Fauziah Mahat

Testing the criticality of HR-TQM factors in the Malaysian higher education context

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence on the degree of criticality and reliability tests for human resource (HR) related critical success factors (CSFs) in TQM implementation. This involves identifying and defining the HR-related CSFs from an exhaustive source of literature reviews on quality initiatives. In higher education (HE) contexts, the CSFs in TQM programmes emphasise more management commitment, HR management and quality working attitudes for customer satisfaction. Therefore, the ‘soft’ or HR aspects in the literature review stand as the fundamental issue of concern for organizational management in quality planning and creating a quality working climate to ensure successful expected performance. Using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), the HR-related CSFs that have high mean scores and reliability coefficients, are teamwork spirit, competent staff, customer-focus orientation and visionary leadership. Other factors have reasonably high scores and are recommended to be included in similar research in contexts other than simply the HE context.

People resistance in TQM implementation: a qualitative study on Malaysian universities

The aim of this paper is to discuss the theoretical and research evidence related to the issue of people barriers concerning problems and pitfalls in Total Quality Management (TQM) implementation. The people-based and service-oriented nature of Higher Education (HE) institutions leaves the university leaders and managers for quality projects to look seriously into the cause of the problems, and apply a strategic approach to ensure successful quality initiatives. A qualitative survey on seven universities in Malaysia suggests that the main reasons for people resistance are lack of knowledge and information on the quality programme, lack of motivation and complacency attitudes, and the quality programme being perceived to cause more burden rather that benefit. The relevant human resource management practices and approaches are discussed to overcome the problems.

Re-thinking: Risk Governance?

Abstract Risk governance has evolved tremendously in the banking industry. The practice recommends the imperative role of Chief Risk Officer (CRO) to oversee risk. This study explores risk governances influence over Islamic banks’ performance. A multivariate analysis technique is used simultaneously via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This study employed cross-sectional sample of 200 Islamic banks across 21 countries for the year 2014. To examine risk governance and Islamic banks performance, this study captures seventeen variables developed from risk management and corporate governance (ROA, ROE, Profit Margin, CRO, Shariah committee member, CEO, board size, remuneration meeting, credit rating, external audit, accounting standard, loan loss provision, capital adequacy ratio, total deposit ratio, GDP, central bank lending rate and inflation). The simulation result revealsrisk governance acts as mediating variable for Islamic banks’ performance.