Consumer Financial Vulnerabilities In Malaysia

This book examines four aspects of Malaysian consumers’ financial vulnerabilities. First, it discusses the issue of over-indebtedness due to excessive reliance on consumer financing. Second, the book investigates why Malaysians are ill-prepared for their golden years in terms of retirement planning and savings. Third, it delves into the problem of financial fraud victimisation among Malaysian consumers. Fourth, the book analyses the reasons why Malaysians are underinsured despite the distinct benefits of life insurance. Drawing on secondary data from government agencies such as Bank Negara Malaysia, Employees' Provident Fund, Royal Malaysian Police and the Department of Statistics Malaysia, each chapter presents statistical trends reflecting the four financial vulnerabilities. In-depth analyses of the literature reveal three broad psychological domains (cognition, motivation, and disposition) and specific psychological factors (e.g. over-confidence, self-control, social norms, and financial literacy) that significantly influence consumers’ financial decisions. The four financial vulnerabilities investigated in this book directly address the strategic outcomes of the Malaysian National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2019–2023 (MNSFL), a five-year plan to elevate the financial literacy of Malaysians. Finally, the book presents strategic recommendations that are believed to be useful guidelines for relevant policymakers to promote positive financial behaviours and rational attitudes among consumers. It will be a useful resource for policymakers and researchers interested in economic psychology and behavioural finance.

This book examines four aspects of Malaysian consumers’ financial vulnerabilities. First, it discusses the issue of over-indebtedness due to excessive reliance on consumer financing. Second, the book investigates why Malaysians are ill-prepared for their golden years in terms of retirement planning and savings. Third, it delves into the problem of financial fraud victimisation among Malaysian consumers. Fourth, the book analyses the reasons why Malaysians are underinsured despite the distinct benefits of life insurance. Drawing on secondary data from government agencies such as Bank Negara Malaysia, Employees' Provident Fund, Royal Malaysian Police and the Department of Statistics Malaysia, each chapter presents statistical trends reflecting the four financial vulnerabilities. In-depth analyses of the literature reveal three broad psychological domains (cognition, motivation, and disposition) and specific psychological factors (e.g. over-confidence, self-control, social norms, and financial literacy) that significantly influence consumers’ financial decisions. The four financial vulnerabilities investigated in this book directly address the strategic outcomes of the Malaysian National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2019–2023 (MNSFL), a five-year plan to elevate the financial literacy of Malaysians. Finally, the book presents strategic recommendations that are believed to be useful guidelines for relevant policymakers to promote positive financial behaviours and rational attitudes among consumers. It will be a useful resource for policymakers and researchers interested in economic psychology and behavioural finance.

Vulnerability is a term that can be studied from different dimensions – the social, legal, economic and political. This book explores these dimensions and captures the vulnerabilities of particular groups in Malaysia – the transgenders, women, children, aboriginal and indigenous people, the rural fisherfolk, the stateless and the economically disempowered. Mirroring the spectrum of »vulnerable groups« defined by the United Nations Global Compact in the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals Report, this book highlights the unique features that portray vulnerabilities – including gender, age, indigeneity, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. The case studies of vulnerable groups in Malaysia – a multicultural, diverse plural Asian state – would be appreciated by both undergraduate and postgraduate students, academics, researchers and policy-makers, keen in Asian Studies and vulnerabilities.

Talent management is a way banks acquire competitive advantage. Practices such as personality profiling with effective knowledge-based productivity and the application of high-performance work systems help to set a company apart from its competition and maintain this competitive advantage. This book provides an in-depth look at the relationship between personality types and individual-level performance in knowledge-based environments, through cases in Australia’s banking and finance sector. This book also examines how high-performance workplace systems influence individual performance in relation to productivity through a multi-level analysis of micro- and meso-level factors. The findings in this book have relevant implications not only for the Australian system but also for other banking and financial service contexts outside of Australia.

How can the public manager create and co-create value in the digital economy? While there is much exciting work being done, there is a pressing need to recontextualize public value theory (PVT), specifically in terms of its theoretical precepts, in the fluid and dynamic environment that the digital economy has produced. Much of the theoretical undergirding of PVT predates the full onset of today’s digital economy, leaving aside phenomena including citizen-driven innovations, decentralized digital structures, and the algorithmic foundations of new economic life. This is why a conceptually driven exercise in contemporizing PVT would be of great value to public administration’s theoreticians seeking to lead the theory in catching up to the praxis. This book seeks to answer the question of creating and co-creating public managerial value by developing chapters that revisit categories central to the functions of public managers in relation to other value-creating agents under PVT. It introduces new and important lenses to PVT that are grounded in the praxis of the digital economy, raising new questions about old problems in PVT and generating newer formulations that push PVT forward and make its debates salient to the futures that lay before the modern public manager. The book therefore constitutes an important effort to take PVT forward by shedding new light on the potency of the public manager in confronting and constructing the digital economy through co-creation with the other agents of public value. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and policy makers in the fields of public and nonprofit management, public administration and policy, and PVT.

Due to automation, nearly half of the jobs will vanish over the next two decades in the US. However, the problem is not confined to any particular country. Management educators in higher education are faced with two fundamental questions: (a) how we prepare our students for new required technology competencies when conducting international business and (b) how we work with new technologies to prepare our students. While the next generation of employees requires competencies in working with artificial intelligence relying on data analytics, the emergence of artificial intelligence and new technologies in augmenting teaching is changing the nature of higher education across the globe. Management Education and Automation explores international management education in light of exponential development of artificial intelligence, big data, demographic shifts, expansion of robotic utilization in many economic sectors, aging populations and negative population growth in developed economies, multipolar international political systems, migration patterns, and fundamental shifts in individual and social interactions via digital media. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students in the fields of international business and management, globalization, management education, and management of technology and innovation.

Competencies are a component of human capital and one of the most important assets of an enterprise. They play an important role in strengthening the position of the company in a competitive market. Investing in the development of competencies increases the organisation's ability to grow and compete through innovations. This book presents a multi-dimensional analysis of the relationship between managerial competencies and innovations. It analyses the role of a manager in a modern organisation, functions performed by managers, management styles and key challenges, including shaping behaviour in the process of managing change in an organisation, as well as an analysis of the structure of competencies, in particular managerial competencies, and the conditions of the process of forming managerial competencies. Management Theory, Innovation and Organisation: A Model of Managerial Competencies illustrates the organisational conditions of innovativeness, which is the relationship between strategy, structure, organisational culture and leadership and knowledge management and innovation management. The developed model can undoubtedly be considered the author’s pioneering contribution to the studies of managerial competencies and innovativeness. The book will be valuable to researchers, students, and managers in the fields of leadership, organizational studies, innovation management, and human resource management.

Through an interdisciplinary approach combining the concepts, methods and tools in language and discourse studies and insights from marketing and tourism research, this book examines the online place branding of Hong Kong, one of the most visited cities and well-known spots in the world. The book compares how the place brand is officially constructed and conveyed by the institutional bodies, as realised on the Brand Hong Kong website online, with how the place brand is publicly experienced and perceived by individuals around the world, as realised on the TripAdvisor Hong Kong travel forum online. The book also includes comparative analysis between Singapore and Hong Kong to provide better understanding of online place branding and findings from the comparative study identify interesting similarities and differences between the official portrayal of the place brand of Hong Kong and its public perception in the digital realm, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore in online place branding. The book also offers evidence-based suggestions on how we can bridge the gap between the online representation and perception of a place brand and how to enhance online place branding in general.