Amran Rasli

SERVQUAL in Malaysian universities: perspectives of international students

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the service quality perceptions and expectations of international postgraduate students studying in selected Malaysian universities.Design/methodology/approach – A gap analysis based on a modified SERVQUAL instrument was used on 522 international postgraduate students who were selected based on stratified sampling of the top five public universities. The analysis started with descriptive analysis followed by factor and reliability analyses. Single mean t‐tests were conducted to assess the significance of the gap analysis based on three methods: item‐by‐item analysis; construct‐by‐construct analysis; and computation of a single measure of service quality.Findings – Five factors in the form of professionalism, reliability, hospitality, tangibles, and commitment were uncovered. The single mean t‐tests for the three methods of gap analysis indicated that all the items of perception were perceived as significantly negative as compared to expectations.Practical i...

Environment and air pollution: health services bequeath to grotesque menace

The objective of the study is to establish the link between air pollution, fossil fuel energy consumption, industrialization, alternative and nuclear energy, combustible renewable and wastes, urbanization, and resulting impact on health services in Malaysia. The study employed two-stage least square regression technique on the time series data from 1975 to 2012 to possibly minimize the problem of endogeniety in the health services model. The results in general show that air pollution and environmental indicators act as a strong contributor to influence Malaysian health services. Urbanization and nuclear energy consumption both significantly increases the life expectancy in Malaysia, while fertility rate decreases along with the increasing urbanization in a country. Fossil fuel energy consumption and industrialization both have an indirect relationship with the infant mortality rate, whereas, carbon dioxide emissions have a direct relationship with the sanitation facility in a country. The results conclude that balancing the air pollution, environment, and health services needs strong policy vistas on the end of the government officials.

The battle of health with environmental evils of Asian countries: promises to keep

The objective of the study is to examine the relationship between environmental indicators and health expenditures in the panel of five selected Asian countries, over the period of 2000–2013. The study used panel cointegration technique for evaluating the nexus between environment and health in the region. The results show that energy demand, forest area, and GDP per unit use of energy have a significant and positive impact on increasing health expenditures in the region. These results have been confirmed by single equation panel cointegration estimators, i.e., fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic OLS (DOLS), and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) estimators. In addition, the study used robust least squares regression to confirm the generalizability of the results in Asian context. All these estimators indicate that environmental indicators escalate the health expenditures per capita in a region; therefore, Asian countries should have to upsurge health expenditures for safeguard from environmental evils in a region.

The Moderating Effect of Enviropreneurship on Green Supply Chain Management Practices and Sustainability Performance

Enviropreneurship is an entrepreneurial orientation that addresses environmental problems and accommodates societal needs while simultaneously meeting the economic objective of organizations. As such, enviropreneurship can serve as a critical moderating factor that influences the relationship between green supply chain management practices (GSCMP) and sustainability performance in the Malaysian manufacturing sector. A research framework of the identified GSCMP, enviropreneurship and sustainability performance is developed with a view towards suggesting how such research might systematically be carried out. Accordingly, such thought depends upon more detailed empirical research by using advanced structural equation modeling approaches. The research findings will be particularly important for manufacturers in nurturing an entrepreneurial orientation within their organization in order to achieve sustainability performance.

Integrating guanxi into technology acceptance: An empirical investigation of WeChat

Social influence is an important research topic in the technology acceptance literature, in particular for social media. Prior empirical studies have for the most part employed social influence theory to investigate user intentions to continue with social media, while culture driven theories have been neglected. Rather than using social influence theory, we introduced guanxi theory to explore how guanxi social mechanisms (or processes) influence Chinese users’ continuance intentions in WeChat. Specifically, we developed a model that examines the role of guanxi as manifested by renqing, mianzi and ganqing in perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and continuance intention in WeChat. A survey research method was adopted to test the proposed hypotheses. This study found that ganqing has a positive impact on perceived usefulness and continuance intention. Mianzi exerts a negative effect on continuance intention but exhibits a positive effect on perceived usefulness. Renqing was found to have no significant impact on perceived usefulness and continuance intention. Our study advances the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by introducing guanxi-based constructs in a Chinese mobile social-messaging application context. Our study also offers alternative insights on guanxi-based social influence processes in the Chinese technology acceptance literature.

