Electronic government procurement adoption behavior amongst Malaysian SMEs

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between a model of electronic procurement (e-procurement) adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst Small Medium Enterprise (SME) in Malaysia. Data was collected through questionnaires that were distributed to SME selected randomly in all SME in Malaysia.The data were analyzed using factor analysis, reliability analysis, independent-sample t-test, descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation and multiple regressions. Regression results reveals that ‘power’, ‘trust’ and ‘value’ have a positive relationship with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia.All dimensions, namely; the power of supplier, power of procurement, trust on supplier, trust on information technology, value of implementation system efficiency and value of cost efficiency were also correlated with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME. Past studies on e-procurement are beset by problems of buyer-seller relationship perspective.In addition, these studies are skewed towards Government-SME relationship perspective which the Government possesses more power than SME and provide a better incentive to educate and influence SME to adopt e-procurement.In investigation the relationship between a model of e-procurement adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia, this study also tries to provides recommendation to Malaysian government for improving the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME

ASSESSMENTS OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN COUNTRY BEAN (Lablab purpureus L.) USING RAPD MARKER AGAINST PHOTO-INSENSITIVITY

RAPD marker was used to evaluate genetic relationships among 11 genotypes of country bean, including first three genotypes were photo-insensitive and the rests were sensitive. The genotypes were grouped into two major clusters where photo-insensitive genotypes remain in cluster I and sensitive genotypes remain in cluster II. A total of 26 bands were detected, of which 57.69% were polymorphic and the remaining were monomorphic across all genotypes. A highest level of genetic distance was observed between CB04 and CB06 while the lowest level of genetic distance showed between CB01 and CB03. The highest similarity index between the genotypes CB01 and CB03 indicated less divergence between them. Low similarity indices were observed between CB04 and CB06, which indicated more divergence. Crossing between the genotypes with low similarity coefficient will manifest high heterosis. The identified genetically distinct cultivars could be potentially important source of germplasm for further improvement of country bean

Leadership Skills among Technical and Vocational Educators

The purpose of leadership skills among technical and vocational educator are to prepare them towards effective organization. Effective leadership is widely accepted as being a key constituent in achieving organization improvement and to examine. This study aimed to gauge the leadership skills among technical and vocational educators effectiveness by using Katzenmeyer and Moller dimensions which are developmental focus, recognition, autonomy, collegiality, participation, open communication and positive environment. This study also indicated the difference between leadership skills and technical and vocational educator experience. A quantitative study using survey exploration was carried out on 30 vocational and technical educators. The respondent was selected by using random sampling technique among technical and vocational educators and the analysis using SPSS 16.0 through descriptive statistic and t-test. The result indicated that the level of leadership skills were at highest in the collegiality dimension and this analysis show that the data variation is not equal and the analysis show there are no significant relationship between effective leadership of educator and gender. This study is hoped to be used by organization as to increase leadership skill among educators and could increase critical thinking skills, insight, intuition and interpersonal communication including listening and positive impact for an improvement in an organization. Keywords: Leadership Skills, Staff, Educators, Professional evelopmen

Kefahaman Guru Dalam Pelaksanaan Pengajaran Sains Rumah Tangga (PKK) Di Sekolah Menengah Harian di Negeri Selangor, Malaysia

Sains Rumah Tangga adalah mata pelajaran elektif ikhtisas (MPEI) dengan kurikulum baharu yang diubah daripada Ekonomi Rumah Tangga sebagai saluran untuk melahirkan pelajar berdaya saing yang mempunyai pengetahuan dan kemahiran dalam peringkat global. Kajian tinjauan ini bertujuan untuk mengenal pasti tahap kefahaman guru dalam pelaksanaan pengajaran Sains Rumah Tangga di sekolah menengah harian di Selangor. Populasi kajian adalah terdiri daripada semua guru yang mengajar mata pelajaran Sains Rumah Tangga di Selangor. Sampel kajian adalah seramai 59 orang guru yang dipilih berdasarkan kaedah persampelan berstrata. Alat kajian yang digunakan adalah soal selidik dan data dianalisis menggunakan perisian IBM SPSS versi 22.0. Hasil kajian ini menunjukkan bahawa guru mempunyai tahap kefahaman yang tinggi dalam pelaksanaan pengajaran Sains Rumah Tangga. Pemberian kursus dan modul berkaitan kurikulum baru dapat meningkatkan kefahaman guru dengan membekalkan kemahiran dan pengetahuan berkaitan setiap topik dalam sukatan pelajaran

