Question

According to Nurmazilah, the nation building mantra became the kind of soul searching within MIA staff. MIA was established by Parliament with the mandate to develop the accounting profession. The profession shall support the economic development in the country particularly in the 1960s where Malaysian economy is at the wake of British “rule and divide” economic agenda. Until now, the nation building mantra is the key to MIA strategy particularly in preparing the accountants to embrace technology. The performance of MIA is reflected by its ability to translate the nation building strategy into its operational activities and the relationship with its stakeholders. The IT strategic plan is the first step in the journey of translating nation building strategy into practice. The IT strategic plan are divided into inner layer and outer layer. Inner layer is within MIA where IT enables its internal operation to be more efficient by putting IT governance and necessary infrastructures in place and outer layer focus on stimulating the profession as a whole; one of the milestones is the e-bank confirmation that materialized in 2020 but the initial works has started since 2016. In keeping up with the global development of the accountancy profession, Nurmazilah acknowledged the dire need for members of the Institute; practitioners in commercial sector, public sector and academia alike, to be prepared to address for what is coming in the next months and years to come – technology advancement. Accounting and auditing services in particular, are facing the overarching concerns: the impact of new technologies disrupting the profession, and its ability to adapt to the rapid pace of change. She understood this issue well, after all, four years of her younger days back in the Birmingham Business School was very much focused on completing her PhD thesis on technology adoption by auditors. To drive this, and ensuring that needs of every sections of its diverse members, the Institute needs to have its own digital strategy. As she understood the issue, it dawned on her that there were many other aspects within the Institute that needed her consideration and funding.

Using the concept of fiduciary duty, focus on Nurmazilah’s specific attributes and give specific examples on her success and aspects that need further improvement.

Answer 1

Fiduciary duty can be defined as the act of the party to work and take actions that are important for the benefit of the other parties.

MIA has the IT strategic plan are divided into the inner layer and outer layer. The inner layer is focused on improving the efficiency of the MIA to have better IT infrastructure and IT governance while the outer layer mainly focused on stimulating the profession. MIA also focused on the development of Accounting and auditing service and e-bank confirmation that materialized in 2020. She also emphasized the implementation of technology adoption by auditors that can solve many issues for the auditors and accountants.

If we look at the probable areas of improvement, accounting governance and transparency can be one of the important fields to focus on. This will make sure that all the financial transactions are transparent and no malfunctioning is taking place.

Apart from this, she can also introduce ethical accounting and practices in the organization that will help in blowing whistles if there is any unethical practice in the firm.