Factors Contributing to Expatriate Adjustment to Life in Malaysia

The objective of this study is to determine the factors contributing to expatriate adjustment to life in Malaysia. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and previous research, the independent variables of cultural intelligence, language ability, open-mindedness, tenure in Malaysia, previous overseas experience and monthly income, are used in this study to predict expatriate adjustment. A survey questionnaire was developed and analysis done on 80 expatriates from four industries in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Results of regression analysis using the PROCESS software showed that cultural intelligence, language ability open-mindedness, tenure in Malaysia and gender explained 76.2% of the variance in expatriate adjustment in Malaysia. Furthermore, tenure in Malaysia moderated cultural intelligence. However, previous overseas assignments and monthly income did not have any relationships with expatriate adjustment. The applicability of the conservation of resources theory to explain expatriate adjustment is clearly established in this study as all the variables that are significant predictors of expatriate adjustment are resources

ES Implementations – A Model of Panoptical Empowerment

Enterprise Systems (ES) / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems implementations have been widely popular with organisations in the past century with revenues of 37.5 billion USD in 2008 (AMR, 2009). Empowerment of users is one of commonly cited benefits of ES usage. However, literature review suggests a paradoxical situation exists with the empowerment of users via the use of IT. Various researchers have attempted to address the panoptical control and empowerment controversy by attempting to explain the impact on managers and users. However, to ensure the success of ES implementation and use, it is idealistic to achieve an optimised balance for the organization to impose control on the use of IT i.e. Enterprise Systems and the empowerment benefits of IT. This study guided by the lens of panopticon control attempts to investigate the impact of empowerment and panoptical control on varying levels of users including management and the factors that assist in optimising both control and empowerment

Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being in Malaysia

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between different forms of social capital and subjective well-being in Malaysia. Subjective well-being is observed based on two aspects: happiness and life satisfaction. The analysis using data from the World Value Survey with 1300 respondents. Based on the ordered probit regression analysis, it is found that bonding and linking social capital contribute to happiness. Happiness also increases for those who are more active in associations. However, bridging social capital based on trust of people from other religion and ethnic group as well as people whom an individual does not know have adverse contribution to happiness. Only linking social capital has a positive relationship with life satisfaction. In terms of religiosity, importance of God seems to have positive relationship with both happiness and life satisfaction. Other factors such as health status, income, marital status and education also have the influence on Malaysians’ happiness and life satisfaction levels

Institutional corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices: the influence of leadership styles and their perceived ethics and social responsibility role

This paper investigates leader's perceptions of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR) on organisation's institutional CSR practices. The results indicate that while the managers in this study perceive that ethics and social responsibility play an important role in determining the organisation's long-term and short-term gains, they do not think that ethics and social responsibility are the only important factors in determining firm's profitability and survival, as indicated by the non-significant results of the PRESOR (social responsibility and profitability) dimension. Another objective was to determine the types of leadership style in influencing the adoption and practices of CSR. As oppose to many previous studies, the results indicate that among the leadership styles, transactional leadership influences institutional CSR practices, while transformational leadership does not. This finding implies that for CSR practices to be implemented, leaders need to use rewards, rules and regulations in a Malaysian context. In other words, in order to institutionalise CSR practices in Malaysia, corporations should start by introducing extrinsic incentives

Urban Malaysian Adolescents' Online Activities.

Many Malaysian adolescents are immersed in the global contemporary,technological and digital culture. Their everyday literacy practices involve participation in a range of activities on the Internet

Insights on the synthesis of asymmetric curcumin derivatives and their biological activities

Curcumin is a small organic molecule with pleiotropic biological activities. However, its multiple structural-pharmacokinetic challenges prevent its development into a clinical drug. Various structural modifications have been made to improve its drug profile. In this review, we focus on the methods adopted in the synthesis of asymmetric curcumin derivatives and their biological activities and forecast the future of this exciting class of compounds in the field of medicine

Decreased Innate Migration of Pro-Inflammatory M1 Macrophages through the Mesothelial Membrane Is Affected by Ceramide Kinase and Ceramide 1-P

The retrograde flow of endometrial tissues deposited into the peritoneal cavity occurs in women during menstruation. Classically (M1) or alternatively (M2) activated macrophages partake in the removal of regurgitated menstrual tissue. The failure of macrophage egress from the peritoneal cavity through the mesothelium leads to chronic inflammation in endometriosis. To study the migration differences of macrophage phenotypes across mesothelial cells, an in vitro model of macrophage egress across a peritoneal mesothelial cell monolayer membrane was developed. M1 macrophages were more sessile, emigrating 2.9-fold less than M2 macrophages. The M1 macrophages displayed a pro-inflammatory cytokine signature, including IL-1α, IL-1β, TNF-α, TNF-β, and IL-12p70. Mass spectrometry sphingolipidomics revealed decreased levels of ceramide-1-phosphate (C1P), an inducer of migration in M1 macrophages, which correlated with its poor migration behavior. C1P is generated by ceramide kinase (CERK) from ceramide, and blocking C1P synthesis via the action of NVP231, a specific CERK chemical inhibitor, prohibited the emigration of M1 and M2 macrophages up to 6.7-fold. Incubation with exogenously added C1P rescued this effect. These results suggest that M1 macrophages are less mobile and have higher retention in the peritoneum due to lower C1P levels, which contributes to an altered peritoneal environment in endometriosis by generating a predominant pro-inflammatory cytokine environment

Exploring preconception signatures of metabolites in mothers with gestational diabetes mellitus using a non-targeted approach

BackgroundMetabolomic changes during pregnancy have been suggested to underlie the etiology of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). However, research on metabolites during preconception is lacking. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate distinctive metabolites during the preconception phase between GDM and non-GDM controls in a nested case-control study in Singapore.MethodsWithin a Singapore preconception cohort, we included 33 Chinese pregnant women diagnosed with GDM according to the IADPSG criteria between 24 and 28 weeks of gestation. We then matched them with 33 non-GDM Chinese women by age and pre-pregnancy body mass index (ppBMI) within the same cohort. We performed a non-targeted metabolomics approach using fasting serum samples collected within 12 months prior to conception. We used generalized linear mixed model to identify metabolites associated with GDM at preconception after adjusting for maternal age and ppBMI. After annotation and multiple testing, we explored the additional predictive value of novel signatures of preconception metabolites in terms of GDM diagnosis.ResultsA total of 57 metabolites were significantly associated with GDM, and eight phosphatidylethanolamines were annotated using HMDB. After multiple testing corrections and sensitivity analysis, phosphatidylethanolamines 36:4 (mean difference beta: 0.07; 95% CI: 0.02, 0.11) and 38:6 (beta: 0.06; 0.004, 0.11) remained significantly higher in GDM subjects, compared with non-GDM controls. With all preconception signals of phosphatidylethanolamines in addition to traditional risk factors (e.g., maternal age and ppBMI), the predictive value measured by area under the curve (AUC) increased from 0.620 to 0.843.ConclusionsOur data identified distinctive signatures of GDM-associated preconception phosphatidylethanolamines, which is of potential value to understand the etiology of GDM as early as in the preconception phase. Future studies with larger sample sizes among alternative populations are warranted to validate the associations of these signatures of metabolites and their predictive value in GDM.Peer reviewe