Pressures, green supply chain management practices and performance of ISO 14001 certified manufacturers in Malaysia

As the language of environmentalism become more vocal globally— including in Malaysia—a growing number of organizations are intending to adopt green approaches throughout their entire supply chains. Issues of environmental protection are central and dynamic; as such, there is an ongoing need for studies to fully understand and update knowledge in this area. This paper investigates green supply chain management (GSCM) among 112 ISO14001 certified manufacturers in Malaysia. Specifically, the objectives of this study are to examine the influence of various pressures (regulation, marketing, competition, management, and cost) on the level of green practices, and the interrelationships between drivers, practices, and performance. The study also looks at the moderating effect of partner relationships. Results indicate that manufacturers in Malaysia experience high external pressures such as regulatory and marketing/customers pressures. The GSCM implementation, especially on external activities, are still at a moderate level except for internal environmental initiatives. GSCM practices affect firms’ financial/market performance and customer satisfaction, but are not significant to environmental performances. The partner relationship (trust and commitment) moderate the relationship between GSCM practices and environmental performances but is not applicable to relationships between GSCM practices and other firms’ performances such as market/financial outcomes and customer satisfaction. Subsequent implications for both theory and practice are discussed in the paper

How green is your supply chain? Evidence from ISO 14001 certified manufacturers in Malaysia

Extraordinary current consumption in the developed countries as well as in the Asian region, as a result of rapid industrialization, has increased the levels of energy and material consumption. This has posed negative consequences on the natural resources and the environment. The question of how to make economic and infrastructure growth environmentally and socially sustainable, so that it can continue to benefits people while conserving the natural assets and ecosystem continues to challenge policy makers, industry, and consumers. This research investigates the level of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices adopted by ISO 14001 certified manufacturers in Malaysia. Based on the data collected through the questionnaire survey, it was found that most manufacturers have not yet fully adopted the green practices within their supply chain activities. Only 17 percent of the total respondents were proactive adopters of the GSCM practices. The internal environmental practices have been found to be the top GSCM practices, followed by eco-design and investment recovery. The least common GSCM practice is reverse logistics. The study offers implications to both theory and practice

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE AND STUDENTS’ ASSERTIVE BEHAVIOUR

Students are more likely to be influenced by their social environment that affects their behaviour, cognitive, emotion as well as their lifestyles. The influence from social environment will eventually mould the students’ personality. Students’ positive personality can be developed by having interpersonal communication competence which plays important role in developing positive psychological aspect among them. This study aims to understand the relationship between interpersonal communication competence and assertive behaviour among secondary school students. A set of questionnaire was used to gather relevant information of interpersonal communication and assertive behaviour of 152 students from one premier school in Kuala Lipis, Pahang. Findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between interpersonal communication competence and assertive behaviour. Apart from that, findings also reveal that there is a gender difference on interpersonal communication’s competence and assertive behaviour. Several limitations and suggestions were also discussed. Keywords: interpersonal communication, communication competence, communication skills, assertive behaviou

Spatial and seasonal ionospheric error growth in DGPS measurement: a case study in Malaysia

This paper tackles the Equatorial ionosphere and its effects on Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) error growth over Malaysia by using a network of GPS Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS). Seasonal variation of ionospheric delay has been examined and findings show that the effect of spatial variation of ionospheric errors in DGPS is very significant during the equinoctial seasons. Furthermore, a DGPS regression model was developed and tested during the solar maximum year in 2013 by using internet-based DGPS. The results show that the model is capable of estimating DGPS positional errors for distances of user to reference station less than 680 km

Drivers, practices and performances of green supply chain management of ISO 14001 certified manufacturers in Malaysia

