Essay --

On September 29, 2013 10.3 Million individuals checked out watch the last scene of Breaking Bad. The show was a tremendous accomplishment for AMC and caught million’s of people’s eye to the medication that the show was based around; Methamphetamine. Despite the fact that Breaking Bad vigorously affected the ubiquity of Methamphetamine, it's anything but another medication. In any case, Methamphetamine has gotten progressively intense as of late because of innovation and assembling that has become simpler and further developed. The starting point of Methamphetamine originates from a medication called Amphetamine; which was first delivered in 1887 in Germany. Afterward, Methamphetamine, which was simpler to make and more grounded than its forerunner, was made in Japan in 1919. Because of the crystalline powder having the option to be dissolvable in water, infusion of the medication turned out to be exceptionally mainstream in its initial days. Methamphetamine initially got put into gigantic use during World War II. Methamphetamine was utilized to shield troops from nodding off, and was utilized by the two sides of the war. A weird and discouraging certainty is that Methamphetamine was really given to kamikaze pilots before their...

Violent Video Games Are Bad for You Free Essays

Today, youngsters, adolescents, and grown-ups are presented to savagery for the duration of their lives. They are uncovered through network shows, motion pictures, possibly in the city, yet what analysts and researchers have end up being an expanding component of savagery in kids and grown-ups is their being presented to rough computer games in which â€Å"they can create viciousness, enthusiastic upheavals, and improper language†. As indicated by Violent Video Games: The Newest Media Violence Hazard, about 85% or more computer games incorporate rough substance. We will compose a custom exposition test on Vicious Video Games Are Bad for You or then again any comparable point just for you Request Now Vicious substance incorporates: violence, murdering, wrong language, and sexual substance. From that point forward, numerous individuals have been stating that these games advance terrible conduct and cause individuals to be progressively rough. As individuals play brutal computer games, it impacts terrible conduct in the player since when you play these games, you control the individual who causes the wrongdoings, shoot and slaughter your adversary, regardless of whether it is a crook or police officer contingent upon the game you are playing. Since you are playing the game, you feel progressively associated with your character in the game and it might influence you in reality. This is demonstrated by the article Computer Games Can Rot Your Brain. As per it, â€Å"researchers have demonstrated that playing or viewing rough computer games has prompted liquor utilization, obliteration of property and other terrible conduct. Computer games can likewise prompt taking of things, essentially vehicles. † Although the article says that, Akemi, a drawn out gamer now 22 years of age, says something else. He says â€Å"I have been messing around since I was in any event 7, I have no criminal record. I have passing marks and have frequently been discovered playing admirably into the night (that is, 4 hours or more). Despite the fact that Akemi has no criminal record, Brad Bushman, a researcher that has been examining the impacts of savage games on individuals says â€Å"aggressive conduct may seem not as crime or physical brutality however in progressively unpretentious manners in manners individuals respond to or interface with others in regular day to day ex istence. † This would imply that Akemi, a gamer for quite a long time with no criminal record, may not cause violations, however within him he has a savage conduct that he communicates while associating with individuals without him knowing it. Not exclusively do brutal recordings advance terrible conduct, they additionally crush students’ grades. On the off chance that somebody is as of now affected by the terrible conduct in computer games, it is sure that the understudy won't prevail in school. On the off chance that he isn't impacted by awful conduct and are getting unsatisfactory evaluations in school, at that point it might be the game’s addictiveness. Games are fun, particularly when you are overcoming beasts and killing individuals which cause you to do it for quite a long time on, making you dependent on it. At the point when you are at school, you would just consider these games and overlook your training. This is upheld by Bushman when he says â€Å"The interface between rough media and animosity is more grounded than the connection between doing schoolwork and getting passing marks. † People can't help contradicting this and state that savage computer games don’t cause awful evaluations since it may have been that the understudy was at that point getting unsatisfactory evaluations before his introduction of vicious games reasoning that the games had no effect on his lackluster showing at school. This might be valid at the same time, what makes it an awful contention is that the understudy that is doing inadequately in school and is playing these games will never escape their propensity for getting awful evaluations. In the event that this understudy was to switch up his games with instructive games for example, at that point he may have picked up the smarts to escape his propensity and become a superior understudy. At long last, fierce computer games are destructive for you, and every other person. They cause troublesome conduct, advance brutality most as a rule, and urge understudies to get terrible scores. Numerous individuals can't help contradicting this however Bushman says â€Å"many logical examinations obviously show that brutal computer games make kids bound to shout, push, and punch. † If we don't see an impact now, we would see it happen later on the off chance that they keep on playing the games. As a last word, he says â€Å"We incorporated each and every examination we could discover on the point. Despite what children state, savage computer games are unsafe. † Instructions to refer to Violent Video Games Are Bad for You, Essay models

How to Use Secondary Essay Samples

How to Use Secondary Essay SamplesAn essay is a logical tool in the education of a new student in a medical school. It shows him/her the language used in a way that will help them understand medical concepts and practice in a more practical and descriptive manner.This essay should be written at the academic level and should be graded on the basis of the writing skill of the student. Secondary essays do not have to be longer or more complex than a college-level essay. They just need to be able to show a clear understanding of the subject matter and the knowledge required to write a good essay.The academic essay in a medical school should present the student in a way that the student can communicate the ideas in a clear and concise manner to the teachers, students and even the professors. Sometimes an essay gets stuffed in the body of the assignment because it does not do its job of informing. Not only does this essay look sloppy, it also doesn't do its job well. Therefore, you should be prepared to go over the same text several times before the deadline.A secondary essay is important for all students at all levels. It is designed for all students in all levels in order to increase their academic awareness and skills. The professional nature of the academic essay, together with the requirement for in-depth research and analysis to be done to win the point, makes this form of writing a difficult one for students to accomplish.Students who intend to pursue careers in the medical profession will benefit from completing such a paper. Secondary essays are a powerful tool that should be utilized frequently in order to improve the student's chances of winning points in his/her exams. There are many materials available to help students achieve the academic standards of the school.Since students need to do well in every class, they need to use different kinds of strategies to attain success in a medical school. Many secondary essay samples have been prepared in order to p repare the students in the medical field. It is very helpful to use these samples in essay competitions so that they can prepare themselves for future competitions. The various essay examples presented in the essay samples can help the students write in a well-organized and clearly written manner.The writers are taught how to correctly cite primary sources to prove their points. They are also taught about researching and analyzing primary sources in order to solve the argument. Also, they are taught about organizing data and explaining what they found. The essays help the students in gaining skills that will serve them well in their future careers in the medical field.Students who intend to specialize in a particular branch of medicine and whose careers are dependent on it can easily score high in a secondary essay. There are a number of free, secondary essay samples available on the internet that can be used by students to prepare their essay. One of the best things about these sec ondary essay samples is that they allow students to choose the topic and write it from scratch, instead of writing a pre-written article.

The Identifying Factors in the Development of Aggression...

The Identifying Factors in the Development of Aggression and Violence in Youth Today Tragic events like the shootings at Columbine High School capture public attention and concern, but are not typical of youth violence. Most adolescent homicides are committed in inner cities and outside of school. They most frequently involve an interpersonal dispute and a single victim. On average, six or seven youths are murdered in this country each day. Most of these are inner-city minority youths. Such acts of violence are tragic and contribute to a climate of fear in schools and communities. Research findings are identifying factors in the development of aggressive and antisocial behavior from early childhood to adolescence and into†¦show more content†¦Successful early adjustment at home increases the likelihood that children will overcome such individual challenges and not become violent. However, exposure to violent or aggressive behavior within a family or peer group may influence a child in that direction. Types and Severity of Antisocial Behavior The types and severity of antisocial behaviors exhibited by youths vary greatly and include lying, bullying, truancy, starting fights, vandalism, theft, assault, rape, and homicide. As a rule, the older the age of onset, the fewer the number of antisocial youths who will engage in seriously aggressive and violent behavior. Longitudinal studies show that many children who engage in antisocial behavior in childhood continue to do so at least through adolescence. Longitudinal research has identified types of youth who progress to adolescent antisocial behavior, multiple pathways through which it develops and persists, and the multiple factors that shape this risk. This research has identified two types of life course trajectories: life course persistent, which is viewed as a form of psycho- pathology, and adolescence limited, which is identified only in select social situations. The distinction between these two types of individuals is very useful, both as a way of thinking about developmental knowledge and as a tool for targeting the right interventions for antisocial youth. Research in this area has generated evidence for this way ofShow MoreRelatedEssay on Genetics Are the Main Cause of Psychopathy1146 Words   |  5 Pagesbe a psychopath. High levels of aggression or delinquency, and antisocial behaviors are all seen in youth with personalities correlating to those of psychopaths. Child psychopathy has not been emphasized as much within the scientific community as much as it is for adult psychopathy. Most clinicians believe this disorder can potentially be treatable and youth showing psychopathic traits can benefit most from this. (Dolan). Some benefits could include: Identifying high risk offenders, ramificationsRead MoreThesis Statement : Children Of The 21st1470 Words   |  6 Pagesnot worthwhile. The use of internet is becoming more and more every day. Even children are using the internet more than they are allowed to. Recent studies show that about 10 years back there were many children playing in grounds and parks but today every park and ground available, are very empty. This is due to more internet and digital media. Parents of 128 children who ranged from first grade through sixth grade are made to go through the cognitive developmental assessment of their childrenRead MoreYouth Gangs And The Cognitive And Social Learning Theory1850 Words   |  8 PagesAbstract: This paper will discuss the correlation of youth gangs and how the cognitive and social learning theory comes in to play, and why female and male juveniles end up in the system. It will touch bases on how youth surroundings have a lot to do with the decisions they choose to make and the life style they end up living. Gangs usually recruit youth off the street, if a child sees that being a part of a gang is an everyday thing and is normal then they will be influenced more to do that. TheRead MoreInfluence of Family Values, Violence and Media Upon Children Essays1949 Words   |  8 Pages Patterns of behavior and cycles of abuse affect childhood development. Traditions and morals give the foundation and support that children need to understand boundaries. Love, family time, and structure provide a cornerstone for children to thrive. At the same time, neglect, abuse and expose to violence create the child’s blueprint for life. To what extent does the â€Å"family† shape the values of children today? Parental involvement and discipline help mold the child’s decisions regarding violentRead MoreBullying at Home and School2035 Words   |  8 Pageshandled says a lot to the victim. â€Å"A statue stands in a shaded place An angel girl with an upturned face A name is written on a polished rock A broken heart that the world forgot.† -Martina McBride Identifying the problem in a child at a young age is not as easily done as in older children. â€Å"Identifying the age aggressor in childhood is much harder because the aggressor is not as advanced as a middle or high school child. The start point to end doesn’t last as long.†(Biachou,Andreous, Botsoglou,Read MoreArt And The Human Services Field1841 Words   |  8 Pageseverything that part one does. ART is not your traditional psychotherapy, group guidance or advising, specific education, or values training. Program goal for ART Aggression Replacement Training is able to concentrate on the development of individuals to address emotional and social aspects that are contributing to youth and behaviors today. Research has been able to show that people who develop social skills, anger control, and moral reasoning skills are less likely to get into high risk situationsRead MoreThe Effects Of Media Violence On Society1942 Words   |  8 Pagesconstantly exposed to media, and media has made the communication of violence more reachable and easier than ever before. Violence is especially an issue that needs to be looked upon, as many, especially the younger generation, view violence in film, computer games or even news reporting’s and this creates them into believing that violence in okay. A recent 2015 study however, identified an association between exposure to violence in entertainment and violent behaviour, which does not prove that exposureRead MoreHigh Risk Family Assessment Health Promotion1593 Words   |  6 Pagessupport and help these people (Bailes, 1998). Substance abuse involving drugs, alcohol, or both is linked with a variety of negative social conditions, including family disturbances, monetary problems, lost output, and failure in school, domestic violence, child abuse, and crime. Furthermore, both social attitudes and legal answers to the use of alcohol and illicit drugs make substance abuse one of the most multifaceted public health issues. Estimates of the total overall costs of substance abuseRead MoreHalimbawa Ng Term Paper6581 Words   |  27 PagesFuller has analyzed bullying in the context of rankism. Bullying can occur in any context in which human beings interact with each other. This includes school, church, family, the workplace, home, and neighborhoods. It is even a common push factor in migration. Bullying can exist between social groups, social classes, and even between countries (see jingoism). In fact, on an international scale, perceived or real imbalances of power between nations, in both economic systems and in treaty systemsRead MoreEssay on The Media Violence Debate3490 Words   |  14 PagesTHE MEDIA VIOLENCE DEBATE Introduction Television and video games are favorite ways teenagers spend their leisure hours. Parents and teens themselves have wondered about their effects because of numerous concerns raised with regards to the negative influences that these form of entertainment bring. Many of today’s children grow up with a television at home or even in their own rooms and there have been studies dedicated to the analysis

