This study aimed to determine the mediating role of leisure satisfaction between work domain (work overload and job involvement), family domain (family workload and family support) and work-life balance among teachers in Kuching. Fifty employees responded to the self-administered questionnaire in one of a primary school in Kuching area. Data was analyzed Pearson Correlation, Regression and Sobel Test. Results indicated that work overload and family workload are negative and significantly influence employee work-life balance while job involvement and family support are positive and significantly effect work-life balance. This research revealed work overload, job involvement, family workload, family support, and work-life balance are partially mediated by leisure satisfaction. Thus, it is recommended for organizations to organize variety of leisure activities as a strategy to assist employees to improve work-life balance.
There are 90000 professional expatriates working in Malaysia and the number is projected to increase year by year. This creates a need to explore work-life balance among expatriates in Malaysia. In this study, qualitative research method was used, and the data was collected using interview guide as the instrument. Actual data was collected from five (5) international lecturers in a public university in Sarawak. The data was analyzed using content analysis. The finding revealed that workload and family support are main contributors to work-life conflict among expatriates while receiving better salaries, meeting new people and experiencing culture are the work-life enrichment factors. Expatriates use general adjustment and interaction to adjust better with their new environment. Hence, it is recommended for organizations to support expatriates through relevant activities to assist them to achieve work-life balance in a foreign country.
Influx of women in the paid labor force had been identified as one of the important factors in raising awareness about work-family balance in organizations in developed countries in the west. The same phenomenon also occurs in Malaysia. Malaysia is considered as having traditional gender role ideology, whereby men and women have separate role in the workplace and in the family. Specifically, this study aims to identify whether there are differences in perception between men and women in public sector towards factors associated with work-life balance. Work-life balance factors examined in this study are work demands, supervisor support, organization’s family-friendly policies, family demands, work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC). Sixty questionnaires were administered to employees in a government health training institution in Sarawak, Malaysia. Data were analyzed using SPPS version 17 and independent t-Test was employed in testing the hypotheses. The study found that men and women are significantly different in terms of supervisor support, work-family conflict and family demands. However, there was no significant difference between men and women employees with regard to work demands, family-work conflict and utilization of family-friendly policies. In line with previous Western findings, women experienced higher level of work to family conflict (WFC) than men employees. In addition, women also reported higher family demands than men. These findings strengthened the traditional gender role ideology ascribed by majority of Malaysians and lend support to the gender role theory. Therefore, the organization could provide relevant training, such as, time and stress management. Supervisors could be trained to be more aware of work-family balance issues faced by their employees and assist them accordingly.
Work-Life balance (WLB) studies have investigated heavily on family domain even though
there are sub domains in life. Thus, this study will contribute to the literature by examining
study domain (lifelong learning and organizational learning) and its influence on familywork
enrichment (FWE) among teachers who are currently continuing their education in
Lundu district. A total of 117 teachers responded to the self-administered questionnaire. The
finding revealed that both organizational learning and lifelong learning have a positive significant
relationship with family work enrichment. Therefore, school management should
encourage the culture of lifelong learning and at the same time provide facilities and atmosphere
to support the culture will ensure family-work enrichment among teachers who are
continuing their study.
Vinegars are most widely used as preservatives in food industry. Vinegars are known for their health benefits; however, the roles of vinegar-associated microflora in locally produced vinegars are not well established. The objectives of this study are to isolate and identify the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from black rice vinegar and coconut vinegar, measure their pH and titratable acidity, and determine their antibacterial activity. LAB was isolated using cultural method. Phenotypic characterization of LAB was carried out using Gram-staining, oxidase test, catalase test and API 50 CHL Kit. Results from API 50 CHL Kit confirmed that BRV03M strain from black rice vinegar and CV03M strain from coconut vinegar were Lactobacillus paracaseissp. paracasei. The identified bacteria in both samples were consistent as L. paracaseiusing 16S rDNAgene sequences with 93% and 99% similarity, respectively. The pH and titratable acidity percentage of both vinegars were also determined. The stability of Cell Free Supernatant-Lactic Acid Bacteria (CFS-LAB) strains within 14 days on their inhibition against selected pathogenic bacteria was determined using agar well diffusion method. The CFS-LAB strain isolated from black rice vinegar (BRV03M) was more stable within 14 days than coconut vinegar in inhibiting tested bacteria, suggesting this strain has great potential as natural antibacterial agents.
The purpose of this study is threefold, that is, to examine discrete emotion and how it could contribute to the crossover phenomena in organizations, to examine how crossover affect employees’ burnout and engagement, to develop a theoretical framework of discrete emotion as mediator and its crossover in the relationship between job demand, resource and employees’ wellbeing. This paper examined past studies from Proquest, SAGE, Springer, JStor and Emerald online Database that are related to discrete emotion, spillover-crossover model, burnout and engagement. Fifty papers were reviewed from the online databases within the year 2004 to 2015. Findings show that discrete emotion has some effect on employees’ wellbeing through crossover phenomena process. Positive emotions, such as, joy and happiness can accelerate a person’s recovery from the physiological effects of negative emotions. Employees react to the antecedent and possess a discrete emotion. Employees’ discrete emotion makes crossover towards colleagues and triggers the intensity of their psychological state (engage, burnout). Practical intervention for human resource development professionals were suggested to assist employees and organizations on making it known about knowledge on discrete emotion and how it can affect employees’ wellbeing. This research produces a theoretical concept to examine the predictive potential of discrete emotion that leads to crossover phenomena in determining employees’ burnout and engagement.
This study aims to identify the relationship between boundary work tactics (behav-ioral, temporal, physical and communicative) and work-family conflict among work-ing women. A survey methodology was used in this study. This research involves the utilisation of questionnaire which was administered among one-hundred and three (103) working women currently working in a selected organisation. This study was conducted in a selected private organisation in Kuching, Sarawak. The relationship between boundary work tactics and work-family conflicts was analyzed using the Pearson’s correlation analysis test. The results of this study revealed that there is a significant relationship between behavioral tactics, temporal tactics, and communica-tive tactics with work-family conflict. Hence, from this study, the organisation can implement more strategic tactics to reduce work-family conflicts when the working women are challenged to balance responsibilities between their work and family.
The objective of this study is to identify the relationship between employee attitude towards training (accessibility of training, social support for training and benefits of training) and employee retention in the telecommunication industry in Kuching. Eighty employees responded to the self-administered questionnaire. Simple random sampling was used to carry out the study. Data was analysed using Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Multiple Regression. Only social support for training had a significant and positive relationship to retention. Thus, it is recommended that managers and supervisors support employees in attending training as well as provide opportunities for employees to apply what they had learned in training as it will influence retention in the organization.