The moderating effects of job demand between job resources, work-life enrichment, and core self-evaluations on work engagement among academics in Malaysian public universities

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between job resources (i.e. perceived organisational support, immediate superior support, colleague support, autonomy, recognition, job prestige, and perceived external prestige), work-life enrichment and core self-evaluations on work engagement among academics in Malaysian public universities. In addition, this study also examined the moderating effects of job demands on these relationships. The survey questionnaire was designed to elicit responses from the participants. A total of 756 questionnaires were distributed to the academics from 18 public universities in Peninsular Malaysia. Three hundred eighty five (385) usable questionnaires were returned, yielding a response rate of 50.9%. The data were analysed using multiple regression analysis. The results indicated that immediate superior support, perceived external prestige, work-to-personal life enrichment, personal life-to-work enrichment, and core self-evaluations were positively related to work engagement. On the other hand, colleague support was found to be negatively related to work engagement. Result from hierarchical regression analysis showed that job demands only moderate the relationship between work-to-personal life enrichment and work engagement. This means the effect of work- to-personal life enrichment and work engagement is strengthened when academic staff is confronted with high job demands. This study shows that systematic training programs are needed to enhance more supportive supervisory practices. To reduce the adverse impact of colleague support on work engagement, academics should be exposed to how communication content can have profound influence on both emotional and instrumental functions of different sources of support. The management should recruit and develop academics with positive core selfevaluation. Besides, efforts to promote prestige image of the universities is likely to bear fruitful results in enhancing the work engagement. In addition, the management should assist employees in achieving greater balance between their work and personal life through work life policies and programs. Last but not least, the limitations of the present study and some suggestions for future research are discussed as wel

Factors Affecting Glance Behavior when Interacting with In-Vehicle Devices: Implications from a Simulator Study

This study examined the effects of text entry and reading on drivers’ eye glance behavior, as influenced by text length and presence of ambient text (i.e., text around targeted text). A simulator study was conducted with 28 drivers. The findings showed that text entry tasks required longer eyes-off-road (EOR) time than text reading tasks. The presence of ambient text also increased the total EOR time for text reading. Tasks with shorter text required shorter individual glances, but even the shortest text entry tasks resulted in long glances for those who entered text in large chunks. Thus, shortening the text length alone may not ensure safe glance behavior and other countermeasures may need to be considered

Assessing Text Reading and Text Entry while Driving Using the Visual Occlusion Technique

This study estimated the time drivers spend completing text reading and text entry tasks of varying difficulty levels using visual occlusion to mimic the timesharing between driving and interacting with text. The findings showed that text entry took longer than text reading and task time increased with longer text length. In the occlusion condition, the total task time with vision unoccluded was shorter than the task time in the static condition, although this finding was not consistent across reading and entry. Ambient text (irrelevant text surrounding the text of interest) had no effect on time on task. These results should be considered in light of the acceptable limits for time on task and can inform the design of invehicle systems that require text reading or entry

Sirtuin 1 facilitates generation of induced pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryonic fibroblasts through the miR-34a and p53 pathways

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Legal provision for protection against sexual harassment at workplace: A comparison

Sexual harassment is also referred as sexual blackmail (in France), unwanted intimacy (in Holland) and sexual molestation (in Italy). Recent report indicated that sexual harassment has been the most serious problem for working women in Europe.Sexual harassment takes many forms ranging from a mere verbal insult to a physical advance that is unwelcome and sexually in nature.It can also be a stalking or a bullying tactic.In Malaysia, although there is no sexual law exists, a person who has been sexually harassed could seek legal remedies under Malaysian criminal law.Section 354 and Section 509 of the Penal Code regarding sexual harassment provide some forms of remedy for the victims.The launching of Malaysian Code of Practice on the Prevention and Eradication of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace was launched on August 17, 1999.The main objective of the Code is to increase awareness among all levels of workers on sexual harassment so that they would not involve in such an offence.However such Code -a mere guidelines to both employers and employees- creates no legal obligation for those who choose not to implement and it has no binding effect.The problems on sexual harassment, although relatively new in Malaysia, existed prior to 1960s during which neither a term to describe nor legal remedy to address.The issues on sexual harassment was alarming within 40 years and according to ILO in 1992, 23 countries revealed that sexual harassment was a major problem in workplace known to women. It has been reported that thirty six countries have enacted specific legislation on sexual harassment in order to handle and prevent this contagious problem from spreading into the society.Against these background, this paper reveals selected sexual harassment cases and highlights the legal provision against sexual harassment at workplace among nine Asian countries

Entropy of black holes in the deformed Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravity

We find the entropy of Kehagias-Sfetsos black hole in the deformed Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravity by using the first law of thermodynamics. When applying generalized uncertainty principle (GUP) to Schwarzschild black hole, the entropy $S=A/4+(\pi/\omega)\ln(A/4)$ may be interpreted as the GUP-inspired black hole entropy. Hence, it implies that the duality in the entropy between the Kehagias-Sfetsos black hole and GUP-inspired Schwarzschild black hole is present.Comment: 11 pages, version to appear in PL

TEACHING CASE STUDY: FROM PENAGA TREE TO HERITAGE BOUTIQUE HOTEL: A CASE STUDY OF HOTEL PENAGA

Hotel Penaga is a heritage-listed boutique hotel in the Unesco World Heritage Site in Penang, Malaysia. It was built in the 1920s and renovated into a 45-room hotel in 2008. Hotel Penaga was the first heritage-listed renovated hotel to be awarded Gold by the Green Building Index. Currently, Hotel Penaga is managed by Vouk Hotel Management. Hotel Penaga is committed to environmental sustainability and emphasizes destination marketing in its hotel operations. Achieving a healthy occupancy rate for the hotel is one of the biggest challenges for Hotel Penaga, especially after the pandemic