Medical Marijuana Essay - 938 Words

For decades America has associated marijuana with many things, and none of them ever any good. From the ‘60s with the hippie revolution, to today with criminals of all kinds, there have been numerous associations that are arguably unwarranted in this day and age. Why is it that we have such negative feelings about marijuana? In America today, the government considers it a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has a â€Å"high potential for abuse† and â€Å"no currently accepted medical use.† The problem with this classification clearly lies in the second half of its classification. Marijuana certainly has medicinal purposes, and humans have been using it for centuries to primarily treat chronic pain and a lack of appetite. It is hard to construct a†¦show more content†¦The truth is, we cannot. In our world today, you would be hard-pressed to not have someone close to you with something as serious as cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. With cancer comes a gre at number of awful symptoms, but to waste away from a lack of appetite is quite common. Surprisingly, this complete lack of appetite can easily be alleviated simply by the consumption of marijuana, be it through inhalation or ingestion. The main compound in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has unique properties, and it is the reason why marijuana is such an effective treatment for loss of appetite and chronic pain. Though the FDA refuses to accept THC as appropriate treatment for these symptoms, they gladly endorse Marinol, the synthetic THC. The problems with Marinol are varied, but primarily, it is not nearly as effective as cannabis for treatment, and is quite psychoactive. While marijuana itself is a psychoactive drug, Marinol is 99% THC, and as such, consuming a pill of Marinol can easily induce a psychoactive state. Users have reported to be incapacitated for days and experiencing awful hallucinations all because of this man-made THC. The research is being done, the fa cts are presenting themselves, state legislature is moving forward, but it is not enough. Research has been done that actually shows evidence that THC lowers the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s, one of the mostShow MoreRelatedThe Legalization Of Medical Marijuana1558 Words   |  7 Pages Alaskan Thunderbolt Whether pro, con, user or bystander. The issue of the nationwide legalization of medical marijuana is one that infringes both in political and social standards. Be it that marijuana is subsequently abused, and utilized as an illegal drug. It is regarded highly, as a controversial issue which affects the amenity of conservative, modern America. Because of which one should further seek to understand. Things like its history, correlation with crime, effects on economy, effectsRead MoreMedical Marijuana1767 Words   |  8 Pages Marijuana is a very prominent and controversial issue in society today. Although many slanderous claims have been made about cannabis in recent history, the truths are slowly starting to resurface. Unfortunately, these truths are under heavy criticism due to the stereotypical view of what people view as the typical â€Å"pot smoker.† This skewed perception of a lazy and unmotivated American is the result of over seventy years of propaganda and misinformation spread by private interests who relied onRead MoreMedical Benefits Of Medical Marijuana1161 Words   |  5 Pagessurrounding the issue of whether medical marijuana ought to be legally sanctioned as a medicinal treatment. Medical marijuana involves the use of cannabis and its constituent’s cannabinoids in order to treat a disease or its symptoms (National Institute on Drug Abuse 2015). Numerous studies led declare the drug a miracle treatment for a variety of medical issues. These studies, however, are limited and effectively challenged by different studies that exhibit the health risks marijuana can have on the humanRead MoreMedical Marijuana And Medical Therapy2626 Words   |  11 PagesMedical marijuana refers to the use of cannabis as medical therapy in the palliative sense to treat diseases or alleviate symptoms. This treatment modality has proven to be a highly debatable issue within the medical field due to the use of this substance as an illicit drug. â€Å"The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey monitors priority health risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States† (Center for DiseaseRead MoreMedical Marijuana Essay1059 Words   |  5 PagesMedical Marijuana One of the most controversial issues in the United States is over medical marijuana. Many experiments test the validity of the drug as a medicine, and results of these experiments receive much praise but also some critique. The DEA and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) are battling over the issue. The underlying matter that cannot be ignored is that marijuana proves to be a useful medication for many patients, especially those with wastingRead MoreThe Ban Of Medical Marijuana1090 Words   |  5 Pagesepilepsy and used medical marijuana to save her life. Her parents had tried almost every medication to try and save her by the time she was two-years-old. Some nights she would get fifty seizures each night. Finally, her parents were able to get her a medical marijuana card in Colorado, and the new medication immediately stopped the seizures (Gummow, 8 Miraculous, para. 4, alternet.org). This is just one example of how unjust the ban of medicinal marijuana is. The ban of medical marijuana is unjust becauseRead MoreMedical Marijuana Essay969 Words   |  4 Pages[Medicinal Marijuana] [Heather Bryant] Communication and compostition (COM156) University of Phoenix, Axia College [October 20, 2012] Medicinal Marijuana use in the United States Although many individuals find medical marijuana illegal, and unnecessary, it is a natural herb used to help symptoms caused by chronic illnesses. Over three million Americans use medical marijuana. Medical marijuana is the most widely used drug used to treat chronic illnesses in seventeenRead MoreMedical Marijuana Essay1174 Words   |  5 PagesMedical Marijuana Marijuana (cannabis) is a mixture of leaves, stems, and flowering tops of the Indian hemp plant Cannabis sativa. [4] Marijuana is thought by many to be harmful, but it has been proven in fact to be helpful for some people with certain illnesses. [4] When I first started looking into medical marijuana as my research subject, I was curious to see what people my age actually thought about marijuana. I asked twenty of my peers, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-twoRead MoreMarijuana as Medical Treatment917 Words   |  4 Pages Marijuana as medical treatment Should marijuana become legal in our country as a prescription and clinical drug for medicinal treatment? Imagine somebody that you love lying in bed at a hospital and having just undergone chemotherapy for their cancer treatment; Side effects of chemotherapy like constantly vomiting, fatigue and pain are difficult to tolerate every day. Doctor can prescribe medication, but any of it has absolutely no effectRead MoreThe Legalization Of Medical Marijuana1314 Words   |  6 PagesMarijuana is the most frequently abused illegal substance worldwide. Not only is there no legitimate medical use, it has been tied to physical, mental, and emotional damages. â€Å"Marijuana refers to the dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa, which contains the psychoactive (mind-altering) chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), as well as other related compounds† (National Institute on Drug Abuse). There are many supporters of the legalization of medical marijuana

The Controversial Issue of Executive Pay in America

The Controversial Issue of Executive Pay in America The Controversial Issue of Executive Pay in America Over the past twenty years, America has seen a substantial amount of change and development amongst many technological industries. Old ideas have been revolutionized. Technology has been continuously upgraded time and time again. Americans slowly have to do less and less because new inventions are constantly increasing their abilities to do more for us. Cars are getting faster, phones are getting smarter and before we know it, 2-dementional televisions will be a thing of the past. Despite everything that is growing around us there are still few things that have stayed the same; for example, the average American income for 99†¦show more content†¦Take severance packages for example. When the average employee in no longer benefitting the company, chances are they will be let go. Besides a final paycheck for hours worked and the possibility of unemployment collection, they do not receive anything else from the company. When a CEO is no longer performing up to standards, they are forced to resign but walk away with much more than a final paycheck. Chuck Prince of Citigroup was shown the door after the company lost $64 billion in market value, yet he left with $68 million and a cash bonus of $12.5 million (Nickels, McHugh amp; McHugh, 2010). Not only are CEOs paid a substantial amount more for their work, they are paid a substantial amount more to leave the company all together. In 2009, President Obama and Congress put limits on executive compensation of firms receiving money under the federal government bailout programs. The payout to CEOs leaving their companies was limited to $500,000 but it wasn’t for all companies across the board. This new limit only applied to companies who had borrowed money from the government during periods of economic downfall and hadn’t yet paid it back. Despite the decrease in monetary payout, CEOs were still allowed a decent portion of restricted stock which am ounted for a fairly large payout when the stock could be sold a few years down the line. According to the majority of American citizens, top-level executives are paid more moneyShow MoreRelatedCeo’s and Upper Management’s Acceptance of over Compensation Are Unethical During Times of Financial Struggle Within Organizations1706 Words   |  7 Pagesare not compensated enough for the pressures they endure, that they are generally they first to receive pay cuts when the company is facing financial distress, and in some cases are first to be dismissed in order to save others in the lower echelon. Because of these compensatory packages given when hired, when the company’s financial stability is no longer solid, the CEOs are still guaranteed pay increases and incentives that they continuously accept. The Board of Directors may believe that theirRead MoreImmigration Argument Essay958 Words   |  4 PagesImmigration is when people from all around the world leave their country in the hopes of living in this new place permanently, however immigration is a very controversial topic lately. Having two sides to the story, immigration is thought by many to be a problem because it causes more violence, over population, causes those who are country born residents to pay for immigrants, or even cause job loss, recently Donald Trump has talked a lot about his views on immigration causing a lot more controversy than inRead MoreEthics and Ceo Pay1403 Words   |  6 PagesRunning head: LEADERSHIP AND ETHICS OF CEO PAY Leadership and Ethics of CEO Pay Chief Executive Officer pay in the United States has risen dramatically. In the past three decades the salary of a CEO has risen significantly beyond what can be explained by variables such as firm, size, performance, and industry classification (Bebchuk Grinstein, 2005). According to research, the CEO pay at the nation’s top 500 largest companies averages about $10.9 million aRead MoreImmigration Policy Of The United States And Its Effects On Hispanic Immigrants1541 Words   |  7 Pageswhom originate from Latin America (migrationpolicy.org). Largely driven by the prospect of the â€Å"American Dream,† the Latino immigration movement began in the 1840s and has fluctuated with new policies, including the bracero program, an oppressive operation for temporary migrant workers, during World War II, and the Immigration Act of 1965, which created the first immigration limit for the Western Hemisphere (Gutià ©rrez, Ewing). Since 1960, the Latino population in Amer ica has grown from 3.24% of theRead MoreThe Constitution Guarantees Every Citizen Civil Rights1378 Words   |  6 Pagesthe right to federal employment, the right to run for office, as well as the right to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Responsibilities of American citizens include supporting and defending the constitution, being informed about issues in the community, participating in the local community, participating in the democratic process, and respecting the laws. Some other responsibilities are paying taxes, serving on a jury, and defending the country as necessary. (2) U.S. citizensRead MoreImmigration Of The United States847 Words   |  4 PagesStates has been among the highest since the peak in early twentieth century. Every year, people who immigrate to this country are count more than 1 million, without including unauthorized immigrants. Many Americans who believed too much immigration in America could become a problem. For the fact that if America’s immigration rate continues grow, like now, by 2050’s the minority groups collectively will constitute the majority of Americans now. Some interest groups believe that the white majority will noRead MoreImmigration Is A Major Controversial Issue1471 Words   |  6 Pages Roman Numeral III Signature Assignment GOVT 2305 MW 8:00-9:20 Danielle Scheurmann 5-4-2015 â€Æ' Immigration is a major controversial issue in today’s government. Some important matters include national security, the economic weight, escalation in drug and weapons trafficking, and human trafficking. Immigration is both beneficial and detrimental to many people, and our country. In my opinion the foremost concern regarding Immigration is National Security. â€Å"More than 10 million undocumented aliensRead MoreImmigration Reform : The United States1312 Words   |  6 PagesImmigration reform is one of the most controversial topic in the U.S. The Democrats and Republicans are having a tug of war over finding a solution to allowing illegal immigrants grant citizenship and allowing their families to stay in the this country. Just last month, President Obama had a televised executive decision talking about immigration reform. President Obama discussed how the executive decisions like providing legal status and work permits for more than 5 million immigrants, making theRead MoreCompensation Practice: World Atwork. Name. Institution.1699 Words   |  7 Pagessatisfying the needs and wants of both consumers and employees. In this examination, WorldatWork has been considered for careful and extensive research to give insight into the issues that are directly/ind irectly involved in compensation practices. WorldatWork WorldatWork is a hotel cleaner firm located in the United States of America. Hsieh, Apostolopoulos, Sà ¶nmez, (2013) noted that the nature of this job is usually unattractive. Most of the workers perform their duties under deplorable conditions.Read MoreAmerica Is The Immigration Policy.in Light Of The Presidential Election1164 Words   |  5 Pagesabout subject in America is the immigration policy.In light of the presidential election people are concerned about how President Trump will affect America s immigration policies.Many opinions are circling the world of media,but this division America comes at the height of racial tension as well causing America to become a volcano just waiting for a chance to erupt. In all honesty many do not discuss controversial topic because they do not understand the history regarding the issue, the current policies

