GOVERNANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMME : A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN MALAYSIA AND FINLAND

This paper studies the adequacy of the educational efforts made by Malaysian business community and various authorities in promoting governance awareness and best practices. The contents of the governance training programmes developed by the sample organisations are screened and analysed as the proxy to reflect the adequacy of local governance education level. Comparative research method is adopted in this paper as to draw better inferences. The governance system practised in Finland is selected for comparison due to Finland’s superior performance in the world Corruption Perception Index issued by an independent agency. The findings show that governance training and development programmes conducted in Malaysia have mainly focused on the board members, senior management and accounting specialists. The governance training needs of other level and category of employees are virtually neglected. Besides their regulatory system, Finnish’s success in building good governance culture is attributed to their government’s effort to promoting civic responsibilities and ethics in their early childhood curriculum. As such, this paper recommends that education to reinforce the principle of governance in Malaysia should be absorbed into the every aspect of live and be inculcated from the elementary school level. Governance education given to individuals at a much later stage, especially when one is already an encumbered Board members, should serves more as a “reminder” to the already implanted virtue.