Nazatul Shima Abdul Rani

Business challenges and strategies for development of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia

Despite their significant role in both the developed and the developing economies, Small-and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are faced with the greater risk of business failure with past statistics indicating that over half of all new ventures will not enjoy long-term success. They face various types of difficulties and business challenges. This paper attempts to examine the issues, and explain how the business owners of SMEs in Malaysia strategise their operation to overcome the failure. The study highlighted several challenges faced by the firms, and to overcome these issues, SMEs have followed numerous strategies. The study revealed that business success is a result of implementing a mix of business, operation and management strategies. The paper concludes with the possible remedies, recommendations and future enhancements.

Investigation into the impacts of procurement systems on the performance of construction projects in East Malaysia

This research investigated the impacts of procurement systems on the performance of construction projects in East Malaysia. Construction project outcome is measured in terms of time, cost and quality achieved. Project clients demand the best value for their money and they want their projects to be completed on time, within budgeted cost and at appropriate quality or specification. The sample in this research consists of 58 participants that work in a construction companies/industry. About 90 questionnaires were distributed, 69 were successfully returned and 58 were fully completed. The sample comprises project clients/owners, project managers, consultants and construction workers. The aim of using project clients, project managers, consultants and construction workers from different companies is because they work under different circumstances. The researchers distributed questionnaires randomly among the participants in different construction companies. The key findings showed that traditional procurement system (TPS) benefits cost and quality but at the expense of time. In other words, TPS has positive impacts on project objectives of cost and quality and negative impact on project time. Whereas, design and build procurement system showed that project objectives of cost and time are positive with negative impact on project quality.