Employee retention in the Malaysian banking industry: Do flexible practices work?

The objective of the study was to determine whether employee retention in Malaysian banks can be improved through flexible working. Using a quantitative approach, the effects of five types of flexible working practice, i.e. flex time, job sharing, flex leave, flex career and flex place, on employee retention were examined. The results suggest that only flex time has a positive significant effect on employee retention, while the effects of other flexible practices are unstable. Unlike most studies which generally demonstrate the positive effects of flexible working on employee retention, the current one indicates that the effectiveness of each flexible practice is influenced by contextual factors. These findings underline the importance of further studies comparing societies of different cultural, political, economic and technological backgrounds. They have also raised the need to re examine human resource management and organizational culture in the Malaysian work environment. Challenges lie in developing a flexible environment which values continuous learning, trust, accountability and strong corporate governance

Multi-Objective Optimization Algorithm Based on Sperm Fertilization Procedure (MOSFP)

In this paper, we propose an extended multi-objective version of single objective optimization algorithm called sperm swarm optimization algorithm. The proposed multi-objective optimization algorithm based on sperm fertilization procedure (MOSFP) operates based on Pareto dominance and a crowding factor, that crowd and filter out the list of the best sperms (global best values). We divide the sperm swarm into three equal parts, after that, different types of turbulence (mutation) operators are applied on these parts, such as uniform mutation, non-uniform mutation, and without any mutation. Our algorithm is compared against three well-known algorithms in the field of optimization. These algorithms are NSGA-II, SPEA2, and OMOPSO. These algorithms are compared using a very popular benchmark function suites called Zitzler-Deb-Thiele (ZDT) and Walking-Fish-Group (WFG). We also adopt three quality metrics to compare the convergence, accuracy, and diversity of these algorithms, including, inverted generational distance (IGD), spread (SP), and epsilon (∈). The experimental results show that the performance of the proposed MOSFP is highly competitive, which outperformed OMOPSO in solving problems such as ZDT3, WFG5, and WFG8. In addition, the proposed MOSFP outperformed both of NSGA-II or SPEA2 algorithms in solving all the problems

Antilock braking system slip control modeling revisited

The introduction of anti-lock braking system (ABS) has been regarded as one of the solutions for braking performance issues due to its notable advantages. The subject had been extensively being studied by researchers until today, to improve the performance of the todays vehicles particularly on the brake system. In this paper, a basic modeling of an ABS braking system via slip control has been introduced on a quarter car model with a conventional hydraulic braking mode. Results of three fundamental controller designs used to evaluate the braking performance of the modeled ABS systems are also been presented. This revisited modeling guide, could be a starting point for new researchers to comprehend the basic braking system behavior before going into more complex braking systems studies