Siti Aishah Mohamad

Contribution of Economic Sectors to Malaysian GDP

The agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors are important elements in any county’s economy. It has direct and significant contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) and job creation, and provides crucial inputs for the rest of the economy, thus having a significant effect on the investment of a country. This paper empirically examines the relationship between manufacturing, agriculture, services sectors and GDP per capita. It uses annual data from the year 2000 until 2010. The research methodology incorporates from time series data gathered from Malaysia Economic Statistics 2013 published by Department of Statistics, Malaysia. The data was analysed using Correlational and Multiple Regression Analysis to examine the relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables. It is found that manufacturing and service sectors are related to real GDP per capita while agricultural sector did not show a significant relationship towards GDP per capita.

Empowerment of Young Entrepreneurs Through Entrepreneurship Education: Students’ Perception

Entrepreneurship education becomes the vital agenda of the Ministry of Education (MOE) to create more entrepreneurs among graduates. It is important to develop attitudes, values, and spirit and create intentions to choose entrepreneurship as a career in the future. Malaysian graduates were found to have low intention to be self-employed. Due to that, MOE planned a lot of programs to increase students’ intention toward entrepreneurship. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of involvement in entrepreneurship education toward students’ intention to be self-employed. This study also aimed to identify the students’ perceptions toward entrepreneurship education to empowering young entrepreneurs. The unit of analysis is final-year students of UiTM Pahang. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 was used to test its correlation and descriptive analysis. The findings indicated that there is no influence of involvement in entrepreneurship programs toward intention to be an entrepreneur. The result also found that the students agreed that entrepreneurship education can give many benefits to them.

To Serve or not to Serve? Student Leaders, Community Service, and Community Service Learning

Community service is volunteer activities that require commitment to help others. This paper explores the knowledge and experience of community service activity among student leaders. It identifies the attitudes and perceptions of the student leaders on community service learning module as a requirement in their academic program. The Community Service—Learning Attitudes and Perception Scale (CSLAPS) was applied in this study. The findings show that the student leaders would participate in community services because of their interest in the program itself as well as for their career development. This research information could be used by the schools and academia to engage their student leaders in an academic-based community service as a way of learning and contributing back to the society. Having served both, the learning part and social purposes of the module, it could shape students into well rounded future leaders whose theoretical learning and real engagement of Community Service could benefit many.

ISO 14001 and Financial Performance: Is the Accreditation Financially Worth It for Malaysian Firms☆

Abstract It is well known that ISO 14001 certification has been widely subscribed by various types of organizations to cope with their environmental affairs. However, what remains a puzzle is whether the ISO 14001 subscription has desirable effects on the participating firms. Such investment should only be advised if it can enhance firms financial standing particularly for business oriented companies. Based on 17 companies certified with ISO 14001 which are listed in Malaysian Stock Exchange, this paper studies the impacts from this voluntarily action on firm financial performance through analysis of financial ratios. Three years of performance covering before and after the certification periods for selected ratios was analyzed using Paired Sample T-Test. The results show that the ISO 14001 certification does not significantly induce higher financial performance based on the perspective of firms’ asset management, profitability, leverage, liquidity and earnings per share (EPS). The finding would suggest that, the realization time for the positive impacts of the ISO 14001 certification could somehow take a much longer period.

Measuring Customer Needs and Want: Exploring SERVQUAL Dimensions in Cooperatives

Customer satisfaction is a relatively recent phenomenon throughout the world and is a philosophy that many service-based organizations have yet to adopt and carry out successfully. Cooperatives, being service-based organizations, usually promise their customers good service quality when dealing with them. Thus, it is important for them to ensure that customers are satisfied with the services provided. The main objective of this research is to determine the level of customer satisfaction using SERVQUAL dimensions at cooperative of Universiti Islam Antarabangsa (UIA), Kuantan, and Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Pahang. Furthermore, the relationship between the SERVQUAL dimensions and customer satisfaction was investigated. The respondents were students and staffs selected randomly from both institutions. The findings showed that customers were fairly satisfied with the service quality provided by the cooperatives. There is a significant positive correlation between reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness with customer satisfaction. These five dimensions, taken together, significantly contribute 71 % to the prediction of customer satisfaction.