Impact of work design on psychological work reactions and job performance among technical workers: A longitudinal study in Malaysia

Work design has long been found to affect employee well-being, but scholars have begun to question whether the established theoretical relations regarding work design continue to hold given the enormous changes in the nature of work during the past two decades. It is increasingly recognised that social characteristics affect work behaviours in substantial ways, and recent theorising proposes that individual differences are also important. Few studies on work design have investigated these factors together. In addition, little is known about whether existing Western findings regarding the effects of work design generalise to non-Western cultures. This thesis built upon to the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model of work design, to test the impact of work design on employee well-being in Malaysia, a country characterised as collectivistic and having high power distance. Specifically, my research sought to examine, cross-sectionally and longitudinally, the direct effects of psychosocial work characteristics on psychological strain. Also, the present study assessed the moderating effects of job resources variables including job control, social support, and self-efficacy on the relationships between job demands and psychological strain. Finally, this study examined the mediation effect of psychological strain on the relationships between work design variables and work attitude outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intentions), as well as the mediation effects of these work attitudes on the relationship between psychological strain and job performance. This research involved a non-experimental two-wave panel survey design with a six-month time interval. Self-reports on the study variables were obtained from 429 technical workers at Time 1 and 245 at Time 2 in a large telecommunication company in Malaysia. I used multivariate analyses to examine the direct and moderating effects hypotheses, and structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess the mediation effects hypotheses. The findings confirmed the direct effects of job demands, job control, social support, and self-efficacy on psychological strain. However, the results failed to support the Job Demands Control (JDC) model in this Malaysian context. Indeed, the combination of high job demands and high job control increased, rather than reduced, psychological strain in this Malaysia setting. The results also provide evidence for a moderating effect of supervisor support, but not for perceived organisational support or co-worker support. Overall, the results did provide some support for the Job Demands Control Support (JDCS) model. Furthermore, they demonstrated a moderating effect of self-efficacy. In the mediation analyses, psychological strain (especially anxiety/depression) functioned as a mediator between work design variables and work attitudes. In subsequent mediation analyses, job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intentions mediated the effect of psychological strain on job performance, particularly in the cross-sectional analyses. This research makes several theoretical contributions, and provides information concerning the JD-R model and its application to a culture characterised by high collectivism and high power distance. The findings may help human resource practitioners understand how work design influences employees’ well-being and performance. Implications are discussed to enhance better mapping of interventions at individual and group levels. Recommendations for future research include the need to test an expanded model of work design and well-being using multi-wave longitudinal designs and multiple measures of key variables

Influence of work-life balance towards level of job satisfaction among research academics in Malaysia

Malaysian Research University academics often exposed to the issues of work-life balance. Work-life balance is suggested as one of potential factor which contribute to the level of job satisfaction among academics. Imbalance between work and life may cause low level of job satisfaction while balance will trigger high level of job satisfaction. This paper aims to foresee the effect of work-life balance towards job satisfaction among academicians in Malaysia. This study is a preliminary study which utilized a survey method to gather the data. A total of 97 respondents were participated in this preliminary study which gathered thru online survey.PASW 18 was executed to analyze the data. Correlation was used to identify relationship between work-to-family enrichment and work-to-family conflict towards job satisfaction. While regression was executed to identify the effect of work-to-family enrichment and work-to-family conflict towards job satisfaction. Result had indicated that work-to-family enrichment and work-to-family conflict significantly influence job satisfaction. In this paper, the researchers discuss the preliminary result of this study and how this study contributes to the knowledge enhancement in area of work-life balance in academia setting

Psychosocial work environment and psychological strain among banking employees

Psychological strain received considerable research attention in the organizational stress research. The prevalence of psychological strain at the workplace is explained by various theoretical models of psychosocial work environment such as job demand-control model, job demand-resources model, and effort-reward imbalance model. This study aims to investigate the effect of psychosocial work environment on psychological strain among employees in banking sector. In banking sector, the employees’ psychological strain is caused by unfeasible sales target, lower salaries, high workload and job insecurity. Thus, this study defines psychosocial work environment as the combination of social and psychological aspect at work. The researcher integrates the effort-reward imbalance model and the organizational justice model as the predictor of psychological strain. The target population for the present study is specifically the bank tellers in a development financial institution (DFI) and a commercial bank. The data was collected quantitatively by distributing questionnaires. This study is a preliminary study. Thus, only 150 respondents were involved in this study. The finding indicates that only reward and overcommitment significantly affect psychological strain. This finding shows the empirical evidence that the effect of psychosocial work environment on employees’ health where psychosocial work environment affects psychological strain

Influence of Mindset on Intellectual Performance

One of the priorities of education institutional existence is to empower student’s academic performance. Understanding their perception towards themselves and their mindset able to help students in their development. This study aims to identify the influence of mindset on intellectual performance. The population of this study sample covers 108 high school students ages 15 to 18 years old across Johor. The respondents of this research were selected through purposive sampling. In this research, student mindset had been measure using the growth mindset scale, and intellectual performance had been measured using 10 items of the psychometric and intellectual test. The data collected were analysed by using SPSS version 26. The results of this research showed that majority of the students has a growth mindset and majority of the students only able to achieve low intellectual performance level. In addition, the findings indicate that type of mindset did not influence intellectual performance

