Vol. 18 No. 4(I) (2026)

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.

Traditional, lecture-based finance courses frequently overwhelm undergraduate students with dense theoretical content, leading to poor knowledge retention, lower overall engagement, and a heavy reliance on last-minute cramming before major assessments. To address these persistent educational challenges, this study details the design, development, and implementation of a mobile-friendly digital flashcard game specifically tailored for an undergraduate Financial Markets and Institutions (FIN) course using the systematic ADDIE instructional design framework. By integrating active recall strategies, custom visual aids, and an algorithm-driven Spaced Repetition System (SRS), the platform transforms passive studying into a dynamic learning process that prompts students to systematically review challenging concepts based on their individual mastery levels. Subject-matter experts rigorously vetted the curriculum content for accuracy and practical relevance prior to deployment, while formative evaluations directly measured student usability, overall engagement, and conceptual comprehension during active coursework. Formative findings, including high expert ratings for content validity and evidence of adaptive scheduling from system logs, suggest that the tool has strong potential to support active recall. However, its effectiveness in improving long-term knowledge retention and reducing academic anxiety will be examined in a subsequent summative evaluation. Ultimately, by documenting the comprehensive analysis, design, and development phases, this study provides instructional designers and finance educators with a practical, replicable blueprint for implementing gamified, technology-enhanced active learning tools across complex capital markets curricula.

The capital structure decision remains an important issue in Shariah-compliant corporate finance, particularly for financial institutions whose regulatory requirements and risk-sharing structures differ from those of conventional corporations. Despite the development of Islamic finance, empirical evidence on the firm-specific determinants of leverage among foreign-owned international Takaful operators in Malaysia remains limited. This study examines the effects of firm age, firm size, liquidity, profitability, and company growth on capital structure using panel data from four foreign-owned international Takaful operators in Malaysia. Capital structure is proxied by the total-liabilities-to-total-assets ratio, which represents overall balance-sheet leverage rather than conventional interest-bearing debt alone. Audited annual financial statements were analysed using panel data regression with cluster-robust standard errors. The findings indicate that firm age, firm size, and liquidity are positively and statistically associated with leverage, whereas profitability and company growth show negative but statistically insignificant relationships. The results suggest that organizational maturity, scale, and liquidity are relevant to the liability structure of international Takaful operators, although the findings should be interpreted within the distinctive regulatory and Shariah-compliant characteristics of the industry. Overall, the evidence provides partial support for the Trade-off Theory and limited support for the Pecking Order Theory when these frameworks are adapted to the Takaful setting. The study contributes to the limited literature on capital structure in Islamic insurance and offers implications for the management of leverage, liquidity, and solvency within international Takaful operators.

This paper explores the complexities of the global business environment and its effect on international competitive advantage in a world that is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). It highlights the critical role of competition in shaping the most effective international business strategies and how to sustain competitive advantage in the global marketplace. The study explores the importance of analyzing foreign market environments, particularly from an industry perspective, by using Michael Porter’s Five Forces framework for international settings. Porter’s Five Forces framework has been widely used to analyze industry competition; however, studies related to the impact of competitive pressures on firms’ ability to maintain international competitive advantage remain under-explored. This research underscores the necessity of understanding the relationship between competitive forces and international competitiveness to enable firms to effectively strategize and sustain performance in global markets.

Private healthcare organizations are expected to take more initiative in understanding their employees' psychological well-being. This is to ensure employees’ strong performance, which directly translates into high-quality patient care. This study aims to determine the relationship between job satisfaction (extrinsic satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction) and psychological well-being; secondly is to identify the relationship between perceived organizational support and psychological well-being. Data were collected from 231 employees at a private healthcare organization located in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The findings revealed that perceived organizational support was found to be the most important factor that influences employees’ psychological well-being, followed by intrinsic satisfaction and extrinsic satisfaction. This study is significant to human resource practitioners and the management of private healthcare organizations in understanding the importance of perceived organizational support and job satisfaction as imperative drivers that influence employees’ psychological well-being.

Workplace harassment poses a significant threat to the psychological well-being of internship students, yet limited evidence exists on whether gender shapes this relationship in Malaysian organizational contexts. This study examined the relationship between workplace harassment and anxiety among internship students in Malaysia and evaluated the moderating role of gender. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 247 internship students from the Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA. Workplace harassment was measured using three dimensions: workplace bullying, abusive supervision, and interpersonal conflict, while anxiety was assessed using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7). Pearson correlation analysis showed that all harassment dimensions were positively and significantly related to anxiety: bullying (r = .367, p < .001), abusive supervision (r = .386, p < .001), and interpersonal conflict (r = .376, p < .001). The composite harassment scores also demonstrated a significant positive association with anxiety (r = .420, p < .001). Hierarchical moderated regression analysis revealed that workplace harassment significantly predicted anxiety (b = .621, p < .001, R² = .188). However, the interaction between workplace harassment and gender was non-significant (b = −.163, p = .452), indicating that gender did not moderate the relationship. The findings suggest that workplace harassment is a substantial predictor of anxiety among interns regardless of gender. Universities and host organizations should implement gender-inclusive anti-harassment policies and psychological support mechanisms to safeguard interns’ well-being.

Job satisfaction is a key factor in retaining the medical workforce, especially in public hospitals where medical officers often face demanding clinical duties and organizational pressures. This concept paper proposes a framework to examine the relationship between workload, work-life balance, and job satisfaction among medical officers in public hospitals in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. The framework is guided by the Job Demands–Resources theory. Workload is viewed as a job demand requiring constant physical and psychological effort, and work-life balance is the extent to which medical officers can manage work responsibilities alongside recovery and personal life. The proposed study will employ a quantitative cross-sectional correlational design. Proportionate stratified random sampling will be used to select the medical officers from the participating hospitals. Data on workload, work-life balance, and job satisfaction, together with relevant demographic and occupational information, will be collected using validated instruments. Descriptive statistics will be used to describe the respondents and study variables, and correlation and multiple linear regressions analysis will be used to examine the relationship among the variables. The proposed framework is expected to provide evidence that is more specific to the working conditions of medical officers in public hospitals in the Klang Valley. Future studies may also test the framework in other regions and hospital settings in Malaysia.