Dynamic linkages among energy consumption, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and agricultural production in Pakistan: sustainable agriculture key to policy success

This study examines the impact of energy demand, air pollution, fossil fuel energy and greenhouse gas emissions on agricultural production in Pakistan for the period 1980–2013. The study utilized the following variables for agricultural production, i.e., agriculture value added, cotton production, wheat production, rice production and sugarcane production in Pakistan. The study employed generalized method of moments estimator to evaluate different simultaneous equations in relation to environmental factors and agricultural production in a country. The results show that CO2 emissions have a positive and energy sources have a negative impact on agricultural value added. The fossil source of energy has a direct relationship with the cotton and sugarcane production, while CO2 emission has a positive relationship with wheat and sugarcane production. Greenhouse gas emissions badly affected the agricultural production including cotton production, wheat production and rice production. Finally, energy consumption exerts the positive impact on the production of cotton, wheat and rice in Pakistan.

Impact of innovation culture on human resources management practices

The organizations around the globe give top priority to innovation, as this leads them in becoming successful over long period of time. the development of innovative culture has now become essential for an organisation to hold its competitive position and sustainability. additionally, the culture with innovation aids in enhancing efficiency, as this brings wonderful breakthroughs in the traditional way of working. Innovative culture not only brings innovation and incremental changes in the way of thinking and doing business activities, but it greatly affects people’s behaviours. human resource practices and management are referred as a set of policies and programs, which is mainly planned to meet both organizational and personal goals. the given article is aimed to identify impact of innovation culture on hrm practices. an investigation of the extent to which hrm practices have changed from status-quo culture to innovative culture, has been done.

Exploring the relationship of horizontal violence, organizational cynicism and turnover intention in the context of social exchange theory

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship of horizontal violence, organizational cynicism and turnover intention in the nursing profession. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative approach was utilized and 870 questionnaires were distributed to collect data from nursing staff working in Punjab region of Pakistan by using non-probability multistage sampling technique. A total of 711 questionnaires were returned, out of which, 668 questionnaires were scrutinized. Additionally, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied to analyze the data. Findings The results revealed an insignificant mediating effect of organizational cynicism between the relationship of horizontal violence and turnover intention. Research limitations/implications The current study has adopted a multistage non-probability sampling technique to collect data because the management of hospitals restricted researcher access to personal information about the nurses. Therefore, at the first stage, the researcher used convenience sampling and at the second stage, the researcher utilized quota sampling to collect the data. Moreover, the findings of the current study are based on cross-sectional data because of the limited time and resources. Practical implications The current study fosters the ongoing debate in organizational studies related to cynicism, and it is noteworthy for the nursing managers to understand the significant factors which directly or indirectly affect the nursing attitude. Originality/value The current study explored the mediating role of organizational cynicism between horizontal violence and turnover intention to fill the research gap.

Entrepreneurial Orientation of Technology-Based SMEs in Malaysia

Many researches all over the world have been studying entrepreneurial orientation in the past. Despite the vast amount of studies conducted, many of these studies adopt Covin and Slevin (1991) dimensions and focus on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this study is to identify the critical dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation and determine the level of entrepreneurial orientation in technology-based SMEs in Malaysia. This study uses survey questionnaire on 150 respondents who are the owners or top managers of technology-based SMEs. Factor, reliability, descriptive, and inferential analyses were subsequently conducted. The factor analysis confirmed five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation, i.e., innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy, which are consistent with earlier studies. The descriptive and inferential analyses indicate that all the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation are apparent within technology-based SMEs, and the levels are generally high. Interestingly, innovativeness is the most prevalent among other dimensions for technology-based SMEs. The originality of this paper lies on being among the first few to examine the entrepreneurial orientation using Lumpkin and Dess (1996) dimensions within the context of technology-based SMEs in Malaysia.

A Competitive Analysis and Formulation of Strategy of University Spin Off Company

A company is required to develop core competencies through the understanding of its competitive advantage to survive in a business environment. Identifying opportunities for competitive advantage requires an understanding of industry competition. A company need to assess the level of competition and company’s position in the industry, and must react to changes in the external environment. Then, a company can arrange appropriate strategies to win the competition. This article obtains data from interviews, observation, books, scientific journals, and the internet. It uses Porter’s Five Forces Model, PEST analysis, and SWOT analysis to analyze the competitive advantages and formulating the strategy. Porter’s Five Forces Model is used to provide the level of competition and the company’s position in the industry, meanwhile PEST analysis is used to analyze the macro environment of an organization, and finally, SWOT analysis formulate a strategy based on Porter and PEST analysis that has been done before. Based on qualitative and quantitative data, it can be concluded that the company has competitive pressures on average high and it has some of opportunities in the industry of health supplements and cosmetics such as population and economic growth of Malaysian is high, and health awareness is also high, this will be followed by the increasing of purchasing healthcare products, technological advance such as online shopping. Strategy formulation of the company also can be defined by SWOT matrix, such as expanding marketing methods by selling a product in third party products online store in Malaysia.