BUKU ABSTRAK - Universiti Putra Malaysia

Factors Influencing Social Activism among Campus Youth in Sri Lanka
Keywords: Social activism, campus youth, Sri Lanka
Prof. Dr. Azimi Hamzah
Shanta Abeysinghe and Sharifah Md. Nor
Institute of Social Science Studies, University Putra Malaysia,
43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
+603-8946 8230; azimi@putra.upm.edu.my
Cost-system Functionality and the Performance of the Malaysian Palm Oil Industry
Prof. Dr. Foong Soon Yau
Neilson Anak Teruki
Graduate School of Management, University Putra Malaysia,
43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
+603-8946 7438; syfoong@putra.upm.edu.my
Keywords: Cost accounting system, organisational performance, oil palm enterprises, Malaysia
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Social Sciences
Youths are constantly searching for a social identity and citizenry to express their inner concerns, and realize
their national development. Within this context, this study identifies social activism as a means for building
youths’ identity and citizenry. Numerous studies have indicated that the search for identity and citizenry is
greatly influenced by both contextual and demographic factors. This paper aims to discuss the findings of a study
pertaining to the contextual and demographic variables that influence social activism among campus youths in Sri
Lanka. Corning’s measures of Social Activism Orientation were adapted for this study to measure social activism.
The findings of this study suggest that youths, irrespective of rural and urban, coming from low income or high
income households, belonging to different fields of studies or have parents with different levels of engagement in
political activities, have equal levels of engagement in social activism in college campuses. However, significant
differences were indicated between youths’ gender, war and non-war location context, and if their campuses are
long established or newly established universities. The impact of universal free education policy is discussed
with special reference to youth empowerment. Existing constrains and the lack of a youth-centered development
approach and an existing institutional socio political culture on campus are also discussed.
Turbulence in the marketplace necessitates adaptation of the cost system design to meet the changing information needs
of managers (Johnson, 1990; Mia and Chenhall, 1994). Despite the assumed causal link between cost-system functionality and
performance, the empirical evidence that support such a relationship is lacking and prior studies on efficacy of cost system
sophistication is inconclusive and mixed. This study investigates the relationship between cost-system functionality and the
performance of oil palm enterprises in Malaysia, as well as whether manager’s perceived usefulness of cost information
mediates the cost-system functionality-performance relationship. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from oil
palm enterprises located only in Sarawak to avoid the confounding effects of weather and soil conditions on performance. The
results indicate that the cost relevance/timeliness dimension of cost-system functionality significantly enhances the performance
of oil palm enterprises. However, manager’s perceived usefulness of cost information only partially mediates the cost-system
functionality-non-financial performance relationship, and this is likely due to the centralised control exercised by the head
office over its estate operations. This study indicates that the efficacy of cost system is contingent on environmental uncertainty.
High-functional cost system is cost efficient and beneficial only when environment is highly uncertain. The oil palm enterprises
are operating in a highly turbulent economic environment due to serious external challenges, such as rising costs of production
inputs, stagnating yield, labor shortage and massive subsidies for production of competing crops. By selecting only oil palm
enterprises for this study to ensure the operational homogeneity, the effects of cost-system functionality on performance could be
examined in a more controlled setting, and this differs from prior cross-sectional studies based on firms from diverse industries.
By analysing the attributes of cost-system functionality into two major dimensions, this study also shows that only relevant and
timely cost information could enhance performance.