THE SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE OF ISLAMIC REITS AND THEIR SOCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS: MALAYSIA AS CASE STUDY.

Abstract

The institutions that are committed to the Islamic tenets logically have got general sustainableperformance and positive social impacts. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the sustainability inMalaysian Islamic REITs’ performance in terms of dividends distributions, net profit and shareprice. Also, discovering the social contributions of them that often is link to the materialperformance. The methodology will include a mixed quantitative and qualitative case studyapproach to assess the performance and social responsibility of Listed IREITs in BursaMalaysia through a modelling set of questions. From the findings, two main different trendscan be highlighted (improving & deteriorating) relating to Malaysian IREITs' performance.The golden start-up period of Malaysian IREITs persisted only for 5 years in terms of theirpositive financial performance, which it reflected an increase in the net income and raise in theshare price of each fund of them. After 5 to 6 years from the inception, the negative financialperformance generally was noticed especially in share price. Moreover, it can be said thatMalaysian Islamic Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) do not make a positive socialcontribution based on the social responsibility activities mentioned in their annual reports. Theimplication is that social responsibility plays a fundamental role in the performance of IslamicREITs (IREITs), and this study highlights the importance of considering their social impacts,which have often been overlooked in previous studies focusing mainly on financialperformance.