Competitive Advantage of Customer Centricity †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Competitive Advantage of Customer Centricity. Answer: Introduction Customer service management is one of the essential activities that any business organization has to give adequate importance, such that customer satisfaction could be achieved. The customers services offered by the business organization highlights the number of customers being attracted to the business organization (Blut et al. 2015). The customer services include guidance provided to the customers, promptness of the employees, politeness and courtesy. Professionalism is also an important factor to be maintained, in order to achieve customer satisfaction. Personalization of the services, according to the demand of the customers is also an important part of customers service management (So et al. 2016). This assignment highlights the evaluation of the encounters of two business organizations namely Coles and Foodland. Both these companies are retail supermarkets and are leaders Australia. The evaluation of the emotional responses has been shed light upon in this assignment, along wit h a comparison of the relative performance. The emotional responses of the customers, in the encounters of the same incidents highlight the effectiveness of the customer services in both the companies. Finally, recommendations have been added for each of the companies. The ways the companies could enhance their customers services have been shed light upon in this assignment. Coles and Foodland are two major grocery and food retail chains in Australia. Both these supermarkets have been the leaders in the Australian market, outperforming each other in every survey. The issue that is faced is in the return of the products bough online. I had bought few grocery products from both Coles and Foodland. However, the experience in the return with Foodland was much better than that of Coles. In Foodland, as I requested the return of the products online, immediately I was contacted by a customer care service professional. The professional wanted to know the details of the issue that I faced and the reason I wanted to return the products that I have bought. Moreover, the customer service professional was empathetic towards me and apologised several times, while I communicated that rotten and out dated products were delivered to me. The customer service professional of Foodland guided me with the following steps that I need to take in order to return the goods that w ere not in order. He apologized several times for the mistake and ensures that the same incident will not be repeated again. The next time I placed an order with Woodland they compensated for their mistakes and give me a lot of free items along with the products that I had ordered. They clearly explained to me that due to some delay in their supply chain and the logistics management, the orders placed were delivered to me rotten. Though, I will disappointed at first yet the guidance and empathy that I got from the customer service professional of Foodland made me understand their problem. While I face the same issue with Coles, the behaviour that I got from the customer service professionals was more painful and annoying than wrong products being delivered to me. When I lodged a complaint due to incorrect delivery of orders, the customer service professional behave with me very rudely. They were very reluctant to replace the order and force me to take the wrong products being delivered to me. Moreover when I ask for compensation they refused. The behaviour of the customer service professionals were not professional at all and were unexpected. I did not get any empathy from them rather I was blamed for not verifying when the products while they were being delivered. I was totally dissatisfied with the customer services provided by Coles. Evaluation of the emotional responses In the incidence of long products being delivered to me by Coles and return products being delivered by Foodland, was equally unexpected and annoying. However in case of Foodland, I had a better experience than in Coles. The professionals of Foodland and the customer service executive were very helpful and empathetic. They reviewed the problem and guided me towards the next steps. Since wrong product delivered to me, I was angry as well as sad. However, the professionals of Foodland handled my anger very efficiently. At times I was angry with their irresponsibility and was rude to the customer service executive. However they understood the pain that I was going through and hence they did not behave rudely with me as a response of my rude behaviour. As the problem was solved by the customer service professionals I realised my mistake. Mistake in delivery of the product might happen once in a while. I could have handled it with more patience. Later I felt that my anger and rude behavio ur towards the customer service professionals was unjustified. The performance of food land commendable and has outperformed the retail market chain Coles. Along with achieving the best customer service award,Foodland has also been chosen for the best store layout, freshness of the food, as well as product variety. The product of food is fresh and cheaper than the other competitive Supermarket stores (Kursunluoglu 2014). The store layouts are well planned and help the customers find the product of their choice very easily (Orel and Kara 2014). The stores also have special facilities for the disabled as well as the elderly citizens. The customer service professionals assist the disabled people and the elderly citizens to find their products (Jahanshani et al. 2014). The company is also active in the CSR activities (Lin and Bennett 2014). Along with hosting various charitable activities, Foodland hosts various sports event and other cultural or charitable activities (Parniangtong 2017). The customer perceived value proposition of Foodland is higher than that of Coles. With the same amount of money a customer is able to get more products from Foodland, than from Coles. Thus, along with obtaining fresh food products and groceries, the customers are able to save certain amount of money while shopping at Foodland. In order to influence the value of perception of the customers the priority of the company needs to be communicated to its regular customers (Hurewitz 2014). Along with priority at low cost product equality has to be ensured. The efficient customer services will help enhancement in the customer perceived value, thus increasing the business to a significant amount. Recommendations In order to ensure that both the companies are able to enhance their shares and business remarkably few recommendations have been given. Foodland needs to ensure that they maintain their standard of the fresh products as well as mention the low cost. The priority that is given to the customer services shouldbe retained, so that they are able to attract more customers along with loyal customer retention (Suryandari and Paswan 2014). It is also recommended that they introduced loyalty bonus for the customers so that they get more discount than the other customers. This will help in retaining old customers. For Coles, it is recommended that they give priority to the customer services in order to attract more customers along with retention of old customers. The price of the product should also be regulated in order to ensure that the customers can save certain amount of money while shopping. The customer service professionals need to be trained more efficiently so that they are able to handle the customer care and empathy does avoiding loss of loyal customers. Conclusion Customer services have a key role to play for any business organisation. The customer services include guidance to the customers for selecting the product along with assistance in after sale services being provided to the customers. The customer services include in store guidance, along with online assistance to the customers. Issues and problems faced by the customers have to be looked after by the customer service executives. It is important that Coles and Foodland give priority to the customer services such that they are able to attract more customers along with the retention of old customers. Customer satisfaction could be achieved if the customer services are given efficiently. Thus, along with quality enhancement and price reduction, the customer services have to be prioritised in order to achieve competitive advantage over the contemporary retail grocery chains. Personalised services are to be given to the customers such that they feel important. Customisation of products and services helps in establishing customer relationship by increasing the number of customers. Strong customer relationship is important for effective Customer services. Loyalty programs for the customers are also effective in enhancing the customer services and establishing a positive customer relationship. Customers feel the priority that is being given to them, thus attracting and retaining them. Empathy towards customers along with professionalism has to be maintained by the customer service executive to enhance the services given to the customers. References Blut, M., Frennea, C.M., Mittal, V. and Mothersbaugh, D.L., 2015. How procedural, financial and relational switching costs affect customer satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and repurchase behavior: A meta-analysis.International Journal of Research in Marketing,32(2), pp.226-229. Hurewitz, M.., 2014.Retail customer service interaction system and method. U.S. Patent Application 14/180,484. Jahanshani, A.A., Hajizadeh, G.M.A., Mirdhamadi, S.A., Nawaser, K. and Khaksar, S.M.S., 2014. Study the effects of customer service and product quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Kursunluoglu, E., 2014. Shopping centre customer service: creating customer satisfaction and loyalty.Marketing Intelligence Planning,32(4), pp.528-548. Lin, Z. and Bennett, D., 2014. Examining retail customer experience and the moderation effect of loyalty programmes.International Journal of Retail Distribution Management,42(10), pp.929-947. Orel, F.D. and Kara, A., 2014. Supermarket self-checkout service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty: Empirical evidence from an emerging market.Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services,21(2), pp.118-129. Parniangtong, S., 2017. Competitive Advantage of Customer Centricity. So, K.K.F., King, C., Sparks, B.A. and Wang, Y., 2016. Enhancing customer relationships with retail service brands: The role of customer engagement.Journal of Service Management,27(2), pp.170-193. Suryandari, R.T. and Paswan, A.K., 2014. Online customer service and retail type-product congruence.Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services,21(1), pp.69-76.

