Employee well-being refers to an individual's state of recognizing their own abilities, coping well with the stresses of life, working productively, and contributing to community development. Therefore, employee well-being must become a primary agenda for organizational management in both the public and private sectors to ensure employees can work productively and manage stress effectively. However, the well-being level of Malaysian public sector employees remains moderate. Previous studies indicate that organizational leadership is one of the factors influencing employee well-being. Thus, this study was conducted to identify specific leader behaviour that influence employee well-being from the Malaysian public sector employee perspective. The data for this study were collected using a qualitative approach, specifically through interviews with 44 public sector employees. The interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. This study identifies leader behaviour that can influence employee well-being in an organization, such as lack of fairness on employees, lack of empathy on employees, lack of understanding about rules and work procedures, integrity and professionalism. The findings of this study are highly significant for management in the Malaysian public sector, and the private sector in general, in designing development programmes for managers and supervisors, especially in aspects of behavioural development. This aspect needs to be developed holistically as it can impact employee well-being within the organisation
Malaysia’s trade policies emphasize the negotiation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), creating a critical need for competent trade negotiators to secure trade deals. However, despite the well-documented economic effects of FTAs, little attention has been given to competency governance. This study examined the challenges affecting TNC in Malaysia’s public sector and the relevant recommendations. By conducting elite interviews with five key government officials who are central to the TNC agenda at the national level, this study obtained high-level institutional views from stakeholders directly involved in TNC. A thematic analysis using NVivo found three issues affecting TNC in Malaysia: (1) institutional fragmentation that has weakened the strategic alignment for the trade negotiation agenda across the government agencies; (2) weak talent retention approach that has caused the loss of trade negotiators’ institutional knowledge; and (3) competency gaps that affect trade negotiators’ capacity. The study suggests the instigation of a governance framework that can realign TNC strategies across government agencies, the establishment of a talent retention initiative for trade negotiation as a specialized competency, and the creation of a structured competency development programme for trade negotiators. The study fills the literature gaps on TNC governance in developing countries and provides policy guidance for strengthening the country’s trade negotiation capacity.
This study examines the nexus between human resource management (HRM) practices and university performance in Nigeria. Overtime, there has been persistent challenges in the higher education sector, ranging from declining educational quality, academic staff migration, and administrative inefficiencies among other challenges. Drawing on Human Capital Theory and the Resource-Based View (RBV), the study investigates the influence of recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal, career development, and employee welfare practices on institutional performance. A mixed-methods research design was adopted, combining quantitative survey data from academic and non-academic staff with qualitative interviews to provide a comprehensive understanding of HRM practices in Nigerian universities. Quantitative data were analysed using correlation, regression, and analysis of variance techniques, while qualitative data were subjected to thematic analysis. The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between strategic HRM practices and university performance (R² = 0.52, p < .001), indicating that HRM practices explain 52% of the variation in institutional performance. Training and development emerged as the strongest predictor of performance outcomes. The study further demonstrates that effective HRM practices enhance research productivity, teaching effectiveness, employee performance, and student satisfaction. The findings highlight the strategic importance of human resources as a source of sustainable institutional advantage. The study recommends strengthening merit-based recruitment, continuous professional development, performance-based recognition systems, and employee welfare programmes to improve the effectiveness and competitiveness of Nigerian universities.
This study investigates the impact of human capital development on economic growth in Nigeria over the period 1986 to 2024. The continued low growth and high poverty rate in Nigeria despite budgetary allocations on public spending raises concerns on the role and effectiveness of human capital investment in inducing growth. Anchored on the neoclassical growth and human capital theory, the study investigates how expenditure on education and health translate to economic growth in Nigeria. Using secondary data and a number of techniques such as the Ordinary Least Square (OLS), Johansen co-integration and Error Correction model (ECM), the results revealed the existence of a long-run relationship between human capital development indicators and economic growth in Nigeria. More so, the OLS result shows that government expenditure on education and secondary school enrolment do have a positive and significant impact on economic growth, while government expenditure on health is positive but insignificant due to inefficiencies, quality issues and structural challenges. The study concludes that human capital development is fundamental and significantly linked to economic growth in Nigeria, with education having a stronger impact than health. It therefore recommends increased and efficient allocation of budgetary resources to education and health, skills development programs with policies that will improve labour productivity in order to harness the full growth potential of human capital in Nigeria.
The current research intends to investigate the influence of AI-enabled job flexibility on the realization of functional sustainability in terms of human resource management in the Iraqi context. A descriptive-analytic method is used in this research, where a Likert-scale questionnaire including 36 questions about each dimension of both variables is used. For collecting the data, the Krejcie and Morgan sample size technique has been used for selecting 200 employees in total from four firms operating in Baghdad (Zain Iraq, Asiacell, General Company for Electronic Industries, and Korkas). There are very strong positive correlations between the variables (0.693-0.755), as well as a significant positive effect (R²=0.659). Functional flexibility prevails (β=0.488).
