Performance measurement practices in the Malaysian companies : an exploratory study

Abstract

With increasing competition through market globalization and lesser regional protectionism, business enterprises need to adapt and to find its niche to succeed. Along with their strategic efforts such as venturing into new markets or improving internal process, organizations should set a suitable performance measurement system (PMS) to link its strategic priorities and actions. Or else, its efforts would fail to achieve its intended results. Although this issue is pertinent across national boundaries, little is known about this issue in companies in the developing countries (i.e. Malaysia). Thus, this study should fill the gap. This study aims to explore the performance measurement practice in the Malaysian listed companies. Data are gathered through sending questionnaire survey to main and second board listed companies. The findings show that benchmarking, balanced scorecard, and total quality management are widely adopted among Malaysian companies. Furthermore, Malaysian companies considered key performance indicators under customer, competitiveness, shareholders, and financial perspectives as more important than employee, learning and growth, supplier, internal business, and environment perspectives. Additionally, the findings reveal that adopting advanced managerial accounting techniques is significantly influenced organization's overall performance. Adopting ISO 9000 and activity-based cost have significant impact on the diversity of the importance of performance measurement perspectives.