Origin of Hip Hop and Punk Rock free essay sample

Both were able to redefine the social norms and include more of a cultural aspect to the music environment. Though punk rock and hip-hop are very different genres, they have similarities in the way the genre effected society and the culture around the music. Punk Rock has gained so much respect and a strong following because Of the bravery and confidence the bands show by their music. Rather than following social norms and disregarding their feelings, they follow their heart and express exactly how they feel.That alone gained so much popularity in the world for punk rock. Their ability to speak the truth and true feelings allows the fans to come together and share common ground with other fans ND the bands themselves. There are certainly differences that are easily noticeable between the two genres, punk rock and hip-hop. For example the way of singing and portraying the message is very unique for each genre. We will write a custom essay sample on Origin of Hip Hop and Punk Rock or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Punk rock utilizes multiple instruments such as the guitar, drums, and vocals to sing and express a message through lyrics.While hip-hop on the other hand, does not use the instruments rather just the use of vocals. The singing of hip-hop is different than that of punk rock. Hip-hop is much more mellow and more of a talking type than a loud singing. For example, The Calashs song Should Stay r Should I Go, uses all the characteristics of the instruments and a message through the lyrics. Very unique for the time period, it appealed to many people especially in the teenage age group. The song explains: Darling you got to let me know Should I stay or should I go?If you say that you are mine Ill be here till the end of time So you got to let me know The lyrics explain feelings towards a female and questioning whether it is better to stay with her or if it is better to leave. These messages are not deliberately stated but are inferred, and people may develop a different meaning from the same lyrics Of a song. On the contrary to punk rock, and example of hip-hop would be Amines Lose Yourself. Vocally, there are no guitars or drums present in the song, just a beat and his voice.His tone is angry as he yells throughout the song, but that is to better portray his message. His overall message of the song is understood when he states: Fact that cant get by with my nine to Five and cant provide the right type of Life for my family cause man, these God damn food stamps dont buy diapers Mine explains the hard life he went through and the hard life that it is for people. Life is not easy by any means, and he is angry that he wasnt able to provide food and a life for his family.The meaningful message is portrayed differently than punk rock, but it attracts a different crowd. The major crowd is in the Bronx in New York City where many people may consider it the ghetto. It appealed to the people because it was very unique and they could relate to many of the problems that people sang about. Though the portrayal of the message is different between punk rock and hip-hop, the overall message is very influential in the culture surrounding the music.

Summary One Essays

Summary One Essays Summary One Essay Summary One Essay Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Summary One The article â€Å"Elements of Strategic Planning and Management in Municipal Government: Status after Two Decades† explores the application of planning and management procedures in municipal governing entities that have populations of over 25,000. A survey was carried out to determine the relevance of strategic planning in municipalities. Strategic planning and management in municipal governments is crucial since it creates efficiency in these systems. Government policy requires municipal governments to employ the use of strategic planning and management approach to maximize efficiency. However, research shows that the application of strategic planning is not always easy to achieve. The article’s point of discovery begins from the determination of what strategic planning is its purpose in municipalities, and its use among other factors. Strategic planning is used to uphold a desirable balance between an organization and the environment within which it operates over a long period. Strategic planning works only when planned action is effectively linked to implementation. A survey given to municipal managers revealed that out of 512 managers only 44 percent employed strategic planning. However, the 44 percent reported that not all strategic plans were implemented. Strategic plan is effective when relevant stakeholders are involved with 60 percent of the local governments that responded affirming that citizens, politicians and other stakeholders were involved in strategic planning processes. Another important factor in strategic planning is the elements used on creating a strategic plan. The respondents of the survey indicated that the most frequently used elements of strategic planning were development of goals and objectives, vision for the future, which was followed by a review of organizational mission goals and finally developing action plans. Implementation of strategic planning requires applying strategic management practices that are divided into four levels. These levels tie into how planning allocates resources, how the municipalities manage their performance and the processes involved in measuring their performance. The results of the survey indicated that strategic planning had helped municipal governments to operate their cities more effectively therefore achieving beneficial result for the municipalities. Summary Two The article â€Å"Effects of Economic Development Strategies in Local Municipalities† by Robbie Waters through survey explore the effects of economic development planning in municipalities that employ them. It has been suggested that economic development planning can be the solution to all the problems facing a community. Literature in economics reveals that effective economic development planning is believed to reduce unemployment rates. In this regard, job creation for the community drives cities to practice economic development strategies and policies. To determine the effectiveness of economic development plans, the article compares the status of cities that employ economic polices to those that do not. This is done by comparing unemployment rates over a five-year period. A survey conducted by International City/Council Management in 1999 and 2004 on chief administration officer in US cities with over 10000 and counties with a population of over 50000 reveal that localities that have written down economic development plans, on an average achieve a reduction in employment rate by 0.76 percentage points. It was also determined that areas with written business strategies had experienced a higher level of unemployment than areas without this form of planning by a 1.16 percentage points. Depending on the model used, the statistical significance is dramatically changed affecting the unemployment rates in the cities. The main aim of economic development planning remains to be growing economically sustainable communities that will create employment opportunities. However, the results acquired from the survey suggest that economic development plans need to be revised to suit the needs of the community. Therefore, the results raise questions as to the relevance of economic development planning in local governments. The results achieved in the survey also suggest that local governments do not employ strategic applications in implementing their economic plans. The evidence also brings into question the commitment of municipal authorities in implementing their plans for the cities they run. In view of the questions raised, future research should aim disambiguating the results and include more parameters that will make to enrich the research and settle the questions that have arisen in research. Summary Three Competing and Cooperating across State Borders in Economic Development: A Call for ‘‘Coopertition’’ by Jon Lombard and John Morris discuss the importance of cooperation of local and state government in economic development. Successful economic development is expected to provide tangible benefits for members of the community within a state or locality. This is seen by the ability for these entities to attract business. Competition however has moved from regional competition to national and international proportions. The essay proposes that competition and cooperation are not opposing forces but rather necessary ingredients to economic success. Considering the relevance of the two, the term coopertition is formed to describe the dual nature of government incentives in aiding economic development. Competition in the past among states for economic developments has been seen to create winners and losers. However, governments have come to the realization that the competition is beneficial to all involved when resources are pulled. Therefore, economic development necessitates a competitive element. Coopertition is an essential part of economic development that seeks to make use of the advantages inherent by cooperating with other governments. It is important to note that coopertition results in the creation of a new economic unit that is not only bigger and better, but also offers its participants a resource base that is unmatched by smaller entities that are competing. The Federal system in America creates a distinction in the political realm with well-defined borders. The hierarchical political structures in the government create levels of competing entities within this structure. From the national level, we derive the states vertically. However, competition exists in the horizontal layer where we have the states competing for economic development. This is the stage at which coopertition for economic development is at its best. The use of cooperation in developing economies has served the well in the United States. Local governments work together in an aim to maximize on benefits imagined in economic development. To achieve the necessity of coopertition, states may make informal agreements or understandings or even interstate compacts. Interstate compacts, however, are not popular because of the formality that goes with creating such an arrangement. Therefore, this is not the right approach to coopertition. In conclusion, the nature of economic development provides rich ground for study. It is evident that the individual forces in competition do not have as many benefits as coopertition does. Individualism undermines economic development. In this sense, it is necessary to explore the benefits of coopertition in enhancing cross-border economic success.

Contemporary issues in marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Contemporary issues in marketing - Essay Example All the above phases mean that the strategy to be developed should effectively put the principles of the company closer to the needs of the specific consumers that the company targets. If a company puts the above in consideration then it will definitely develop unique strategies that make it competitive in the new market. This is addition to proper review and correction policies will determine the success of the adapted international marketing mix that Weny Trippes (fictional company) has developed. Weny Trippes has a really wide market appeal in the soft drink market in the United States. A company such as Weny Trippes has the ability to introduce new products that meet the demands and quality requirements of its consumers faster than any other company in the local scene. It has better consumer need responsiveness, better innovative skills, quality products and processes as well as higher efficiency that promotes its differentiation advantage in the United States market. This has ma de the company to consider developing marketing strategies that can ensure the success of its product line in other foreign markets such as those of Central America, East Africa, or Northern Europe, Chinese market and the Middle East markets. Different foreign markets have different needs and present unique different challenges that Weny Trippes has to form effective entry and marketing strategies on how to overcome them. ... Increasing competitiveness on a global ground has forced many industries to expand to foreign countries. Internationalisation, which is the process by virtue of which a firm moves from operating in its domestic market to international markets, has hence become an ongoing trend in the economy. But this however may have effects that are not evident in the domestic sector especially in terms of coping up with a foreign environment. The international market for many products is subject to many dynamic influences that can lead to changes in the volume, mix and distribution of demand and sources of competitiveness (Ofori 2000). Before this decision to venture into the market Weny Trippes only ventured the domestic market and never thought of expanding its business beyond the borders of its home country. The international penetration option for the companies is a means of expanding the profits and at the same time attempting to cash on the weakness and lack of creativity by the home compani es or firms that produce similar products (Akkaya 2006). Organizations are optimally entering into newer foreign markets mainly the onset of globalisation. â€Å"Globalisation is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment †¦. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems...† (Rothenberg 2002, p1). Thus, its wish to make an impression in foreign markets is further driven by the globalization. In addition, Weny Trippes has a really diverse range of soft drink products and energy drinks that it intends to develop an international marketing strategy so as to promote them in several foreign markets.

Cultural Plualism Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Cultural Plualism Assignment - Essay Example The people, who migrate from their homelands to work in foreign lands, form minorities and represent their cultures in the presence of other cultures; this creates the concept of cultural pluralism. Following are some of the criteria, on the basis of which different cultures can be described; Individualistic versus collective Masculinity versus femininity Social perspective of different cultures 2. Cultural Patterns The cultural pattern that has been chosen for analysis (with respect to a global context) is ‘individualistic versus collective’ cultures. Dessler (2007) defined individualism as the extent to which individuals look out for their own betterment instead of acting like a member of a group (or society). The societies that promote such non-conformist point of views are often termed as individualistic cultures. In individualistic cultures, social and family bonds are much looser than the other cultures since they do not value traditional customs and morals to a gr eat extent. Lascu (2003) explained that great stress is laid on the achievement of personal goals and attaining capabilities to fulfill their dreams. Social norms are not as important as the individual’s own decisions and judgments. Their main aims in life are self satisfaction, achievement of their own objectives and fulfillment of their own desires. People, who follow an individualistic culture, feel unenthusiastic about participating in collective efforts of a group if their own actions are not acknowledged and rewarded. Collectivism can be defined as the extent to which individuals act for the betterment of the whole group (family, social circle etc) rather than self interests. Hofstede (2001) stated that the social ties and values of individuals are very strong in a collectivist culture. They value the greater benefit of the whole group before their own and are in favor of sharing their rewards with all the group members. There exists a need in the collectivist culture t o associate oneself with a certain group since the sense of belonging and dependence is very common. Markus and Kitayama (1991) defined individualism and collectivism as independence and interdependence with the individual’s organization, respectively. Collectivist culture promotes interdependence with people outside the group and greater associations with people inside the group. Krynke (1998) stated that cultures have been witnessed to transform from collectivist to individualistic ones due to the progression of industrialization. 3. Individualistic and Collective Cultures in a Global Perspective Individualistic culture is usually witnessed in organizations that are present in fully industrialized countries for example, United States, Britain, Australia etc. The western countries have been known to possess loose social and cultural ties in their societies therefore individualistic culture usually prevails in the respective region. The individual is not dependent on his orga nization, at any emotional level. The concepts of trust, loyalty and friendship do not bear much relevance in such cultures since greater success and profits overpower all other factors. Individualistic culture promotes the concept of enhancing their own identity on the basis of their unique traits. On the contrary, Asian and Middle Eastern countries have always treasured the factors of social harmony, religious norms etc. The culture in such regions is strongly influenced by religion and traditions of their past generations, due to which they value

Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies

Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies 1.0 Introduction and motivation of study The issues of ownership and corporate governance have been discussed broadly in the prior literature especially in developed markets. However, in emerging economies like Malaysia, the issues received a vigorous impetus when the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) hit Malaysia with severity in 1997/98. The AFC had depressed the economy to negative 7.5% in 1998, around 84,000 people lost their job and Malaysian capital market lost estimated USD200 billion in term of market capitalization during the crisis (Series of Malaysia Economic Reports). At the same time, the value of Malaysian currency had been decrease dramatically from 2.52 ringgit to the US dollar in June, 1997 to a lowest of 4.50 ringgit to the US dollar in January, 1998 (Tourres, 2003), plunging the country into its first recession for many years. Weak financial systems, excessive foreign borrowing and lack of transparency were among factors that contributed to the crisis (Fischer, 1998). Following the AFC, the Malaysian government introduced several reform measures to enhance transparency and accountability to restoring market confidence and encourage more stable and long term international investment. Example of these are the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG) in 1998, the introduction of Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) in March 2000  [1]  which codified the principles and best practices of good governance and the launched of Malaysias Capital Market Master Plan in 2002 as a comprehensive plan that identifies the strategic positioning and future of the Malaysian capital market. The Minority Shareholders Watchdog GROUP (MSWG) was also setup in 2001 as respond to the AFC. This study focuses on Malaysias capital market mainly because of the confidence shown by the international business community concerning investments in Malaysia especially after the economy has fully recovered from the AFC. Based on The Productivity and Investment Climate Survey, World Bank 2009, which reports firms perceptions of the business environment, suggests that Malaysia is a relatively attractive place for investors. Meanwhile, Report on Doing Business 2010 ranked Malaysia 23rd out of 183 economies for ease of doing business and recently the World Competitiveness Scoreboard 2010 placed Malaysia 10th of the most competitive economy in the world, up from 18th place in the previous year. The achievement of Malaysia economy to date partly contributing through the active roles plays by the government-linked companies (GLCs) that form the backbone of the structure of the Malaysian economy. GLCs and their controlling shareholders, government-linked investment companies (GLICs), constitute a significant part of the economic structure of Malaysia. GLCs employ an estimated 5% of the national workforce, account for approximately 49% of market capitalization (Ringgit Malaysia 235.5 billion) of Bursa Malaysia Securities, contributes about 17 percent of the nations gross fixed capital formation and account for almost 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (Malaysia Economic Report, 2009/2010). More than that, GLCs also plays an important role in executing government policies and initiatives especially in key sectors and new growth sectors. Even with active divestment and privatization, GLCs remained as the main service providers to the nations key strategic utilities and services including electricity, telecommunications, airlines, airports, public transportations, banking and financial services. On top of that, GLCs also on forefront in implementing recommendations of the best practices affirmed in Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance for Malaysian Public Listed Companies (Corporate Governance Survey Report, 2008). In the meantime, Corporate Governance Watch 2007, an annual collaborative study of corporate governance landscape of Asian market undertaken by independent stockbroker CLSA Asia Pacific Markets and the Asian Corporate Governance Association noted general improvement at the GLCs, a function of GLCs reforms and greater openness. Finally, the research on GLCs performance in Malaysia is also very important in order to investigate the real achievement of GLCs Transformation Program, the special program that was launched in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve the performance of GLCs. Recently, the total shareholder return of a selection of top 20 GLCs, has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compounded annual growth rat e of 2.4 percent since the launch of the program (Business Times, 2009). Motivate by the above reason, part of this study attempts to examine whether or not government ownership lead to better company performance by focusing on the unique characteristics of government ownership in GLCs. The research is an attempt to extend the literature in this field and to provide new insight and understanding on the roles of state in emerging market considering the limited number of research in this area. Hence, the first part of this study attempts to answer the following primary research question: Is there any significant relationship between ownership structure of government- linked companies in Malaysia and firm value? 2.0 Theoretical Foundations of the Study There are number of different theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze corporate governance. Difference frameworks approaches corporate governance in different way, for example; the agency theory arises from the fields of finance and economics and the stakeholder theory arises from social-orientated perspective on corporate governance. According to Mallin (2010, p.14), the main theories that have affected the development of corporate governance are agency theory, transaction cost economics, stakeholder theory and stewardship theory. All these theory from difference disciplines have contributed to the development of theoretical aspects of corporate governance and its frameworks. However, the main theory that generally associated with ownership of the firm is agency theory that widely used in previous researches around the world. Theoretical and empirical researches on the relationship between ownership and firm value was originally motivated by the separation of ownership from control (Berle Means, 1932) and more recently, by agency theory (Jensen Meckling, 1976; Fama Jensen, 1983). In this theory, the basic assumption is that the goals and objectives of the principals (owners) and managers (agents) conflict. The central problem in corporate governance is to construct rules and incentive to effectively align the behavior of managers with the desires of principals (Hawley and Williams, 1996). The problem of agents being responsible to principals is that it compounds the agency costs identified by Jensen and Meckling (1976) with the basic assumption is that managers will act opportunistically to further their own interests before shareholders and one of the main reasons that the desired actions of principal and agent diverge is their different attitude towards risk (Shankman, 1999). Under the circumstances, in Malaysia where there is a high concentration of government ownership in firms (Tam and Tan, 2007) and high percentage of firms affiliated to government (La Porta et al., 1999), the government ownership actually has capacity to provide a control mechanisms to align management personal objectives with firm objectives and eventually increase the firm value. Parts of GLCs in Malaysia are privatized firms during Malaysian Privatization Policy in 1990s. Hence, the firms always related to political variables and in that stance the political view of GLCs conceive that the high level of government interferences resulted of inefficiency to the firm rather than facilitate the operation. 3.0 Literature Review and Research Gaps In Malaysia context, GLCs are defined as companies that have a primary commercial objective and in which the Malaysian government has a direct controlling stake via the GLICs. The GLICs are investment arms of the government that allocate government funds to the GLCs (Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance, 2004; Lau and Tong, 2008). Meanwhile, the controlling stake here refers to the governments ability (not just percentage ownership) to appoint board members, senior management and/or make major decisions. The Ministry of Finance (1993) classify GLCs as one in which the Malaysian government had an effective ownership interest of at least 20 percent of equity shares. Twenty percent voting rights in one particular company is considered to be sufficient for effective control and is employed in previous studies on ownership (La Porta et al.,1999; Faccio et.al., 2001 and Setia-Atmaja, 2009). Majority of GLCs under the federal government are under Khazanah Nasional Berhad, one of the most active GLICs in Malaysia  [2]  . Empirical studies on the relationship between government ownership and firm performance on the whole produced inconclusive results. Study by Ang and Ding (2005) on the relationship between ownership structure of Singaporean GLCs and performance found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs. In a related study, Ke and Issac (2007) report that governments shareholding is positively related to corporate performance of Chinas listed property companies, suggested that the economy sector is matter in the country. The findings however inconsistent with other empirical studies on the government ownership in China where in overall found the negative relationship between these two variables. For example, Sun and Tong (2003); McGuiness and Ferguson (2005); Gunasekarage, Xu and Wang (1999) and Li, Sun and Zou (2009) find that on average, the firms performance is negatively influenced by the governments ownership. Research in Malaysia on the relationship between government ownership and performance is lacking and also show mixed findings. Recently, Lau and Tong (2008) conducted a research on the impact of government intervention on firm value by employed 15 listed GLCs under Khazanah Nasional Berhad from year 2000 to 2005 (90 firm-year observations). They reveal a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership and firm value. However, this study has shortcomings as the selected data sets of 15 GLCs a year under Khazanah Nasional Berhad are too small and not robust enough to represent the overall GLCs performance. In fact, there are many more listed GLCs under the controlled of federal government GLICs  [3]  as well as GLCs under the state government jurisdiction. This research aims to address this issue by providing in-depth examinations and comprehensive study on all GLCs both at federal and state level. In a related study in Malaysia, Tam and Tan (2007) find that the performance of firms associated to government ownership is poor compared to others ownership types namely; individual-owned firms, foreign-owned firms and trust fund-owned firms. The study involved the top 150 listed companies on Bursa Malaysia Securities based on their ranking according to their market capitalization in 2000. The similar results also found in research by Ming and Gee (2008); and Chu and Cheah (2006) that show the negative relationship between government ownership and firms corporate performance. However, those studies also have limitations as they fail to properly identify the unique characteristics of GLCs ownership in Malaysia. In their studies, they group together all types of GLCs in one group in an attempt to find its relationship to performance without addressing issues of (i) the different type of GLCs controlled by federal government and GLCs controlled by states government and (ii) the differe nt type of shares in GLCs. With regard to the first issue, distinctions should be made between GLCs controlled by federal government (GLCFGs) and those controlled by state governments (GLCSGs) predominantly because they are difference in aspects of monitoring by federal government machineries and GLICs. GLCFGs subjected to strict supervision and monitoring not only by its GLICs but by ministries concerned under federal government. For example, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, a GLCFG is the largest electric utility company in Malaysia with one governments special share and majority of it ordinary shares owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad . The Ministry of Finance responsible to the issues pertaining to the corporate matters of the company such as the approval entity for appointment of CEO/board of directors, their contract extension or termination, company performance etc. The selection of company chairman or CEO is carefully chosen based on their capability and suitability to head the organization. In the meantime, matters pertaining to policy such as approval for electric tariff increment and monitoring of company obeying to energy policy of Malaysia are under the responsibility of Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water as a guardian ministry. In addition, National Audit Department also conducting an annual auditing or special auditing to this company to be reported in Auditors General Report that eventually to be presented in Parliament. Furthermore, Public Accounts Committee, a committee under Parliament also have right to investigate whatever issues surrounding the company such as mismanagement or issues highlighted in Auditors General Report. With all these stringent monitoring systems, the GLCFGs are more cautious in their actions and eventually lead to good corporate performance in the long run. On the other hand, the extent of monitoring and supervision of GLCSGs by respective state governments is weaker. All issues pertaining GLCSGs are to be monitor and solve by State Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), a controlling agency cum main shareholder of GLCSGs. As contended in Agency Theory, lack of monitoring efforts will increase the agency costs that eventually lead to poor firm performance. Furthermore, GLICs at federal government have more systematically systems and incentives in monitoring and improve its GLCs performance compared to its counterpart in state government. For example is the establishment of a special program aims to transform GLCs to high performers entity called GLCs Transformation Program (GTP) that was launched in May 2004. Under this program, 20 larger GLCs (G-20) that controlled by different federal government GLICs has been selected to be transformed into high performance entity and become regional or global champions. Since the launch the programme, G-20 have made significant improvement especially on their financial aspects with operating cash flow for non-financial G-20 firms grew by 42% from RM14 billion in 2004 to RM20 billion in 2008. At the same time, aggregate earnings for 2008 also 53% higher compared to performance in 2004 and total shareholder returns has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compo unded annual growth rate of 4.8% since the launch of the program (GTP Mid-Term Progress Review, 2009). With regard to this issue, based on above motivations the current study argue that the performance of listed GLCs controlled by federal government are better than it counterparts under the controlled of state government. On the second issue, previous studies with concerned to government ownership and performance have ignored the very important characteristic of GLCs in Malaysia which is GLCs with governments one special share or golden share. As a background, to stimulate economic growth and reduce Government financial burden, privatization policy was introduced in 1983 and a lot of government entities as well as hundreds of government projects had been implemented by private sector. From 1983 until 2003, 474 projects and 457 government entities had been privatized from 1983 until 