Hypermarkets and the Small Retailers in Malaysia: Exploring Retailers' Competitive Abilities

The emergence of multinational retailers, especially in grocery retailing, has changed the retail scenario in Malaysia over the last decade. In the past, grocery retail formats such as supermarkets, minimarkets, and night markets dominated the Malaysian retail scene, consumers are now given the choice of shopping in large retail outlets where new retail formats such as hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, and superstores now thrive and are increasingly gaining in popularity. Interestingly, large retail concepts are predominantly associated with multinational retailers such as Carrefour, Makro, Giant, and Tesco. The presence of large retailers brings with it the question of dominance and implications of changing customer preferences. This study assesses the perception of small retailers toward their abilities to compete effectively in an industry where large, multinational retailers appear to be dominating. It appears, however, that the small retailers possess distinctive qualities in relation to their strategic inputs that can essentially differentiate them from their larger competitors. It is suggested that some regulatory measures especially by local authorities are necessary, but this must not be to a point of curbing healthy competition among the different types of retailers.     

Foreign and Domestic Shocks: Macroeconomic Responses of ASEAN-3 Countries

Abstract

The study provides new empirical evidence on the relative importance of foreign and domestic shocks on selected ASEAN-3 (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand) macroeconomic variables. Three structural vector auto regression models are estimated for each country. The focal point is given on the formulation of the sources of foreign factors. The first model uses trade-weighted foreign variables of both US and Japan to represent the foreign factors. The other two models use US and Japan by themselves, respectively, to represent the foreign factors. Two important results are emerged. First, foreign sectors play an important role in influencing macroeconomic variables of each of the ASEAN-3 country, especially in the medium and the long-run horizon. Second, most of the time, the Japanese factors are more dominant than the US factors in influencing domestic output and inflation for each of the ASEAN-3 countries.     

Effects of communication and financial concerns on banking attitude-behaviour relations

Despite extensive discussion of the concept of Islamic banking, which is based on the fundamental doctrines of Islamic law (Shariah) and Islamic economics (prohibition of interest and profit-loss sharing), few studies have explored the factors that potentially affect behaviour intentions among customers. This study investigates direct and moderating effects of communication and financial factors on customer attitudes and behavioural intentions towards Islamic banking. Data were collected from the customers of Islamic banks and the Islamic banking divisions of conventional banks in Malaysia using online surveys. The hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis. The results suggest that relationship marketing, informative advertising, perceived benefits, and profit-loss sharing are important determinants of behavioural intentions among both Muslim and non-Muslim customer groups. This study also found moderating effects for most of the conceptualized moderating variables, particularly attitude interactions with informative advertising, ease of online banking, and the principle of profit-loss sharing. There are both notable similarities and differences in the results for the two customer groups. The findings imply that different strategies should be used both to retain existing customers and attract new ones.     

Toward a comprehensive theoretical framework for Shariah governance in Islamic financial institutions

The purpose of this research is to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework for interpreting Shariah governance mechanism in Islamic financial institutions (IFIs). After reviewing existing theories that were used to explain the phenomenon of corporate governance, three most commonly used theories in the corporate governance and Shariah governance area namely agency theory, stewardship theory and stakeholder theory were used and integrated based on their interrelated concepts and their relationship with Shariah governance. The constructed theoretical framework includes five concepts, namely accountability, disclosure and transparency, competency, confidentiality and independency among the key functionaries in Shariah governance, which are perceived to be the principles of Shariah governance. This research is among the first attempts to build an integrated theoretical foundation for Shariah governance in IFIs and the developed theoretical framework can be used as the basis for interpretations and comparisons on the ideal versus practical situation of Shariah governance in IFIs.     

Antecedents and outcomes of flight attendants’ job satisfaction

This paper develops and tests a comprehensive model for job satisfaction amongst flight attendants with antecedents and outcomes that are germane in the context of airlines. The antecedents are: jetlag, role overload, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depersonalization, and the outcomes are; job performance and service recovery performance. A framework was tested using structural equation modelling. A survey was conducted of flight attendants working in Malaysia found exhaustion and personal accomplishment have a direct effect on job satisfaction; emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment affect the level of depersonalization; and role overload has a positive relationship.     

Matching of police and hospital road crash casualty records – a data-linkage study in Malaysia

Underreporting of road crashes hampers the development of appropriate road safety countermeasures in many countries. In this study, police and hospital records from road crash casualties in the Melaka Tengah district in Malaysia from 2014 were collected to determine their matching and reporting rates. Based on authentic personal identifiers from both types of records, Microsoft SQL was used to reveal how the matching rate varies due to multiple factors. The results showed that 311 cases (of 7625 hospital records) could be linked to both databases, yielding a 4.1% matching rate and a 4.7% police reporting rate. Both the reporting and matching rates increased with the level of injury severity. The significant underreporting in the police database showed that complementary data are necessary for enhancing the current official crash data records.     

Accreditation of engineering programs: an evaluation of current practices in Malaysia

The curriculum for undergraduate engineering courses in Malaysia is becoming increasingly structured, following the global trend for quality assurance in engineering education, through accreditation schemes. Generally, the accreditation criteria call for the graduates from engineering programs to demonstrate a range of skills, from technical problem solving to soft skills and an aptitude for lifelong learning. In order to comply with these criteria, accreditation schemes are adopted as a quality assurance measure. This paper shall introduce the characteristics of the engineering accreditation scheme in Malaysia. The impact of the accreditation scheme on the quality of these engineering programs shall be evaluated. Data collection is in the form of benchmarking and questionnaires. The evaluation criteria shall be in terms of benefits to the institution, academic faculty, students, and the challenges encountered. A discussion on the evaluation shall include the supposed dichotomies which arise from this accreditation process, namely the compromise between research versus teaching; and the value of engineering knowledge whether as an academic pursuit or catering to industry’s needs. Ultimately, this paper shall address a fundamental question related to undergraduate teaching in engineering: whether accreditation is a necessary prerequisite in maintaining high standards in engineering programs in Malaysia.     

Productivity of Foreign and Domestic Firms in the Malaysian Manufacturing Industry*

The relative position of total factor productivity (TFP) of both foreign and domestic ?rms in the manufacturing industry in Malaysia is estimated for three‐ and ?ve‐digit level subsectors. It was found that the differences between foreign and domestic ?rms varied widely from sector to sector. However, for the manufacturing industry as a whole, TFP was approximately the same for foreign and domestic ?rms for the period 1994–1996.     

The role of executives in hostile takeover attempts

This paper proposes a two-stage game theoretic model where the discretionary power of executives acts as an implicit defense against hostile takeovers. Following managerial enterprise models, this paper analyzes the effects of discretionary power of target’s executives over R&D and advertising expenditures in defeating hostile takeover attempts. It is shown that in vertically differentiated industries, in equilibrium, target’s executives keep low level of R&D and advertising expenditures to make their firm an unattractive target for hostile takeovers. The model reveals that executives are influenced by their self-interest of monetary and non-monetary benefits and this self-interest makes the industry more differentiated.