Information Management and Business Review

In recent years, the demand placed upon today's workforce has increased while the expectations of today's organization have changed. Therefore, managing an employee's performance is still a major challenge facing many organizations. This study examines the relationship between employee performance and work stress, work environment and organizational climate among employees in an emerging region which is Southern Sarawak, Malaysia. A quantitative cross-sectional research methodology was utilized in this study. Data collection occurred utilizing structured questionnaires completed by 221 government employees working in Kuching Sarawak utilizing convenience sampling. A multiple regression analysis model was developed for each of the six dimensions: workload; role conflict; role ambiguity; physical work environment; psychological work environment; and organizational climate. The results indicate that none of the work stress variables (i.e., workload, role conflict, role ambiguity) or the physical work environment had a statistically significant relationship with employee performance. However, the psychological work environment and organizational climate demonstrated a statistically significant positive relationship with employee performance. Furthermore, Organizational Climate emerged as the strongest predictive variable. These empirical results demonstrate that psychosocial and organizational support systems provide greater leverage in promoting employee performance than either the physical or structural aspects of the workplace. Thus, this study provides additional empirical evidence to the growing body of literature in the developing regional area of Sarawak, Malaysia, which supports the notion that organizations should develop and implement proactive employee wellness initiatives and supportive leadership and communication strategies to maintain superior levels of employee performance.

Take a walk on any of the densely populated streets in Malaysia today, and you'll see a country rapidly embracing digitization, with cashless night markets, for example, as well as government services reached via a flick of the screen. But as the nation moves quickly toward full-fledged maturity, an unwelcome rub remains: trusting the average man or woman in the street is an ongoing process, even as the technology is in place. This psychological difference is most obvious in the financial industry, where conventional, face-to-face insurance handshakes are giving way to digital shops. This study examines the key factors influencing consumers' intention to purchase online insurance services in the metropolitan neighborhood of Bandar Baru Uda in Johor Bahru to identify what motivates or deters them from shifting to this medium. The thematic study focuses on the direct relationships between the most important underlying properties, such as satisfaction level, perceived internet quality, and motivating properties, which can affect customer purchasing decisions. The empirical findings indicate a statistically significant correlation between these consumer perceptions and their actions in purchasing. The results of these findings offer strategic guidance for insurance companies seeking to enhance their digital channels and empower customers to make informed decisions about the insurance sector in the digital era.

Production of food is essential in ensuring the food security of a nation, depending on the economic situation and changes in the environment. This paper seeks to establish the impact of macroeconomic factors as well as environmental factors on food production in Malaysia from 1988 to 2022. The main objectives of this paper include establishing the effect of food imports, inflation rate, temperature, and agricultural land on food production in Malaysia. The stationarity tests show that the variables have different orders of integration, while the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test establishes a long-run cointegrating relation. The study finds out that food imports, temperature, and agricultural land significantly affect long-run food production. These findings illustrate the policy implications of macroeconomic factors, particularly food imports, as well as environmental factors, namely temperature and agricultural land, on food production in Malaysia.

Framed by the Big Five Factor Model, this study investigated how much one's personality traits and socialisation process influence purchasing intention in social networking services (SNS). This study adopted a snowball sampling method, focusing on SNS users as respondents throughout Malaysia. The data collected were then tested via structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) using AMOS. The study revealed that openness to new experiences, group norms, and social identity significantly impact SNS users’ purchase intention. This study’s discovery gives SNS developers insights into the pattern of SNS users' purchasing intentions and strengthens the socialisation process as a driver that encourages purchases among users. Recognizing the importance of the SSN, businesses should plan strategically based on the comprehension of users’ personalities. It is crucial to incorporate a basic understanding of a person’s personality and his or her reasoning for each intention and behaviour to precisely predict and interpret actions, which would enable businesses to sustainably grow towards building a competitive advantage. By understanding more about the types of personality of SNS users, practitioners, as well as society, will benefit from better decision-making capabilities.