Ari Warokka

Service Quality and Students' Satisfaction at Higher Learning Institutions: The Competing Dimensions of Malaysian Universities' Competitiveness

One of important determinants of national competitiveness is the quality of its higher education. This quality comes from the combination of excellent learning process and public satisfaction on the service delivered. Student satisfaction assessment is vital in determining service quality at higher learning institutions (HEIs). To remain competitive, it requires HEIs to continuously acquire, maintain, and build stronger relationships with students. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate students’ satisfaction on services provided by HEIs. Specifically, the study found significant relationship between the five dimensions of service quality (tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) or SERVQUAL and students’ satisfaction. From 1000 questionnaires being sent out to respondents, 360 responded. The ;indings generally indicate that the majority of students are satisfied with the facilities provided by universities. Such findings should help universities make better strategic plan as to enhance students’ satisfaction in particular and its overall performance in general. In general, the results indicated that all the five dimensions of service quality were correlated with student satisfaction.

Fostering Niches among SMEs in Malaysia through Organizational Commitment, Leadership, Organizational Culture and Job Satisfaction

Niche creation is a challenge among firms regardless of size, ownership and the kind of product/service they offer. Once it is created, fostering such niche becomes a greater issue. In this paper, we focused on the SMEs in emerging markets particularly in Malaysia. By using questionnaires, data was gathered from 100 employees working in SMEs particularly in Selangor, Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to let owners/managers/founders of SMEs better understand how fostering niches is influenced by organizational commitment, leadership, and organizational culture, towards job satisfaction as antecedents of competitive advantage and/or success of SMEs. Employees’ attitudes and behaviours are affected by the relationship between them and their employer. This relationship is referred to as organizational commitment. Moreover, leadership and organizational culture considerably have an influence on job satisfaction. Understanding this concept will aid employers to instil strong organizational culture and create solid organizational commitment among their employees and lead effectively so that they would be able to retain their well-experienced and skilful employees. Ultimately job satisfaction plays a very important role in the success of organizations particularly in the context of SMEs in Malaysia. The findings revealed positive relationships among the variables and their importance as determinants of job satisfaction in SMEs, which hopefully could contribute to the extant literature on job satisfaction and competitive advantage from the perspective of this country in Asia.

Organizational Justice in Performance Appraisal System and Work Performance: Evidence from an Emerging Market

This study aimed at extending the literature of the effect of performance appraisal on productivity and employees by connecting the employees’ perception on fair performance appraisal and organizational justice-considered practices to job satisfaction and work performance. Prior studies did not explore much this relation due to the geographical sample limitation and governance practice context. Participants of this research were employees of large and well-established companies, which were considered to have well and transparent appraisal systems and a perfect recently context to find the effect of organizational justice conflict. Questionnaires were used and processed with factor analysis and regression to examine the simultaneous effects of few independent variables on a dependent variable. The results reveal that the interactional justice has more influence than other types of organizational justice in evaluating employee’s performance, which is contrary with previous researches. Employees are more concerned on interaction during and after the evaluation process. They are keen on knowing how they have been evaluated and what the feedback of their superior is after the performance appraisal process. It provides strong support for the relationship between employee perception of organizational justice in performance appraisal system and work performance. It also supports a significant relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and work performance. The important implication for organization is a pivotal role of the employees’ perceptions of the success or failure of a system. Therefore, the management has to keep in view the perceptions of their employees, while designing or modifying the appraisal system.

Does Environmental Performance Really Matter? A Lesson from the Debate of Environmental Disclosure and Firm Performance

Prior empirical studies revealed that firms with high environmental performance tend to be profitable, but questions persist about the nature to the relationship. Those questions are referred to: “Does stronger environmental performance really lead to better financial performance?” Alternatively, “Is the observed relationship the outcome of some other underlying firm attributes?” The long debate about the relationship between environmental performance and firm performance in emerging economies still remain inconclusive and offer further explorations, especially in the context of emerging countries, which its rapid growth does not only carry social progress but also environmental challenges. Recent heuristic findings reveal that on average, while 42% of emergingmarket companies support environmental commitments in the form of policies or statements, they remain weaker on implementation and progress tracking. Little empirical research into the effect of environmental disclosure together with environmental performance on firm performance is done in Southeast Asian countries. This study extends the literature that has been done mostly in western societies by proposing a further linkage between environmental disclosure, environmental performance, and financial performance, which is rarely investigated in developing societies. The study analyzed 33 Indonesian manufacturing firms that were listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) and reported their environmental performance assessment to the Ministry of Environment Indonesia. Statistic methods used for testing the hypothesis were T-test and multivariate regression model. The empirical results reveal that environmental performance has significantly influenced financial performance of the Indonesian manufacturing firm. However, one striking finding in this study is the insignificant influence of environmental disclosure on firms financial performance. Meanwhile, environmental performance and disclosure simultaneously have significant effect on firms financial performance. These results explicitly show how firms in emerging countries are going to be more concerned with environmental sustainability and long-run profitability. Keyword: Environment Performance, Environmental Disclosure, Firm Performance, Sustainability. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Relationship Marketing and Customer Loyalty: Do Customer Satisfaction and Customer Trust Really Serve as Intervening Variables?

To contend the traditional transaction marketing, which focuses on the completion of the transaction and the pursuit of maximizing profits for each transaction, the relationship marketing in the banking sector, on the other hand, offers the establishment of strong relationships and stable partnerships between the bank and its customer in order to maximize the pursuit of the interests of all aspects of the relationship. This paper examined the nature of linkages between relationship marketing and customer loyalty by using customer satisfaction and customer trust as the intervening variables. It investigated the customer perception on customer satisfaction’s characteristics and confidence in exchange partners reliability and integrity as the mediating factors to build their trust on the banking services. The researchers employed 150 respondents of private banking as the sample. This paper used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analysis the relationship. The results revealed that the relationship marketing tactics affected customer loyalty significantly through customer trust and customer satisfaction. It explicitly demonstrates that the banks have undertaken an organization-wide strategy to manage and nurture their interaction with clients and sales prospects as the base for their customer loyalty.