2005 involving assets sale of RM1.54 billion and equity sales of RM4.94 billion (Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister Department). Various type of privatization such as sale, leased, management contract and build-lease-transfer have been used. However, in some strategic entities such as ports, main utilities provider (e.g. Tenaga Nasional Berhad) and national carrier (Malaysian Airlines Systems Berhad), Malaysian governme nt directly retained one special share or well known as golden share on top of ordinary shares that possess by GLICs on behalf of the government. In this type of GLCs, the degree of Government interference is excessively. The golden share grant government not only right to control companys direction including the appointment/dismissal of Chairman, Board member, CEO and senior management but also make major decisions such as restructuring exercise, mergers and acquisition, assets disposal and even cancel whatever decision make by the firms for the interest of government  [5]  by the government in 2001 with cost closed to Ringgit Malaysia one billion (Jalleh M., 2005) was a good example of how this type of GLCs being protected by the government. Another prominent case was the bailout of national car company Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional or Proton by state-owned oil company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (known as Petronas) during the AFC through cash injected by instruction of the gove rnment (Restall, 2000). Based on the arguments, the present study believed that, this type of firms should be treated separately from other normal GLCs to moderate the impact of government interventions. By group them together into one group of GLCs as carried out by previous studies in Malaysia is inappropriate and may have distorted their studies result. This research basically will address both of these issue by differentiate all GLCs in Malaysia into groups according to their controlling agency at federal or state level and also based on their type of shares to observe their impact to firms corporate performance. This study expected to form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and provide new facts on some elements of the government ownership in emerging economies by providing in-depth analysis on the issue. To the best of my knowledge, no particular researcher so far focuses on examining government ownership and firm value by make use of these proposed approaches. In addition to that, others variable that related to government ownership such as the role of politicians, government official and ex- government officials as board members in GLCs and also the influence of degree of government ownership in GLCs will also be tested. 4.0 Hypotheses development This present study ultimately intended to test for any association between ownership structures of GLCs and firm value. A total of seven aspects have been identified and the hypotheses developed as to their probable effect and firm performance. 4.1 GLCs under federal and state government and firm performance There were not studies specifically relate this variable with performance in Malaysia, but study by Chen, Firth and Xu (2009) on Chinas listed company revealed that the performance of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to central government or in Malaysian context is federal government is outperformed their counterpart which are related to state and local government. They also argued that different form of government ownership have different motivation and objectives on investment and it lead to different performance outcomes for the companies they have invested in. According to Loh (2008), the Malaysias constitutional design clearly favors the federal over the state governments, both in term of legislative jurisdictions as well as in terms of revenue assignments. Based on this argument and motivations on the effectiveness of monitoring systems by federal government as discussed in 3.0, the proposed hypothesis is: H1: The impact of GLCs controlled by federal government on firm performance is stronger than GLCs controlled by states government 4.2 GLCs with governments special share and firm performance As explained in Section 3.0 above, governments golden share providing the government will unlimited power to control company directions and sometimes lead to misallocation of resources by the companies itself or by the government in order to assist them. The holding agency of this share is Ministry of Finance Incorporated, the entity under Ministry of Finance, Malaysia.  Although there is no empirical study so far that investigate the relationship between governments special share and performance in Malaysia, but study by Sun, Tong H.S, and Tong (2002) from Chinas privatization experience shows that too much government interference and control of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was among the reasons of SOEs poor performance. Another argument is that, as of the perspective of minority shareholders, too much intervention from government will jeopardize the companys development and resulted poor performance in the long run. Hence, this type of company is not attractive for investo rs. Therefore, it is hypothesized that: H2: The impact of GLCs without governments golden share on firm performance is stronger than GLCs with governments golden share 4.3 Degree of government ownership and firm performance Like many others East Asian countries, Malaysias corporate sector also experiencing a high level of ownership concentration (Liew, 2007; La Porta et al., 1998). Gunasekarage et. al (2006) in their study on influence of the degree of state ownership on the performance of listed Chinese companies conclude that firms performance is significant at high levels of government ownership and a balanced ownership structure enhances the firm performance. Study by Ke and D.Isaac (2007) in China listed property companies from 2000 to 2002 also reveals that the government shareholding is positively related to corporate performance. In Malaysia context, Lau and Tong (2008) in their study of 15 listed GLCs in Bursa Malaysia for the period of 2000 to 2005 find a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership  [6]  and firm value. However, this study has limitation in term of selected data sets as laid out in Section 3.0. Therefore the variable will be re-testing with more comprehensive data sets in order to have more concrete and robust evidence on the influence of this variable to firm performance. In line with agency theory that concentrated ownership in more effective in reducing managerial agency cost, the proposed hypotheses are: H3: There is a significant relationship between governments ownership degree in GLCs and firm performance 4.4 Politicians as director and firm performance GLCs traditionally has some of its boards of directors that had affiliations with the ruling party especially those GLCs that previously under government control and later on involved in privatization. Johnson and Mitton (2003) noted that as of October 1999, 15.8% or 67 out of 424 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia Securities are politically connected to the ruling party. Empirical evidence on the association between politicians as director and its impact to firm value is inconclusive. Study by Xu, Zhu and Lin (2005) on state owned enterprises in China revealed that politicians have incentives to control the firms to achieve economically inefficient objectives for political purposes. In a related study, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) exposed that excess employment and wages are common in public enterprise that control by politicians. This unhealthy phenomenon could lead to wrong managerial investment decisions and result in misallocation of companys resources that eventuall y reduce the firm value. Boubakri, Cosset and Saffar (2008) investigate the association between political connections of newly privatized firms and the impact to performance. The study involved 245 privatized firms in 27 developing and 14 industrialized countries and the existence of political connections is based on whether the particular firms have a politician or an ex-politician on their boards. They find that the politically-connected firms exhibit a poor performance compared to their non-connected counterparts. The similar result also found in Fan et. al (2007). Meanwhile, Fisman (2001) in his study in Indonesia and Faccio (2006) in analysis of 47 countries find a significant relationship between these two variables. In the context of Malaysia where business and politics are inter-related (Gomez and Jomo, 1997) indicated that, participation of politicians in GLCs might have effects on firm value as they act as a link between the governments and companys management. Therefore, it is hypothesized that, H4: There is a significant relationship between politician as director and firm performance 4.5 Government officials as board member in GLCs and firm performance GLCs are created partly to implement government policy objectives especially those established as a result of privatization exercises in the early eighties. Hence, most of their board of directors are civil servants either still in-service or formal government officials that act as eyes and ear of government as well as communication bridge between the management and the government. Agrawal and Knoeber (2001) in their study found that the politically experience directors that comprises former government officials benefits the company they served and noted that they are more prevalent in firms compare to others outside directors. In a related study in Singapore that involved 25 GLCs and 204 non-GLCs for the period from 1990 to 2000, Ang and Ding (2006) found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs in the area of profitability, efficiency and firms financial performance. Like Malaysian GLCs, Singapore GLCs also comprises government officials in their board. At suc h, it is hypothesized that, H5: There is a significant relationship between in service government official as director and firm performance H6: There is a significant relationship between former government official as director and firm performance 5.0 Research design and methodology 5.1 Data and sample design The first model in this research is designed to examine the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance of all GLCs listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia Securities for the period of five years (2004 until 2008). To ensure that the sample clearly represented the population intended for the research and to harmonious the selected sample to the GLCs definition, the sample selection is based on the following criteria: At any time, one specific GLICs either at federal or states government level must be the single largest shareholder with at least 20% share ownership in one particular company on Main Board of KLSE and; The financial and unit trust companies are excluded as they are governed by different set of rules and acts that could affect the end findings of this study. In addition, all required financial data for the study period are to be available in databases (Datastream or Thomson Research) and information on ownership and corporate governance structure from companies respective audited annual report. The study constructs an unbalanced panel data of all GLCs during the study period. This approach has the advantage of attrition biases in correlation (Hu and Izumida, 2008). The observations period of 2004 to 2008 is chosen mainly because the period was the phase of economic stability in Malaysia when the countrys economy and capitals market activities fully recovered after the Asian Financial Crisis. The performance chart in Figure 2 below reveals that prior to AFC, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) in average has been trading in an upward trend. However, the AFC push down the KLCI to below 600 during the peak of the crisis. The post-crisis period has seen steady increase in the value of the KLCI even though until 2006 Bursa Malaysia Securities still has some 200 companies trading at more than 50 percent discount to their book values (James, 2006). Another reason for the chosen period is to evaluate the impact of GLCs Transformation Program that launch in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve performance of GLCs. 5.2 Methodology 5.2.1 The proposed model The following base model will be used to test the hypotheses that have been defined in the previous section: PERFORM = ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ²1FG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²2SG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²3GOLD + ÃŽÂ ²4GOV_OWN + ÃŽÂ ²5POL + ÃŽÂ ²6GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²7EX-GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²8LOG_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²9LEV + ÃŽÂ ²10BOD_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²11BOD_MEET + ÃŽÂ ²12BOD_IND + ÃŽÂ µi Where; PERFORM = the dependent variables: proxy by ROA, ROE and Tobins Q; Independent variables: FG_GLC = GLCs under federal government (equal to 1 if a firm is under federal government, and 0 otherwise) SG_GLC = GLCs under state government (equal to 1 if a firm is under states government, and 0 otherwise) GOLD = GLCs which government owned one golden share (equal to 1 if a firm has governments golden share, and 0 otherwise) GOV_OWN = captures the percentage of government ownership in a GLC POL = captures the percentage of politician on the board GO_BOD = captures the percentage of government official in-service on the board EX-GO_BOD = captures the percentage of ex-government official on the board Control variables: LOG_SIZE = natural log of total assets as proxy of firm size LEV = firm leverage (total liabilities to total assets) BOD_SIZE = number of board of directors during the year BOD_MEET = number of board of directors meetings during the year BOD_IND = captures the percentage of independent directors on the board ÃŽÂ µi = error term 5.2.2 Operationalization of variable selection 5.2.2.1 The dependent variable The dependent variable in this study is firm performance that comprises accounting and market based performance namely return on assets (ROA)  [8]  and Tobins Q. They are to be employed in this study to measure the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance. The accounting-based performance is the most common types of performance measurement in assessing business performance. In this approach, annual report, which comprises income statements, balance sheets and statements of changes in financial position are the source of information to analyze companys financial performance for one particular financial year. This approach is very important for companys stakeholders such as potential investors since the indicator can help them in making investment decisions. It also vital in helping the companys shareholders to assess how well the company performed in market place in order to make decisions on management and employees rewards, setting suitable plans to sustain the goo d momentum or even take drastic approaches for company to remain in business. The accounting-based performance also helps manager to effectively plan and control in order to achieve the objectives of the company. For example, according to Thompson Yeung (2001), return on equity as one of the accounting-based measurements can accommodate the effect of different accounting procedures across industries and can minimize the multi-linearity between companys specific characteristics such as size, age and profitability. Both ROA and ROE are the most common measurement used in analyzing financial performance of companies and have been used widely in previous studies (Vafeas,1999; Abdullah,2004; Bhagat Black, 2002; Rahman Haniffa 2006; Ang Ding, 2006; Bhagat Bolton; 2008 and Chu, 2009). Since accounting-based performance measures the past