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Volume 5 Number 1

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Leadership as Situational Factor on Personality-Performance Relationship: An Empirical Study of The Taiwan’s Office Machinery Sales Force (Kuang-Hui Chiu and Tsai Chen, Page 01-17)

This study investigated the relationship of salespersons’ personality and job performance, as well as the moderating effect of leadership style. Data were collected from salespeople of Taiwan’s three leading office machinery companies. With “strong” vs. “weak” situations as theoretical foundation, the results showed that Initiating Structure has negative and Consideration positive moderating effects on personality-job performance relationship. Moreover, Conscientiousness as well as gender and seniority have significant influences on sales performance. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed by the study. Some insightful opinions of high-level managers of the industry have also been collected and reported.

Analysis of Labour Requirements in the Malaysian Services Sector (Rahmah Ismail Ishak Yussof and Norsiah Uddin, Page 19-38)

Contribution of the services sector to the Malaysian economy has continuously increased. This sector has exceeded other sectors in terms of its contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment especially after the 1990s.  Therefore, labour requirement for the services sector needs to be emphasised to avoid shortages of manpower that could retard its growth.  This paper aims to analyse the need for high level workers in the services sector, namely, the administration and managerial workers; and the professional and technical workers. Five services subsector to be analysed are electric, gas and water; wholesale trade and retail, hotel and restaurant; transportation, storage and communication; finance, insurance real estate and business services; and government services and other related services. Result shows that output has positive and significant impact on demand for both groups of workers. More than half of the workers in the period of 2010-2015 are of the professional and technical workers. Subsectors that require many workers include wholesale trade and retail; and hotel and restaurant.  

The Pre-Development Process Implementation of Product Innovation: A Malaysian Food and Beverage Manufacturing SMEs Survey (Noor Hidayah Abu, Baba Md Deros, Dzuraidah Abd Wahab, Mohd Nizam Ab Rahman and Mohd Fitri Mansor, Page 39-49)

The pre-development phase is an important driver of new product development (NPD) project success. Large-scale organizations have adopted efficient pre-development process. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have not received adequate attention from researcher for their pre-development process. The main objective of this research is to identify the practice of formal pre-development activities among Malaysian manufacturing SMEs. This study presents the results of a survey on a sample of 156 SMEs in the food and beverage industry. Quantitative data analysis will be conducted using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software version 17. Our study confirms earlier finding about the develop quality product becomes an important goal for SMEs to implement formal pre-development process. Besides that listening to customer become important sources for SMEs to generate new ideas. In addition creative technique is frequent use as formal assessment technique during the idea assessment. We also find SMEs to be intensively involved in business analysis on project evaluation process. The results present a clarified view of pre-development activities that may serve as a guide for the successful development and market launch of new product among SMEs.

Exploring Usefulness of CRM and IT in Malaysian Hospitality Industry: A Qualitative Approach (Filzah Md Isa, Cheng Wei Hin and Jasmani Mohd Yunus Page 51-64)

This paper is an attempt to explore the customer relationship management and IT related issues in three star rating hotels in the state of Penang, Malaysia. This paper would contribute as a useful guide to three star hotel, giving them some valuable information on what the customer expectations in term of CRM and IT facilities and if they are duly met then services and operational issues shall not occur. The significance of this case study has provided scope for three star rating hotels to improve their IT based activities to influence service quality and reduce the weaknesses, with availing opportunities and strengthen their position in the industry.

The Influence of Up line Support on Change Success in Malaysian Health Care Products Direct Selling Industry (Fawad Hussain, Mihraj Begum Binti Saibu Rahman and Mohamad Ghozali Bin Hassan Page 65-76)  

The main purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between up line support and both change success proxies namely sales performance and job satisfaction, among salespersons in direct selling industry of Malaysia. Six hundred ninety structured questionnaires were distributed to salespersons throughout Malaysia and 244 were returned but only 238 were usable. The results illustrate that up line support has shown positive influence on job satisfaction but not on sales performance. This study contributes a significant knowledge to direct selling industry since there is still a lack of studies that have been done on the relationship between up line support influences on change success in this particular industry. This study adds to the literature by showing the importance of up line support on change success in direct selling industry. It also provides some theoretical contributions to sales management practices in the competitive environment of direct selling industry.