Enhancing Regulatory Compliance in Foreign Investment Management Under the Shadow of Big Data Analysis – A Fresh Insight from Malaysia

Big data emergence has brought a new trend in the current world of business. BDA enhance a firm to keep update with current changes and design its strategies, make effective decision and explore new market opportunities. The Malaysian Digital Economic Market has a growing trend in BDA, as according to The Digital Economic Corporation Commission of Malaysia expected a growth of US $ 1.9 million in BDA market. This is the country listed top in the 2022 Milken Institute Global Opportunity Index for having potential to attract foreign direct inflows in the country. Malaysia observed MYR 24.4 billion foreign direct investment in the year 2022. Being a large Islamic state, Malaysia holds various cultural and a tradition value having an increasing international outlook, put emphasize collective well-being and humane treatment in the society and prefers to maintain harmony among people. The country adopts sharia compliance and provides suitable framework to attract foreign investments. Finding a research gap on BDA’s impact on regulatory compliance of FDIM, this paper examines the role of Big Data (endogenous variable) on the enhancement of regulatory compliance (exogenous variable) of foreign direct investment management (exogenous variable) in Malaysia. The study developed survey-based questionnaires for data collection and applied partial least square based structural modelling equation (PLS-SEM) for analysis purpose. The main survey was conducted in a market research firm having more than 5000 Malaysian IT managers and business analyst. Findings of the study indicate a significant positive role of BDA on RC, and partial positive mediating role on RC & FDIM. However, RC positively influences FDIM whereas, BDA is insignificantly negatively related with FDIM. The paper provides valuable insights for the policy makers of Malaysia to utilize the advantages of BDA in attracting more FDI through enhanced regulatory compliances.