Small-medium enterprises (SMEs) have always been considered to be the backbone of Brunei's economy. As published by the OECD in 2006, SMEs constitute a high percentage of businesses, where they account for 98% of all active business enterprises, and contribute about 92% of the employment in the private sector, and at least 66% of the GDP within the non-oil sector of the economy. Since SMEs are considered to be significant for the economy, they are encouraged to improve their business performance in order to sustain their business development by enhancing their accounting information system. This article will focus on the current accounting practices in which Brunei SMEs have been implemented by MMA Cube Stores as a case study. As cube shop businesses have been growing all over the country, it is significant to carry out this research as it may apply to the other similar business in Brunei. Reasonable recommendations are included in this article for the augmentation of the accounting system among Brunei SMEs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has indirectly changed the landscape of the country’s education system. Through information-based decision-making, the management of the education system seeks to increase the access to and efficiency, effectiveness, equity and quality of education through effective systems of monitoring, evaluation, budgeting and planning. From this perspective, an Integrated National Education Information System (iNEIS^TM) was developed to streamline and transform business processes and to provide an application and technology platform to comply with the National Education System that may be suitable for the COVID-19 pandemic environment. The implementation of iNEIS™ aimed to significantly improve operational efficiency and productivity and provide better services, value and “holistic education” to students. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the newly implemented, integrated iNEIS^TM and its implications for educational management systems that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. It specifically examines the benefits and obstacles that hinder the efficiency and effectiveness of the system. The result is very interesting. These findings demonstrate that there was a lack of positive impact on end-users, such as lacking readiness to accept organizational change and uncoordinated communication and information exchange between stakeholders and end-users. This research implies that when both the stakeholder-provider and end-user understand the significance of iNEIS^TM, there is a great possibility that the implementation will succeed in harvesting the full value of the system. This paper provides the stakeholder-provider with useful guidelines, in the form of recommendations, that need to be implemented to ensure improvement in the effectiveness of iNEIS^TM.

The COVID19 pandemic has indirectly changed the landscape of the business environment system through cloud intelligence within the digital ecosystem that has as a goal increasing the access, efficiency, effectiveness, equity and quality of business processes through cloud intelligent systems. Cloud intelligent systems are becoming revolutionary in today’s world pandemic causing a complete and drastic change to a variety of industries, including, security, transportation, business, logistics and manufacturing. The main purpose of cloud intelligence systems is to facilitate the ease of access from any location and the management of practical computing resources. One of the challenges faced by cloud technology today is scheduling. The role of scheduling algorithms is very important, since tasks are executed by orders that may need more attention. Here, scheduling algorithms intended to minimize monetary cost and minimize makespan time to execute the workflow are presented. This study proposes cloud intelligent systems apps through an approach to cloud computing scheduling that may lead to great benefits and efficiency. The result is very promising. It showed that there are numerous applications of intelligent systems due to the more advanced hardware being built nowadays, plus business processes advancing to become smarter and more efficient in growing profitably over a destructive digital ecosystem during the COVID19 pandemic. The results indicate that intelligent systems over the cloud play a big role not just for interacting with the world helping businesses grow, but as well as in the advancement for a better tomorrow.

There is currently a dearth of knowledge for human resource management under an SMEs context. As a result, it is assumed that human resource management based on large business organizations is applicable for SMEs at a smaller scale. From the resource-based view, this article investigates the impact of human resource management practices towards the SMEs in Brunei Darussalam. By conducting an exploratory study, a questionnaire survey of 296 was collected from the local SMEs to ascertain how the human resource management practices impact their performance. This is followed by the analyzing the result via the Pearson Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression which suggests that specific human resource management practices have a significant impact on the SMEs. As part of the contribution, the article extends the knowledge of human resource management in SMEs context by understanding their impact towards the SMEs performance.

This paper compares creativity experiences and perceptions among employees of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and students in higher education institutions (HEI) in Brunei Darussalam. The study was conducted through interactions and surveys to assess (i) understanding and practice of creative tools and techniques; (ii) creativity performance in teams and individuals and (iii) perception of creativity among 39 employees in SME and 68 students from HEI. Statistical analysis was carried out using Pearson’s chi-square test for goodness of fit and Cramer’s V test to estimate strength tests for correlation. The findings indicate a majority in both groups have not received prior instruction in creativity and that employees of SMEs have less interest in receiving creative instructions. There is consensus among both groups that group work will result in greater creative performance. Ambiguity of customer needs or requirement was a factor most often cited to impede creative performance of teams in SME. Results from this study were used to make recommendations to improve practice and learning creativity in SME and HEI.