Determinants for a Successful Interstate Ro-Ro Operations in Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand: A Review

In accelerating the integration of the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) and realising more equivalent modal splitting, short sea shipping (SSS) has become a progressively important component in IMT-GT transport planning. Over the years, numerous studies have attempted to look into the SSS requirements and to classify the SSS routes which are economically practicable. Interestingly, Ro-Ro services have become one of the interest areas under the SSS operations that have been extensively researched particularly in Europe. Notwithstanding the efforts made to develop successful Ro-Ro operations, there still exists a great potential which has yet to be exploited enough for various reasons. This paper aims to review the key factors which may contribute to successful Ro-Ro SSS operations. Although a myriad of important factors identified by means of empirical studies, a counter argument is that the important determining factors which are required for a particular route or region may not be applicable to another. In Europe and North America, SSS was introduced to divert road freight transportation away from the congested roads as its main purpose, whereas in Southeast Asian countries, SSS has been part of the initiative to ensure the attainment of a well-connected Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) community. However, earlier Ro-Ro operations along some of the routes were not able to sustain and ceased operations after several years. Hence, although important lessons can be learned from the experience of other regions, a more comprehensive study need to be conducted before any Ro-Ro SSS endeavour could be initiated to ensure the important determinants for its success that may be peculiar to a particular region or corridor are identified and addressed

Sikap dan Masalah Guru Pelatih dalam Menjalani Latihan Mengajar

Practical teaching is an important component in the teacher education programme, as it exposes students to the actual teaching environment. A study was conducted to identity the attitude of student teachers towards practical teaching and the problems they faced during practicum. The population comprised UPM student teachers of the December semester 1993/94. The systematic cluster sampling technique was used to select the sample of 215 student teachers. The findings showed that, in general, student teachers have a positive attitude towards practical teaching; this attitude was found to have a significant relationship with teaching experience. Student teachers without teaching experience were found to have a more positive attitude towards practical teaching than those who had teaching experience. The findings also showed that student teachers found difficulties in (I) teaching with full concentration in the time frame given,(2) choosing appropriate audiovisual teaching aids, (3) choosing appropriate teaching methods, (4) knowing the background of every student that he/she taught, (5) remembering the names of all students he/she taught, (6) solving financial problems, (7) solving the problem of anxiety, and (8) preparing various types of questions. Two of these problems, i.e. the difficulties of choosing appropriate audiovidual teaching aids and teaching methods, had significant relationships with attitude towards practical teaching

Hubungan nilai kerja dengan jantina, umur dan pengalaman mengajar guru pelatih

In order to be successful in his work, a person should have not only knowledge and skills, but also good work values. The study explored twelve work values of trainee teachers of Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) and their relationships with gender, age and teaching experience. In general, trainee teachers of UPM had good work values. They considered self-development, economic reward and job security as very important values, whereas creativity, working conditions, life style and autonomy were considered moderately important. Values like variety, authority, social relationship, risk, and prestige were not very important to them. In addition, significantly low relationships exist between work values and age and teaching experience. Young trainee teachers without teaching experience were found to have better work values than experienced trainee teachers. Male trainee teachers were found to value creativity and authority more than female trainee teachers. Trainee teachers without teaching experience were also found to value variety, risk and prestige more than experienced trainee teachers. Age was found to have negative and low but significant relationships with life style, authority, risk and prestige. This relationship showed that as trainee teachers grew older, these values became less important to them. Based on the findings of the study, it is suggested that rewards should be given to teacher's in order to attract more of the younger generation to become teachers, teachers should be given more autonomy, teachers should be motivated to use their own creativity, and younger teachers should be given challenging tasks

Path Optimization and Object Localization Using Hybrid Particle Swarm and Ant Colony Optimization for Mobile RFID Reader

This paper proposes a hybrid approach of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for the mobile Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) reader to get the shortest path for object localization. In this approach, we have adopted the ACO global pheromone updating information of ants to guide the update velocities and position for PSO based on nearest neighbor constraints. The pheromone information is used efficiently to guide the selection of each particle in a search space of its visits. The best path will be used for mobile RFID reader for objects localization in search space. Simulation results show that the method is effective, minimizing the number of visited nodes for a mobile RFID reader