Munir Shuib

Job Satisfaction Amongst Employees in Small and Medium Industries (SMIs) in the Manufacturing Sector: A Malaysian Case

ABSTRACT In the era of global business, quality of human resources, skilled and knowledgeable employees are highly essential. It is frequently noted that quality human resources act as a prerequisite for competitive advantage and competitive edge of any business. This is especially so in the case of small and medium industries (SMIs), considered as “the seeds” from which large organizations and big corporations are grown. Similarly, previous studies indicate that high turnover of employees undeniably affects production, productivity, profitability and hence hinders further growth of any business, small, medium and large alike. While there are a number of empirical studies on employees, their working environment, and job satisfaction, only a few have based their data on SMIs. In view of this, a survey was carried out on 243 employees of SMIs in Kuala Terengganu in late 2004 to address some of the issues above in the context of SMIs. Interestingly, the study found that the surveyed employees were relatively young, unmarried, new in the length of service and low educational attainment as well as low level of income. Surprisingly however, they were generally satisfied with their working environment and job, including their salary, task, co-worker, supervision and promotion. Furthermore, it was found that occupational categories correlate significantly with level of job satisfaction. That is, the higher the occupational categories are, the higher the level of job satisfaction. The study concludes that while SMIs should upgrade skills among their employees, government policies should also be more favorable so that a more conducive working environment and job satisfaction in SMIs could be created.

Emerging Practices in University-Community Engagement in Malaysia

With the proliferation of mobile technologies, nowadays, English language educators and instructors globally are increasingly looking into the potential of mobile learning as pedagogical practices to teach the language, including as a tool to test students’ grammatical ability. However, users’ perception on the usability of such advancing approach in education is critical to a successful mobile learning implementation. While there is a considerable enthusiasm for incorporating mobile technologies in English language education, there is a paucity of research evidence about whether mobile-based test is perceived as usable by English language learners in Malaysia.

Learning Style Preferences among Male and Female ESL Students in Universiti-Sains Malaysia.

Individuals preferentially process information in different ways. This includes the varied learning style preference of the individuals in any study program, including English as a Second Language (ESL). However, one of major concerns is, do the ESL students have different preferred way to learn? Past studies have given mixed results including pertaining to Malaysian students. To address this issue, this study sought to identify whether there are differences in learning style preferences between male and female students who undertook ESL courses in the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). To achieve the study objective, Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model (FSLSM) was selected to gather data on the respondents’ learning style preference due to its validity, widespread use and suitability to the scope of the study. The responses gathered from FSLSM were tallied and assessed for gender difference in LSP. Results indicated that, there is a strong representation of visual learners from both male and female respondents. On the other hand, the respondents, irrespective of the gender difference, are well-balanced in the dimensions of sensing/intuitive, active/reflective, and sequential/global. In addressing the gender difference, it was found in this study that there is no significant difference between male and female ESL students in their preferred learning The Journal of Educators Online-JEO July 2015 ISSN 1547-500X Vol 13 Number 2 104 104 styles on each of the FSLSM dimension. Thus, this study revealed that, gender does not help differentiate students’ learning preferences. The findings lend support to several past studies on LSP.