The influence of personality trait on the relationship of emotional intelligence and self-esteem

The theoretical solutions are simply not able to unlock the psychological issues because it is closely linked to affective, cognitive and human behaviour in the workplace. In this study, the issues in the workplace are referring to personality, emotional intelligence and self-esteem of employees. The specific purpose of this study was to test the effect of extraversion personality as a moderator towards the relationship of emotional intelligence and self-esteem of employees. A total of 196 civil servants in the Local Authority (LA) have been selected as respondents. Measurement tools that used is Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Form (EPQR-S), Emotional Intelligence Self-Description Inventory (EISDI), and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES). The data was analysed by using the hierarchical regression analysis. The finding shows that the two hypotheses are accepted. From this analysis as well, there was a moderating effect of extraversion personality on the relationship between emotional intelligence (perception and appraisal of emotion, and understanding emotions) with self-esteem of employees. The most important finding shows that extraversion personality serves as moderator when the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-esteem are enhanced if extraversion were on a high level. This is compared with the low levels of extraversion personality that causing on relationship of emotional intelligence with self-esteem becoming weaker

The Validated Learning Transfer Factors among Malaysian Public Sector

Learning transfer has become a main issue in training as it symbolizes the effectiveness of the training programme and the return of the organizatio

Effect of leader-member exchange, psychological empowerment, workplace spirituality towards transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior among nurses

Transformational leadership, leader-member exchange (LMX), workplace spirituality and psychological empowerment have been given the credit of bringing success to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in an organization. Thusly, this research will investigate the role of transformational leadership on OCB especially within the context of Malaysia’s nurses. Furthermore, it is expected that the efficient role of transformational leadership relies on LMX on interaction to OCB. Additionally, the presence of workplace spirituality as a moderator among subordinate may affect relationship between LMX and OCB. Lastly, the effect of psychological empowerment as a moderator between transformational leadership and OCB also will be studied. The research method will be conducted as a cross-sectional study which the data will be collected by using questionnairebased survey. Transformational leadership will be measured by adapted from Multiple Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) by Bass (1985), OCB from Organ (1988), LMX adapted from LMX-7 by Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995), workplace spirituality from Milliman et al., (2003) and psychological empowerment will be adapted from Spreitzer (1995). The total population of this research is 5084 and a minimum sample size is 1396. The hospitals will be divided into five zone clusters. The fishbowl technique and systematic sampling design will be applied. The data will be analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

Psychological Contract Breach, Behavioural Work Outcomes, Organisational Identification, and Islamic Work Ethics: A Moderated Mediation Study

We investigated how organisational identification (OID) mediates the influences of psychological contract breach (PCB) on two work outcomes [organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB)], and how Islamic work ethics (IWE) moderated the PCB–OID relationship. We collected data from 256 Palestinian managers in Gaza Strip ministries using a self-report questionnaire; we employed Structural Equation Modelling in analysing the data using Smart PLS. Our findings reveal that OID mediates between PCB and the two work outcomes. Further, we show that IWE has no moderating influence on the PCB–OID relationship. Finally, the influence of PCB on the two work outcomes is insignificant

The impact of personality trait on the relationship of emotional intelligence and self-esteem

Fundamental science of psychology often rooted in diversity theory that touching reality of human and humanity. Theoretical solution alone may not be able to unlock the psychological issues because it is closely related to affective, cognitive and human behaviour in the workplace. In this study, the issues in the workplace are referring to personality, emotional intelligence and self-esteem of employees. The specific purpose of this study was to test the effect of extraversion personality as a moderator towards the relationship of emotional intelligence and self-esteem of employees. A total of 196 civil servants in the Local Authority (LA) have been selected as respondents. Measurement tools that used is Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Form (EPQR-S), Emotional Intelligence Self-Description Inventory (EISDI), and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES). The data was analysed by using the hierarchical regression analysis. The finding shows that the two hypotheses are accepted. From this analysis as well, there was a moderating effect of extraversion personality on the relationship between emotional intelligence (perception and appraisal of emotion, and understanding emotions) with self-esteem of employees. The most important finding shows that extraversion personality serves as moderator when the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-esteem are enhanced if extraversion were on a high level. This is compared with the low levels of extraversion personality that causing on relationship of emotional intelligence with self-esteem more weaker

A bibliometric analysis of global research pattern on psychological well-being

This paper reports an analysis of publications of scholars around the world in psychological well-being in the subject area of psychology. The study uses a bibliometric approach that explores patterns in global psychological well-being research, published from 1962 to 2018. The research patterns are focused on outputs of publications, co-authorships among authors and affiliated countries as well as co-occurrences of author keywords. 928 bibliographic records were retrieved from Scopus database. The findings illustrate global researchers have significantly enhanced their impact, particularly since the period of 2007 onwards. 63% of the total global publications is published by scholars from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, followed by the other 63 countries/territories. Besides, top 10 productive universities were from the first three leading countries and nine of it were amongst the top 100 universities in the world. This study indicates that global scholars have made significant contributions to global psychological well-being study