Strategic role of mobile commerce (M-Commerce) payment system: Establishing new competitive advantage

A Mobile based payment system or m-commerce is an emerging issue of e-commerce in Malaysia. It is recognized by both academia and practitioners as one of the fastest growing and preferable medium of making business transactions. This study investigated the benefits of m-commerce payment method, and services satisfaction on m-commerce providers. Respondents were those who had experienced using this mode of payment. The main objectives of the study were; a) to determine the level of m-commerce awareness in Malaysia; b) to determine the level of mcommerce payment system usage among Malaysian; c) to determine the level of m-commerce payment environment among Malaysian; and d) to determine the relationship between payment system and payment environment toward m-commerce services satisfaction. The results show that m-commerce is another tool that is both highly intangible and possesses specific characteristics. It can be developed and made as another avenue for firms to create competitive advantage.

The Interrelated Nexus of Indigenous Economic Growth and Small Business Development: Do Local Culture, Government Role, and Entrepreneurial Behavior Play the Role?

The rarely investigated themes on the indigenous economic’s influence on small business development have made the local governments’ policies on regional development merely relied on large industries as the main engine. The paper aims to examine the effects of local culture, government role, and entrepreneurial behavior on the SMEs performance. A total of 270 questionnaires was distributed to the Papuan entrepreneurs who are currently running their SMEs in the agribusiness industry, and a sample of 250 returned-questionnaires was used for further analysis. We employed the path analysis and structural equation model to investigate the relationship the determinants of indigenous economic growth and SMEs performance. The results proved that the effects of local culture and governments role were stronger and significant through the intermediating variable entrepreneurial behavior. This indirect influence revealed that selfemployed behavior was the medium to enhance and strengthen the SMEs performance. This denotes that the nexus of local culture-government role-entrepreneurial behavior plays a vital role in promoting entrepreneurship development. In addition, discussions, implications, as well as conclusions of the study were also highlighted.

An empirical study on the influence of perceived organizational support on academic expatriates’ organizational commitment

The paper aims to examine the relationships between the perceived organizational support and expatriates’ organizational commitment. A total of 131 questionnaires was distributed to expatriate who are currently serving at a public university and a sample of 93 returned-questionnaires was used for further analysis. The data were analyzed using Pearsons correlation and regression analysis to investigate the relationship perceived organizational support and organizational commitment. The correlation analysis proved that the perceived organizational support was highly important to affective and normative commitment whereas its relationship with continuance commitment is not relevant. Finally, the regression analysis revealed perceived organizational support as being more significant at influencing organizational commitment. Furthermore, the regression results also showed that 40.6 % of total variance of POS was explained by organizational commitment. This denotes that POS play a vital role in promoting organizational commitment. In addition, discussions, implications, as well as conclusions of the study were also highlighted.

University Students’ Emotion State and Academic Performance: New Insights of Managing Complex Cognitive

A potentially important but relatively unexplored factor in explaining human capital accumulation during college is mental state (health) problems. Recent empirical findings reveal the impact of mental state, i.e. positive mood, on the performance of the students in processing information. This kind of mental state facilitates cognitive process that leads to better learning performance and satisfaction. Positive mood facilitates complex cognitive functions requiring flexibility, integration, and utilization of cognitive material such as memory, categorization, creative problem solving, decision-making and learning. Little empirical research on students’ emotions and their effect on learning and academic performance is available that could guide the design of learning environments. This study extends the literature that has been done mostly in western societies by proposing a further linkage between positive and negative mood to students’ learning and the impact of that learning on student’s academic performance in Indonesian universities, which is rarely investigated in non-western societies. The data were collected by using questionnaires and a sample of 106 students who have mid-term examination (assessment) in their active academic semester. The result, based on analysis using structural equation modeling, indicates that the tested model has an acceptable 4it. The 4indings also indicate that (1) positive mood has no in4luence on learning, (2) negative mood has negative in4luence on learning, and (3) learning has positive influence on student’s academic performance. Keyword: Mental State, Positive Mood, Negative Mood, Learning, Academic Performance _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Triple Bottom Line Effect on Emerging Market Companies: A Test of Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Value Relationship

Over the last twenty years, after corporations have historically focused their reporting systems on the provision of financial information needed by managers and shareholders to assess risks and calculate returns, the global awareness of the need to assess the full spectrum of corporate value has grown dramatically. The triple bottom line or total returns on capital—economic, social, or environmental—are now tracked with increasing regularity. Prior research has revealed that a significant pressure of economic changes, an increase in interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in recent years, and an acknowledgement of it as an important research topic has brought a bigger and wider effort to build a comprehensive framework. Little empirical research on the effect of corporate social responsibility together with profitability on firm value is done in Southeast Asian countries. This study extends the literature that has been done mostly in western societies by proposing a further linkage between social responsibility, profitability, and firm value, which is rarely investigated in non-western societies. The study analyzed 35 Indonesian manufacturing firms that are listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) and report their CSR as the supplement in the annual report. Statistic methods used for testing the hypothesis are T-test and multivariate regression model. The empirical results reveal that CSR has significantly influenced the firm value of Indonesian manufacturing companies. However, one striking finding in this study is the insignificant influence of two measures of profitability, i.e. ROA and ROE, over firm value of those companies have good CSR. These results explicitly show how firms in emerging countries are going to be more concerned with social sustainability and long-run profitability.