The influence of leadership styles on employees’ job satisfaction in public sector organizations in Malaysia

Leadership is a process influence between leaders and subordinates where a leader attempts to influence the behaviour of subordinates to achieve the organizational goals. Organizational success in achieving its goals and objectives depends on the leaders of the organization and their leadership styles. By adopting the appropriate leadership styles, leaders can affect employee job satisfaction, commitment and productivity. Two hundred Malaysian executives working in public sectors voluntarily participated in this study. Two types of leadership styles, namely, transactional and transformational were found to have direct relationships with employees’ job satisfaction. The results showed that transformational leadership style has a stronger relationship with job satisfaction. This implies that transformational leadership is deemed suitable for managing government organizations. Implications of the findings were discussed further

Introductory tutorial on data analysis using SPSS

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Mediators and moderators in regression analyses

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Enhancing organizational performance of Malaysian SMEs: the role of HRM and organizational learning capability

Purpose: the purpose of this paper is to examine organizational learning (OL) capability as a mediator of the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and performance of Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach - A cross-sectional design was adopted, where data were collected from a sample of 286 manufacturing and service SMEs, utilizing a survey questionnaire. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Findings - Results from a two-stage structural equation modeling analysis suggest that the use of human-capital enhancing HR practices strengthen SMEs' learning capability. Furthermore, SMEs' learning capability mediates the effect of the HR practices on firm performance. Research limitations/implications - It uses a cross-sectional design which has prevented the examination of cause and effect relationship between two constructs. It also did not include large organizations in the sample population. It also did not consider other SME contextual variables which may otherwise exert significant impact on OL capability, or moderate the relationship between the constructs under study. Practical implications - A profound understanding of HR practices' holistic effect on performances would assist organizations to implement strategies to sustain competitive advantage. Company capabilities embedded in employee behavior are less likely to be inimitable and organizations could effectively nurture the needed employee capabilities to achieve the desired performance outcomes. Originality/value - The study advances knowledge on HRM among SMEs by proposing that decisions on selection of HR practices can be guided by the objective of developing the OL capability of the firm

Board governance structure and CEO compensation

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Factors influencing community participation in Community-Based Ecotourism in Padawan, Sarawak

Community Based Ecotourism (CBE) has commonly practiced by the rural communities of Sarawak as poverty alleviation and local empowerment tool in conserving the natural resources in their livelihood. The community participation in the rural areas of Sarawak is essential in CBE sustainability. This study investigates the community participation in Community Based Ecotourism in Padawan, Sarawak. This study only applied for six selected villages in Kampung Sadir, Kampung Giam Danu, Kampung Annah Rais, Kampung Semadang and Kampung Benuk. These six villages are among the villages in Padawan that have ecotourism potential and availability. The application of the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) used to analyse the categories of contributing factors towards the community participation in CBE. Their CBE activities included Tourist Centre/Guide, homestays, heritage festivals and outdoor activities. The method used to accomplish this study is snowball sampling techniques to recruit the participants to be involved in focus group interviews. For this study, the Village Chiefs were requested to select the suitable participants (ecotourism business providers, village committee and common villagers) to participate in focus group interview. Throughout the focus group interview, the participants were required to discuss on the issues or factors influencing their participation in CBE. The findings reveal the factors that affecting motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) of the community in involving in CBE