and current performance of the firm, m Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies Corporate Performance of Malaysian Public Companies 1.0 Introduction and motivation of study The issues of ownership and corporate governance have been discussed broadly in the prior literature especially in developed markets. However, in emerging economies like Malaysia, the issues received a vigorous impetus when the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) hit Malaysia with severity in 1997/98. The AFC had depressed the economy to negative 7.5% in 1998, around 84,000 people lost their job and Malaysian capital market lost estimated USD200 billion in term of market capitalization during the crisis (Series of Malaysia Economic Reports). At the same time, the value of Malaysian currency had been decrease dramatically from 2.52 ringgit to the US dollar in June, 1997 to a lowest of 4.50 ringgit to the US dollar in January, 1998 (Tourres, 2003), plunging the country into its first recession for many years. Weak financial systems, excessive foreign borrowing and lack of transparency were among factors that contributed to the crisis (Fischer, 1998). Following the AFC, the Malaysian government introduced several reform measures to enhance transparency and accountability to restoring market confidence and encourage more stable and long term international investment. Example of these are the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG) in 1998, the introduction of Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) in March 2000  [1]  which codified the principles and best practices of good governance and the launched of Malaysias Capital Market Master Plan in 2002 as a comprehensive plan that identifies the strategic positioning and future of the Malaysian capital market. The Minority Shareholders Watchdog GROUP (MSWG) was also setup in 2001 as respond to the AFC. This study focuses on Malaysias capital market mainly because of the confidence shown by the international business community concerning investments in Malaysia especially after the economy has fully recovered from the AFC. Based on The Productivity and Investment Climate Survey, World Bank 2009, which reports firms perceptions of the business environment, suggests that Malaysia is a relatively attractive place for investors. Meanwhile, Report on Doing Business 2010 ranked Malaysia 23rd out of 183 economies for ease of doing business and recently the World Competitiveness Scoreboard 2010 placed Malaysia 10th of the most competitive economy in the world, up from 18th place in the previous year. The achievement of Malaysia economy to date partly contributing through the active roles plays by the government-linked companies (GLCs) that form the backbone of the structure of the Malaysian economy. GLCs and their controlling shareholders, government-linked investment companies (GLICs), constitute a significant part of the economic structure of Malaysia. GLCs employ an estimated 5% of the national workforce, account for approximately 49% of market capitalization (Ringgit Malaysia 235.5 billion) of Bursa Malaysia Securities, contributes about 17 percent of the nations gross fixed capital formation and account for almost 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (Malaysia Economic Report, 2009/2010). More than that, GLCs also plays an important role in executing government policies and initiatives especially in key sectors and new growth sectors. Even with active divestment and privatization, GLCs remained as the main service providers to the nations key strategic utilities and services including electricity, telecommunications, airlines, airports, public transportations, banking and financial services. On top of that, GLCs also on forefront in implementing recommendations of the best practices affirmed in Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance for Malaysian Public Listed Companies (Corporate Governance Survey Report, 2008). In the meantime, Corporate Governance Watch 2007, an annual collaborative study of corporate governance landscape of Asian market undertaken by independent stockbroker CLSA Asia Pacific Markets and the Asian Corporate Governance Association noted general improvement at the GLCs, a function of GLCs reforms and greater openness. Finally, the research on GLCs performance in Malaysia is also very important in order to investigate the real achievement of GLCs Transformation Program, the special program that was launched in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve the performance of GLCs. Recently, the total shareholder return of a selection of top 20 GLCs, has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compounded annual growth rat e of 2.4 percent since the launch of the program (Business Times, 2009). Motivate by the above reason, part of this study attempts to examine whether or not government ownership lead to better company performance by focusing on the unique characteristics of government ownership in GLCs. The research is an attempt to extend the literature in this field and to provide new insight and understanding on the roles of state in emerging market considering the limited number of research in this area. Hence, the first part of this study attempts to answer the following primary research question: Is there any significant relationship between ownership structure of government- linked companies in Malaysia and firm value? 2.0 Theoretical Foundations of the Study There are number of different theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze corporate governance. Difference frameworks approaches corporate governance in different way, for example; the agency theory arises from the fields of finance and economics and the stakeholder theory arises from social-orientated perspective on corporate governance. According to Mallin (2010, p.14), the main theories that have affected the development of corporate governance are agency theory, transaction cost economics, stakeholder theory and stewardship theory. All these theory from difference disciplines have contributed to the development of theoretical aspects of corporate governance and its frameworks. However, the main theory that generally associated with ownership of the firm is agency theory that widely used in previous researches around the world. Theoretical and empirical researches on the relationship between ownership and firm value was originally motivated by the separation of ownership from control (Berle Means, 1932) and more recently, by agency theory (Jensen Meckling, 1976; Fama Jensen, 1983). In this theory, the basic assumption is that the goals and objectives of the principals (owners) and managers (agents) conflict. The central problem in corporate governance is to construct rules and incentive to effectively align the behavior of managers with the desires of principals (Hawley and Williams, 1996). The problem of agents being responsible to principals is that it compounds the agency costs identified by Jensen and Meckling (1976) with the basic assumption is that managers will act opportunistically to further their own interests before shareholders and one of the main reasons that the desired actions of principal and agent diverge is their different attitude towards risk (Shankman, 1999). Under the circumstances, in Malaysia where there is a high concentration of government ownership in firms (Tam and Tan, 2007) and high percentage of firms affiliated to government (La Porta et al., 1999), the government ownership actually has capacity to provide a control mechanisms to align management personal objectives with firm objectives and eventually increase the firm value. Parts of GLCs in Malaysia are privatized firms during Malaysian Privatization Policy in 1990s. Hence, the firms always related to political variables and in that stance the political view of GLCs conceive that the high level of government interferences resulted of inefficiency to the firm rather than facilitate the operation. 3.0 Literature Review and Research Gaps In Malaysia context, GLCs are defined as companies that have a primary commercial objective and in which the Malaysian government has a direct controlling stake via the GLICs. The GLICs are investment arms of the government that allocate government funds to the GLCs (Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance, 2004; Lau and Tong, 2008). Meanwhile, the controlling stake here refers to the governments ability (not just percentage ownership) to appoint board members, senior management and/or make major decisions. The Ministry of Finance (1993) classify GLCs as one in which the Malaysian government had an effective ownership interest of at least 20 percent of equity shares. Twenty percent voting rights in one particular company is considered to be sufficient for effective control and is employed in previous studies on ownership (La Porta et al.,1999; Faccio et.al., 2001 and Setia-Atmaja, 2009). Majority of GLCs under the federal government are under Khazanah Nasional Berhad, one of the most active GLICs in Malaysia  [2]  . Empirical studies on the relationship between government ownership and firm performance on the whole produced inconclusive results. Study by Ang and Ding (2005) on the relationship between ownership structure of Singaporean GLCs and performance found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs. In a related study, Ke and Issac (2007) report that governments shareholding is positively related to corporate performance of Chinas listed property companies, suggested that the economy sector is matter in the country. The findings however inconsistent with other empirical studies on the government ownership in China where in overall found the negative relationship between these two variables. For example, Sun and Tong (2003); McGuiness and Ferguson (2005); Gunasekarage, Xu and Wang (1999) and Li, Sun and Zou (2009) find that on average, the firms performance is negatively influenced by the governments ownership. Research in Malaysia on the relationship between government ownership and performance is lacking and also show mixed findings. Recently, Lau and Tong (2008) conducted a research on the impact of government intervention on firm value by employed 15 listed GLCs under Khazanah Nasional Berhad from year 2000 to 2005 (90 firm-year observations). They reveal a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership and firm value. However, this study has shortcomings as the selected data sets of 15 GLCs a year under Khazanah Nasional Berhad are too small and not robust enough to represent the overall GLCs performance. In fact, there are many more listed GLCs under the controlled of federal government GLICs  [3]  as well as GLCs under the state government jurisdiction. This research aims to address this issue by providing in-depth examinations and comprehensive study on all GLCs both at federal and state level. In a related study in Malaysia, Tam and Tan (2007) find that the performance of firms associated to government ownership is poor compared to others ownership types namely; individual-owned firms, foreign-owned firms and trust fund-owned firms. The study involved the top 150 listed companies on Bursa Malaysia Securities based on their ranking according to their market capitalization in 2000. The similar results also found in research by Ming and Gee (2008); and Chu and Cheah (2006) that show the negative relationship between government ownership and firms corporate performance. However, those studies also have limitations as they fail to properly identify the unique characteristics of GLCs ownership in Malaysia. In their studies, they group together all types of GLCs in one group in an attempt to find its relationship to performance without addressing issues of (i) the different type of GLCs controlled by federal government and GLCs controlled by states government and (ii) the differe nt type of shares in GLCs. With regard to the first issue, distinctions should be made between GLCs controlled by federal government (GLCFGs) and those controlled by state governments (GLCSGs) predominantly because they are difference in aspects of monitoring by federal government machineries and GLICs. GLCFGs subjected to strict supervision and monitoring not only by its GLICs but by ministries concerned under federal government. For example, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, a GLCFG is the largest electric utility company in Malaysia with one governments special share and majority of it ordinary shares owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad . The Ministry of Finance responsible to the issues pertaining to the corporate matters of the company such as the approval entity for appointment of CEO/board of directors, their contract extension or termination, company performance etc. The selection of company chairman or CEO is carefully chosen based on their capability and suitability to head the organization. In the meantime, matters pertaining to policy such as approval for electric tariff increment and monitoring of company obeying to energy policy of Malaysia are under the responsibility of Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water as a guardian ministry. In addition, National Audit Department also conducting an annual auditing or special auditing to this company to be reported in Auditors General Report that eventually to be presented in Parliament. Furthermore, Public Accounts Committee, a committee under Parliament also have right to investigate whatever issues surrounding the company such as mismanagement or issues highlighted in Auditors General Report. With all these stringent monitoring systems, the GLCFGs are more cautious in their actions and eventually lead to good corporate performance in the long run. On the other hand, the extent of monitoring and supervision of GLCSGs by respective state governments is weaker. All issues pertaining GLCSGs are to be monitor and solve by State Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), a controlling agency cum main shareholder of GLCSGs. As contended in Agency Theory, lack of monitoring efforts will increase the agency costs that eventually lead to poor firm performance. Furthermore, GLICs at federal government have more systematically systems and incentives in monitoring and improve its GLCs performance compared to its counterpart in state government. For example is the establishment of a special program aims to transform GLCs to high performers entity called GLCs Transformation Program (GTP) that was launched in May 2004. Under this program, 20 larger GLCs (G-20) that controlled by different federal government GLICs has been selected to be transformed into high performance entity and become regional or global champions. Since the launch the programme, G-20 have made significant improvement especially on their financial aspects with operating cash flow for non-financial G-20 firms grew by 42% from RM14 billion in 2004 to RM20 billion in 2008. At the same time, aggregate earnings for 2008 also 53% higher compared to performance in 2004 and total shareholder returns has outperformed the benchmark index of Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) by a compo unded annual growth rate of 4.8% since the launch of the program (GTP Mid-Term Progress Review, 2009). With regard to this issue, based on above motivations the current study argue that the performance of listed GLCs controlled by federal government are better than it counterparts under the controlled of state government. On the second issue, previous studies with concerned to government ownership and performance have ignored the very important characteristic of GLCs in Malaysia which is GLCs with governments one special share or golden share. As a background, to stimulate economic growth and reduce Government financial burden, privatization policy was introduced in 1983 and a lot of government entities as well as hundreds of government projects had been implemented by private sector. From 1983 until 2003, 