating ESG and Shariah-compliant frameworks in driving share price performance while ensuring that ethical standards are taken into consideration.

Previous research and practitioners typically concentrate on a limited operational definition of bullying when examining educators’ experiences with bullying in higher educational institutions (HEIs). This study employs the term Educator-Targeted Bullying (ETB) to denote a more precise variable, owing to the narrow definition of academic bullying. This study aims to validate a 47-item instrument that assesses three forms of bullying-related stress among academics in higher education institutions. Upon reviewing previous literature on educator bullying, three prevalent forms are identified: workplace bullying, cyberbullying, and teacher-targeted bullying. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to evaluate factorial structures based on a total of 210 survey responses. This study categorizes seven dimensions of ETB: student direct bullying, devaluation bullying, indirect private bullying, pictorial cyberbullying, task bullying, relational cyberbullying, and student physical bullying. Consequently, the factors significantly influence the operational definitions of educator bullying.