Relationship between leadership style and project success among IT Professionals in Nigeria: Implications to Project Management

The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between leadership style of IT Professionals and IT project success in Nigeria. A total of 150 questionnaires were distributed to IT professionals in Nigeria, and a total of 59 completed questionnaires were received resulting in a total of 39.3% response rate. The findings of the study indicate that there is a positive relationship between project manager’s leadership styles and IT projects success in Nigeria. In other words the leadership behavior of IT project manager results in project success in varying degrees based on the type of style exhibited. The result also indicated that the IT project managers in our sample exhibited more of transformational than any other styles investigated

Examining the relationship between employees’ perceptions on competency training and affective commitment: The moderating influence of volition

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between employees’ perceptions on competency training and affective commitment and the moderating effect of employees’ volition on this relationship. Data were collected from a field survey of 159 technicians from selected institutes in Sarawak. Regression analysis indicated that there was a positive relationship between employee’s perceived training comprehensiveness and affective commitment. In addition, the results indicated that the relationship between employee’s perceptions on competency training and affective commitment will be more positive for those who take on the competency training by own volition. Implications for researchers and practitioners are proposed based on the findings

Exploring the extent of transformational leadership in the context of Miri entrepreneurs

In this century entrepreneurs (leaders) are faced with significant challenges that require extraordinary leadership. The business environments are changing at a very fast pace with immense competition, changing needs of customers, increasingly global economy and the rapid changes in the technology. This paper investigates the transactional and transformational leadership styles among the Miri entrepreneurs by employing the approach based on the Bass’s Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). Miri was chosen as the area of study as it will be a resort city by the year 2005 and, hence, Miri needs entrepreneurs who demonstrate effective leadership styles to cope with the increasing dynamic and complex business environment. Moreover, the entrepreneurs must meet the increasing preference for transformational leadership styles among employees found in many studies in order to improve satisfaction and commitment of the workforce. The findings were mapped with various literatures with the intention to enhance understanding of the leadership styles of Miri entrepreneurs and to further promote effective leadership styles amongst them. This research identified the leadership style of Miri entrepreneurs as transformational rather than transactional. This finding is consistent with the findings of transformational and transactional leadership styles in the Malaysian context undertaken by Sheh (2002) and Ng et al. (2002)

Miri City as a festival destination image in the context of Miri Country Music Festival

The primary objective of the study is to ascertain the festival destination image of Miri. More specifically the study objectives are to determine Miri as a festival destination image among the tourists in the context of Miri Country Music Festival (MCMF) and to assess tourist’s satisfaction level of MCMF. The findings show that the participants have positive impression about Miri being a festival destination image. This paper provides some insights to relevant authorities for further improvements to meet the expectation of the tourists. The limitations of the study and future research are also discussed in this paper

High performance work practices and service quality in mid-scale lodging industry

The main objective of this research is to examine the important constructs of service quality in its relation to high performance research practice with employee engagement as mediating factor. It attempts to identify the potential gap in the service quality performance in the lodging industry in Sabah, Malaysia. A preliminary study to complement a larger research, this study intends to use quantitative approach. The three-fold potential contributions of this paper include: enriching the literature of strategic Human Resource (HR) and Organizational Behavior (OB) as empirical evidence to the management of lodging industry and the service sector in general and lastly, contributing toward the sustainable and robust performance of the ‘Sabah hospitality service quality performance’

Influence of Cultural Intelligence and Psychological Capital on Service Quality: A Study of the Hotel Industry in Sabah, Malaysia

Cultural intelligence (CQ) and psychological capital (PsyCap) are two critical characteristics that can be leveraged to develop dynamic hotel frontline employees capable of sustaining service excellence. While both the hotel industry and researchers have followed this trend, there are few studies in the research setting that delve into this relationship. This study examines the effects of cultural intelligence on service quality with psychological capital serving as a mediating variable. To confirm the proposed hypotheses, this study collects 300 questionnaires from four- and five-star hotels. For quantitative analysis, partial least squares structural equation modelling was used. The findings revealed that PsyCap is favorably associated with three components of CQ (metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral elements). Simultaneously, the CQ cognitive and behavioral elements were found to be positively related with service quality (SQ). These findings offer hotel managers practical guidance on how to evaluate critical internal resources and capabilities as a source to implementing and sustaining human resource practices

The role of cultural values on transformational leadership and citizenship behavior

Transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) have gained much popularity in recent years among scholars and practitioners. Although the cultural context of transformational leadership and OCB has increasingly been recognized as highly relevant, there is a paucity of studies done so far. Various research suggested that transformational leaders modifies subordinates OCB that may produce positive behaviors and increase organizational effectiveness. However the impact and process may vary in a different cultural setting. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework on the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and citizenship behavior in an integrative way by viewing Sabah ethnic cultural values as a latent moderating mechanism that may not have been empirically tested in the leadership and OCB literature

Antecedents of Affective Organizational Commitment and Turnover Intention of Academics in selected private universities in Malaysia

The private universities are playing important roles in offering high quality education to Malaysian and international students, thus contributing towards the aims of making Malaysia an international education hub. This study empirically investigated the influence of three selected HR practices, namely pay level satisfaction, career development opportunities and work-family support, POS and three mediating variables, namely felt obligation, trust in management and professional commitment on two focal variables, namely affective organizational commitment and turnover intention in the context of academics working with private universities in Malaysia. The underlying theory for this study is the Organizational Support Theory. The objectives of the study were achieved using a quantitative survey method. A pilot study with 134 academics from one private university was undertaken to ensure the validity and reliability of the research instrument as well as identifying the best fitting structural model that would explain the data collected.) For the actual study, a total of four private universities gave approval for this study to be conducted and a total of 202 valid responses were received from the academics, yielding a response rate of 20.2%. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to test the validity of the overall measurement and structural model and the hypothesized relationships between the latent constructs. This study found that the academics' perceived career development opportunities positively influenced -the level of POS and POS had a direct positive relationship with affective organizational commitment. Besides, POS has not only a direct influence on organizational commitment, but also an indirect impact via felt obligation, confirming the partial mediator effect of felt obligation. Another interesting finding of the study was that the influence of POS on turnover intention is only through the indirect effect via affective organizational commitment. The results of this study add to our knowledge about the social exchange mechanisms or process that link HR practices with the employees'affective organizational commitment and turnover intention. This study sheds some important implications on the effective management of employees in general, and academics in particular. Future research directions include employing the longitudinal research design to confirm the direction of causality ofthe constructs of this study; including other HR practices, mediating variables and employee behaviors into the model; and extending the study to other institutions of higher learning

Perceived organizational support: Linking human resource management practices with affective organizational commitment, professional commitment and turnover intention

The main objective of this conceptual paper is to examine the role of perceived organizational support(POS) to link the four (4) human resource management practices namely pay satisfaction, career development opportunities, work/family support and leader-member exchange and affective organizational commitment, professional commitment and turnover intention of faculty members working for private higher education institutions in Malaysia.This paper will mainly be driven theoretically by the social exchange theory, the concept of perceived organizational support (POS) which is the commitment of the organization to the employee, the norm of reciprocity, the organizational support theory as well as the other relevant literature in the human resource management and organizational behaviour research.This paper contributes to the limited body of knowledge about the psychological processes underlying the formation of organizational commitment through the perspectives of the social exchange theory (Blau,1964) and the organizational support theory (Eisenberger, et al., 1986; Eisenberger et al., 2001)