474 projects and 457 government entities had been privatized from 1983 until 2005 involving assets sale of RM1.54 billion and equity sales of RM4.94 billion (Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister Department). Various type of privatization such as sale, leased, management contract and build-lease-transfer have been used. However, in some strategic entities such as ports, main utilities provider (e.g. Tenaga Nasional Berhad) and national carrier (Malaysian Airlines Systems Berhad), Malaysian governme nt directly retained one special share or well known as golden share on top of ordinary shares that possess by GLICs on behalf of the government. In this type of GLCs, the degree of Government interference is excessively. The golden share grant government not only right to control companys direction including the appointment/dismissal of Chairman, Board member, CEO and senior management but also make major decisions such as restructuring exercise, mergers and acquisition, assets disposal and even cancel whatever decision make by the firms for the interest of government  [5]  by the government in 2001 with cost closed to Ringgit Malaysia one billion (Jalleh M., 2005) was a good example of how this type of GLCs being protected by the government. Another prominent case was the bailout of national car company Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional or Proton by state-owned oil company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (known as Petronas) during the AFC through cash injected by instruction of the gove rnment (Restall, 2000). Based on the arguments, the present study believed that, this type of firms should be treated separately from other normal GLCs to moderate the impact of government interventions. By group them together into one group of GLCs as carried out by previous studies in Malaysia is inappropriate and may have distorted their studies result. This research basically will address both of these issue by differentiate all GLCs in Malaysia into groups according to their controlling agency at federal or state level and also based on their type of shares to observe their impact to firms corporate performance. This study expected to form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and provide new facts on some elements of the government ownership in emerging economies by providing in-depth analysis on the issue. To the best of my knowledge, no particular researcher so far focuses on examining government ownership and firm value by make use of these proposed approaches. In addition to that, others variable that related to government ownership such as the role of politicians, government official and ex- government officials as board members in GLCs and also the influence of degree of government ownership in GLCs will also be tested. 4.0 Hypotheses development This present study ultimately intended to test for any association between ownership structures of GLCs and firm value. A total of seven aspects have been identified and the hypotheses developed as to their probable effect and firm performance. 4.1 GLCs under federal and state government and firm performance There were not studies specifically relate this variable with performance in Malaysia, but study by Chen, Firth and Xu (2009) on Chinas listed company revealed that the performance of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to central government or in Malaysian context is federal government is outperformed their counterpart which are related to state and local government. They also argued that different form of government ownership have different motivation and objectives on investment and it lead to different performance outcomes for the companies they have invested in. According to Loh (2008), the Malaysias constitutional design clearly favors the federal over the state governments, both in term of legislative jurisdictions as well as in terms of revenue assignments. Based on this argument and motivations on the effectiveness of monitoring systems by federal government as discussed in 3.0, the proposed hypothesis is: H1: The impact of GLCs controlled by federal government on firm performance is stronger than GLCs controlled by states government 4.2 GLCs with governments special share and firm performance As explained in Section 3.0 above, governments golden share providing the government will unlimited power to control company directions and sometimes lead to misallocation of resources by the companies itself or by the government in order to assist them. The holding agency of this share is Ministry of Finance Incorporated, the entity under Ministry of Finance, Malaysia.  Although there is no empirical study so far that investigate the relationship between governments special share and performance in Malaysia, but study by Sun, Tong H.S, and Tong (2002) from Chinas privatization experience shows that too much government interference and control of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was among the reasons of SOEs poor performance. Another argument is that, as of the perspective of minority shareholders, too much intervention from government will jeopardize the companys development and resulted poor performance in the long run. Hence, this type of company is not attractive for investo rs. Therefore, it is hypothesized that: H2: The impact of GLCs without governments golden share on firm performance is stronger than GLCs with governments golden share 4.3 Degree of government ownership and firm performance Like many others East Asian countries, Malaysias corporate sector also experiencing a high level of ownership concentration (Liew, 2007; La Porta et al., 1998). Gunasekarage et. al (2006) in their study on influence of the degree of state ownership on the performance of listed Chinese companies conclude that firms performance is significant at high levels of government ownership and a balanced ownership structure enhances the firm performance. Study by Ke and D.Isaac (2007) in China listed property companies from 2000 to 2002 also reveals that the government shareholding is positively related to corporate performance. In Malaysia context, Lau and Tong (2008) in their study of 15 listed GLCs in Bursa Malaysia for the period of 2000 to 2005 find a significant positive relationship between the degree of government ownership  [6]  and firm value. However, this study has limitation in term of selected data sets as laid out in Section 3.0. Therefore the variable will be re-testing with more comprehensive data sets in order to have more concrete and robust evidence on the influence of this variable to firm performance. In line with agency theory that concentrated ownership in more effective in reducing managerial agency cost, the proposed hypotheses are: H3: There is a significant relationship between governments ownership degree in GLCs and firm performance 4.4 Politicians as director and firm performance GLCs traditionally has some of its boards of directors that had affiliations with the ruling party especially those GLCs that previously under government control and later on involved in privatization. Johnson and Mitton (2003) noted that as of October 1999, 15.8% or 67 out of 424 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia Securities are politically connected to the ruling party. Empirical evidence on the association between politicians as director and its impact to firm value is inconclusive. Study by Xu, Zhu and Lin (2005) on state owned enterprises in China revealed that politicians have incentives to control the firms to achieve economically inefficient objectives for political purposes. In a related study, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) exposed that excess employment and wages are common in public enterprise that control by politicians. This unhealthy phenomenon could lead to wrong managerial investment decisions and result in misallocation of companys resources that eventuall y reduce the firm value. Boubakri, Cosset and Saffar (2008) investigate the association between political connections of newly privatized firms and the impact to performance. The study involved 245 privatized firms in 27 developing and 14 industrialized countries and the existence of political connections is based on whether the particular firms have a politician or an ex-politician on their boards. They find that the politically-connected firms exhibit a poor performance compared to their non-connected counterparts. The similar result also found in Fan et. al (2007). Meanwhile, Fisman (2001) in his study in Indonesia and Faccio (2006) in analysis of 47 countries find a significant relationship between these two variables. In the context of Malaysia where business and politics are inter-related (Gomez and Jomo, 1997) indicated that, participation of politicians in GLCs might have effects on firm value as they act as a link between the governments and companys management. Therefore, it is hypothesized that, H4: There is a significant relationship between politician as director and firm performance 4.5 Government officials as board member in GLCs and firm performance GLCs are created partly to implement government policy objectives especially those established as a result of privatization exercises in the early eighties. Hence, most of their board of directors are civil servants either still in-service or formal government officials that act as eyes and ear of government as well as communication bridge between the management and the government. Agrawal and Knoeber (2001) in their study found that the politically experience directors that comprises former government officials benefits the company they served and noted that they are more prevalent in firms compare to others outside directors. In a related study in Singapore that involved 25 GLCs and 204 non-GLCs for the period from 1990 to 2000, Ang and Ding (2006) found that GLCs exhibit higher valuations than those of the non-GLCs in the area of profitability, efficiency and firms financial performance. Like Malaysian GLCs, Singapore GLCs also comprises government officials in their board. At suc h, it is hypothesized that, H5: There is a significant relationship between in service government official as director and firm performance H6: There is a significant relationship between former government official as director and firm performance 5.0 Research design and methodology 5.1 Data and sample design The first model in this research is designed to examine the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance of all GLCs listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia Securities for the period of five years (2004 until 2008). To ensure that the sample clearly represented the population intended for the research and to harmonious the selected sample to the GLCs definition, the sample selection is based on the following criteria: At any time, one specific GLICs either at federal or states government level must be the single largest shareholder with at least 20% share ownership in one particular company on Main Board of KLSE and; The financial and unit trust companies are excluded as they are governed by different set of rules and acts that could affect the end findings of this study. In addition, all required financial data for the study period are to be available in databases (Datastream or Thomson Research) and information on ownership and corporate governance structure from companies respective audited annual report. The study constructs an unbalanced panel data of all GLCs during the study period. This approach has the advantage of attrition biases in correlation (Hu and Izumida, 2008). The observations period of 2004 to 2008 is chosen mainly because the period was the phase of economic stability in Malaysia when the countrys economy and capitals market activities fully recovered after the Asian Financial Crisis. The performance chart in Figure 2 below reveals that prior to AFC, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) in average has been trading in an upward trend. However, the AFC push down the KLCI to below 600 during the peak of the crisis. The post-crisis period has seen steady increase in the value of the KLCI even though until 2006 Bursa Malaysia Securities still has some 200 companies trading at more than 50 percent discount to their book values (James, 2006). Another reason for the chosen period is to evaluate the impact of GLCs Transformation Program that launch in May 2004 by Malaysian government to improve performance of GLCs. 5.2 Methodology 5.2.1 The proposed model The following base model will be used to test the hypotheses that have been defined in the previous section: PERFORM = ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ²1FG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²2SG_GLC + ÃŽÂ ²3GOLD + ÃŽÂ ²4GOV_OWN + ÃŽÂ ²5POL + ÃŽÂ ²6GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²7EX-GO_BOD + ÃŽÂ ²8LOG_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²9LEV + ÃŽÂ ²10BOD_SIZE + ÃŽÂ ²11BOD_MEET + ÃŽÂ ²12BOD_IND + ÃŽÂ µi Where; PERFORM = the dependent variables: proxy by ROA, ROE and Tobins Q; Independent variables: FG_GLC = GLCs under federal government (equal to 1 if a firm is under federal government, and 0 otherwise) SG_GLC = GLCs under state government (equal to 1 if a firm is under states government, and 0 otherwise) GOLD = GLCs which government owned one golden share (equal to 1 if a firm has governments golden share, and 0 otherwise) GOV_OWN = captures the percentage of government ownership in a GLC POL = captures the percentage of politician on the board GO_BOD = captures the percentage of government official in-service on the board EX-GO_BOD = captures the percentage of ex-government official on the board Control variables: LOG_SIZE = natural log of total assets as proxy of firm size LEV = firm leverage (total liabilities to total assets) BOD_SIZE = number of board of directors during the year BOD_MEET = number of board of directors meetings during the year BOD_IND = captures the percentage of independent directors on the board ÃŽÂ µi = error term 5.2.2 Operationalization of variable selection 5.2.2.1 The dependent variable The dependent variable in this study is firm performance that comprises accounting and market based performance namely return on assets (ROA)  [8]  and Tobins Q. They are to be employed in this study to measure the impact of ownership structure on corporate performance. The accounting-based performance is the most common types of performance measurement in assessing business performance. In this approach, annual report, which comprises income statements, balance sheets and statements of changes in financial position are the source of information to analyze companys financial performance for one particular financial year. This approach is very important for companys stakeholders such as potential investors since the indicator can help them in making investment decisions. It also vital in helping the companys shareholders to assess how well the company performed in market place in order to make decisions on management and employees rewards, setting suitable plans to sustain the goo d momentum or even take drastic approaches for company to remain in business. The accounting-based performance also helps manager to effectively plan and control in order to achieve the objectives of the company. For example, according to Thompson Yeung (2001), return on equity as one of the accounting-based measurements can accommodate the effect of different accounting procedures across industries and can minimize the multi-linearity between companys specific characteristics such as size, age and profitability. Both ROA and ROE are the most common measurement used in analyzing financial performance of companies and have been used widely in previous studies (Vafeas,1999; Abdullah,2004; Bhagat Black, 2002; Rahman Haniffa 2006; Ang Ding, 2006; Bhagat Bolton; 2008 and Chu, 2009). Since accounting-based performance measures the past and current performance of the firm, m