The emergence of attention towards the prospects of South East Asia becoming a new centre for manufacturing industry is expected to create more job and business opportunities in the future. Despite the rapid changes in world development, the effect and consequences of manufacturing activities in the supply chain process has been widely discussed. An increasing amount of research into the underlying dimensions of greening the supply chain (GSCM) is gaining momentum and offers a lot of discoveries to be explored especially in the context of developing countries since more focus have been given to the developed countries in previous research. Thus, this study bridge the gap by examines the GSCM drivers, practices and performances of ISO 14001 certified manufacturers in Malaysia. This study posits several hypotheses to examine the relationship between green supply chain drivers, practices and performances. This study also hypothesises that trust ~and commitment moderates the relationship between green practices and GSCM performances. Data was collected through interview sessions with representative from four selected manufacturers and self-administered questionnaires that were sent to respondents in the target sample which was drawn from a list of IS014001 manufacturers obtained from the Federation of Malaysia Manufacturers (FMM) 2010. A total of 112 usable responses were received and used for the data analysis. Pearson's correlation and multiple regression analysis were used for the hypotheses testing in this study. The qualitative data from the interviews were used to further support the findings. It can be conclude that manufacturers in Malaysia received high pressures to adopt GSCM however, the implementation and the outcomes for the GSCM practices still at par. The results provided support for four hypotheses posited in the research framework. Significantly, the findings indicated that Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) drivers were positively related to GSCM practices. Meanwhile the elements of trust and commitment moderate the relationships between GSCM practices and environmental performances. However, the findings failed to find significant evidence on the moderating effect of trust and commitment on GSCM practices, and the other two outcomes indicators which were market/financial performances and customer satisfaction. The overall findings thus seem to support the theoretical model of the research

Green supply chain management in developing countries : a study of factors and practices in Malaysia.

With the increasing awareness on environmental sustainability issues, manufacturing firms nowadays start to think and act green. In addition, firms need to implement wise strategies in order to compromise with green issues without neglecting their business objectives. This paper reports the results of green practices and factors that lead firms to adopt green initiatives in Malaysia. Based on in depth interviews with four manufacturing companies, the results show that customers, marketing, regulations, competitive and internal factors are among the factors that encouraged firms to adopt green practices. This study also indicates manufacturers in Malaysia implement green purchasing, eco design and internal green practices in their operations. Therefore the findings will help to address the issues more appropriately and plan for better green supply chain management initiatives in the future aligning with effort and commitment shown by the government

GPS meteorology in a low-latitude region: remote sensing of atmospheric water vapor over the Malaysian Peninsula

This paper presents an accuracy assessment of IWV data obtained from one year of GPS measurements in Peninsular Malaysia and the correlation between this GPS-derived IWV and radiosonde-derived IWV. Four GPS stations in close proximity to existing radiosonde stations are assessed; the root mean square errors of the GPS-derived IWVs are 3.447kg/m 2, 3.786kg/m 2, 4.122kg/m 2 and 4.253kg/m 2 and their linear correlation coefficients are 0.877, 0.797, 0.851 and 0.849, respectively. Such strong correlations indicate that GPS data has the potential to be used for water vapor observation in Peninsular Malaysia for locations with few weather stations

Iskandarnet IOMOS: near real-time equatorial space weather monitoring and alert system in Peninsular Malaysia

This work proposes ISKANDARnet Ionospheric Outburst MOnitoring and alert System (IOMOS), along with Ionospheric Outburst Index (IOX) to develop an operational near real-time space weather service for Malaysia. The IOMOS is based on Global Positioning System (GPS) Network-based Real-Time Kinematic (NRTK) concept which is by nature for atmospheric (ionosphere and troposphere) modeling within the network coverage. The elegance of this solution lies in the fact that IOMOS utilize differential ionospheric residual from network of GPS baselines which incur no additional cost for operation. Users will be informed about the ionospheric perturbation through Short Message Service (SMS), email or Twitter. This approach will ultimately beneficial for the navigation and satellite positioning communities, particularly during the coming Solar Cycle 24. In addition, a combination of local and global GPS network has been employed to study the equatorial ionosphere geomorphology and climatology in the Malaysian sector. Equatorial Total Electron Content (TEC) over Malaysia shows semi-annual, annual, and seasonal variations with maximum values appearing during equinoctial months and minimum during solstices months. The TEC value during vernal equinox is about 21% higher than autumnal equinox, and December solstice exceeds that at the June solstice by around 14%. It is also found that semi-annual variation is present at all levels of solar activity, whereas June solstice predominates December solstice during high solar activity for annual and seasonal variations. In near future, a near real-time TEC derivation system will be developed to support equatorial ionosphere modeling to enhance space weather service for Malaysia