Whistleblowing Policy Disclosure Among Malaysian Listed Shariah-Compliant Companies

Abstract

Despite the fact that there are legislative safeguards to protect whistleblowers, there is no specific regulation requiring Malaysian firms to establish a standardised whistleblowing disclosure. The purpose of this research is to determine the level of whistleblowing policy disclosures among Malaysia’s top 100 shariah-compliant listed firms. The study employed a content analysis approach to determine the level of disclosure of whistleblowing policies, which were evaluated using a self-developed checklist. The whistleblowing disclosure index was created specifically utilising the guidelines given by the MCCG (2021), the OECD (2011), and Standards Australia (2003). According to this research, a substantial majority of Malaysian Shariah-compliant companies in the Top 100 do not provide thorough disclosure in their whistleblowing policies. Despite those who achieved 81 percent to 100 percent disclosure of their whistleblowing policies, a large proportion of these Shariah-compliant organisations produced less than 50 percent of the desired disclosures of their whistleblowing policies. This study is consistent with the Minority Shareholders Watchdog Group’s (MWSG) findings that the implementation of whistleblowing policies in Malaysian-listed corporations is poor. The findings of this study have significant implications for improving knowledge of the need for Shariah-compliant organisations to have effective and comprehensive corporate whistleblower policies. Hopefully, this would help regulators establish effective tools to promote whistleblowing and demand the mandatory installation of an internal whistleblowing system among Malaysian Shariah-compliant enterprises to provide better responsibility and openness to the public, consistent with the teachings of Islam.