The relationship between human resource management practices, organizational commitment, career concern, job stress and turnover intention

Any academic institution cannot survive and perform well without competent and committed academic staff. Therefore, it is important to address the issue of faculty turnover. It has been argued that faculty dissatisfaction with existing human resource practices such as no provision of equitable salary, performance appraisal, training and development, job stress and lack of career growth practices could lead to turnover. Hence, the focus of this study is to investigate the relationship between human resource practices, focusing specifically on examining the effect of salary, performance appraisal, training and development, and career growth (career goal progress, professional ability development, promotion speed, and remuneration growth) and employee’s turnover intention. This study also investigates the mediating role of organizational commitment on these relationships, as well as the moderating role of career concern and job stress on the relationships between organizational commitment and turnover intention. Using a cross sectional survey technique, this study gathers data from a sample of 270 full time faculty members of private universities in Pakistan. The Partial Least Square (PLS) two step path modeling was used to test the direct and indirect hypotheses. The results indicate that salary and performance appraisal are significantly and negatively related to turnover intention. Besides, it was found that out of four dimensions of career growth, only promotion speed and remuneration growth, have significant direct relationship with turnover intention. Nonetheless, with regard to mediated relationships, it was found that organizational commitment mediates the relationships between performance appraisal as well three dimensions of career growth (career goal progress, promotion speed, remuneration growth) and turnover intention. The results verify that these relationships are mediated by organizational commitment except salary. Nevertheless, the results also show that career concern plays an important role in moderating the relationship between organizational commitment and turnover intention. This finding suggests that to reduce turnover intention amongst employees, organizations must realize that the impact of organizational commitment in reducing turnover intention is enhanced whenever the employees are concerned about their career growth. Hence, employees’ career development should also be the concern of organizations

THE ROLE OF ANXIETY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITING SKILL AT SECONDARY LEVEL STUDENTS

This study has investigated the role of English language anxiety, its types and impacts on writing skill at secondary school level. Quantitative approach was used in this study. One hundred seventeen students and twenty teachers of English Language were selected randomly in this study. Questionnaire was used as data collection tool. It was adapted from Cheng (2004) in a modified form of English language writing anxiety (i.e. second language writing anxiety inventory) to analyze the causes and effects of English language writing anxiety. Another questionnaire was used to collect data from teachers, which were related with English language writing anxiety in their students. Consequently, the findings confirmed that most of the students feel anxiety, which had a debilitating impact on English language writing. Similarly, evaluation of data discovered that somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety, insufficient writing practice, avoidance behavior, loss of vocabulary expertise in the performance of writing represent the primary sources of anxiety in English language writing by students. Moreover, this research showed that very few teachers seem to assist their students’ triumph over writing anxiety because of massive elegance and the limited time allocated for English classrooms. On the basis of the findings, a few suggestions made so as to help to lessen anxiety in English language writing classrooms. The suggestions for classrooms exercise centered on ways of handling English language writing anxiety and guidelines to make the writing magnificence and to create a good environment for stressful students

Momentum and Uncertainty Relations in the Entropic Approach to Quantum Theory

In the Entropic Dynamics (ED) approach to quantum theory the particles have well-defined positions but since they follow non differentiable Brownian trajectories they cannot be assigned an instantaneous momentum. Nevertheless, four different notions of momentum can be usefully introduced. We derive relations among them and the corresponding uncertainty relations. The main conclusion is that momentum is a statistical concept: in ED the momenta are not properties of the particles; they are attributes of the probability distributions.Comment: Presented at MaxEnt 2011, the 31st International Workshop on Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering, (July 10--15, 2011, Waterloo, Canada

Career concern as predictor of turnover intention: Empirical evidence from education industry

Retaining the best employees is of high concern for most organizations and this issue has become a significant focus of attention for many researchers. For this reason, there is the necessity to investigate the factors which influence the employee turnover intention behavior in the organization, specifically to examine the effect of Career concern on turnover intention. Career concern was conceptualized by Adult Career Concern Inventory (ACCI) which used to measure and operationalized the Career concern variable. Data was collected to investigate the relationships in a sample of 270 full time faculty members employed in different private universities of Pakistan. The Finding of this paper indicated that career concern has been found as one of the most important predictor of employee turnover intention. This implies that, if employees are highly concerned about their career (i.e. the progression of their career) they are more likely to leave their current organization, especially if their prospect of advancing their career is not clear or non-existence

Microstructure and Mechanical Behavior of Al-Mg Composites Synthesized by Reactive Sintering

Lightweight metal matrix composites are synthesized from elemental powder mixtures of aluminum and magnesium using pressure-assisted reactive sintering. The effect of the reaction between aluminum and magnesium on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the composites due to the formation of β-Al3Mg2 and γ-Al12Mg17 intermetallics is investigated. The formation of the intermetallic compounds progressively consumes aluminum and magnesium and induces strengthening of the composites: the yield and compressive strengths increase with the increase of the content of intermetallic reinforcement at the expense of the plastic deformation. The yield strength of the composites follows the iso-stress model when the data are plotted as a function of the intermetallic content

Ultra low noise YBCO nanoSQUIDs implementing nanowires

We present results on ultra low noise YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-\delta}$ nano Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices (nanoSQUIDs). To realize such devices, we implemented high quality YBCO nanowires, working as weak links between two electrodes. We observe critical current modulation as a function of an externally applied magnetic field in the full temperature range below the transition temperature $T_C$. The white flux noise below 1 $\mu \Phi_0/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ at T = 8 K makes our nanoSQUIDs very attractive for the detection of small spin systems.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Appl. Phys. Lett. 25/01/201

Pituitary stalk interruption syndrome presenting in a euthyroid adult with short stature

Pituitary stalk interruption syndrome (PSIS) is a distinct and rare clinical entity responsible for congenital hypopituitarism resulting in deficiency of pituitary hormones with deficiency of the growth hormone (100%) and gonadotropins (97.2%) being its most common presentation at the time of hospital encounter (Wang et al., 2015). Isolated sparing of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) with deficiency of the remaining anterior pituitary hormones may be present in PSIS, as is true in our case. Therefore, it should be kept in mind at the time of examination in suspected cases of PSIS