Research Literature Synthesis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Research Literature Synthesis - Essay Example One such way in the education sector, is information and communication technology, which has caused a shift in the process of learning. The integration of information and communication technology in the learning sector has promoted instant recovery of many learning centers, thereby causing a shift in learning outcomes. Application of information technology into the learning sector requires skills and transformation of the labor sector to match technological requirements. This remains a significant challenge according to Galanouli, Murphy and Gardner (2004), in application of technology, as most instructors are not well equipped with technological variations. Consequently, the cost of introducing the new devices in learning institutions and training of instructors has remained a challenge. This is because the old dogs take a longer time to grasp matters of new technology and adapt into the system. In as much as traditional methods of learning helped in nurturing proficient students, a dvancement into the new era of technology required a change. This factor has called on many learning institutions, to come up with various ways, to match the technological demand (Galanouli, Murphy & Gardner 2004). ... Some other areas that also find educational assistance in the school include the town of Rancho Viejo and other areas such as Cameron County, Raide Hope king, South point, San Pedro. This makes it the largest school in the metropolitan area of Rio Grande Valley. Academically the school has made landmark achievements producing some of the best economists and other prominent people in the world. Consequently, it has won various awards because of the outstanding work it has done to propel the level of education. In 2008, for instance, the institution won the urban education Broad Prize, an award only given to schools that have made enormous improvements in student performance, instituted viable educational policy measures and has closed the widening gap in the educational sector (Knezek & Christensen, 2002). This can be through various educational support programmes, which include encouraging students and offering financial assistance. In as much as the institution has done much to impr ove the educational standards, the question behind the application of information technology in the institution has remained unanswered. This is due to the limited attention given to introduction of new learning materials according to Groff & Mouza 2008. It should also not be refuted that the institution has tried by installing new learning devices such as projectors and personal computers. Brownsville Independent School District (BISD) uses a system of curriculum discharge, which encourages easier understanding. This incorporates division of learning activities into three main areas. This includes written curriculum, which mainly encourage student participation through conducting assignments and taking decisive notes. In as much as the

SHAKESPEARE PAPER Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

SHAKESPEARE PAPER - Essay Example The way the structure of this play begins is an indication of tragic events happening hence the reason to classify this play under tragedy. The king’s Illness is also a sign of tragedy. The king has been ailing for long and nobody has been able to offer him cure especially after the death of a gifted doctor. Helena chooses this reason to pursue her love for Bertram and makes her way to Paris where he convinces the King about her secret recipe that is likely to cure the King. In return Helena asks for a chance to declare whom to marry from the palace if she succeeds in curing the King. As expected she manages to cure the king and requests to marry Bertram something that Bertram denies several times. This is also a sign of tragedy. Despite Helena making sacrifices like following Bertram in Paris and sacrificing her life to cure the King, Bertram still turns her down. This is a form of tragedy. Moreover, Helena chooses to disappear as a way of tempting Bertram to return from war but this strategy does not qualify as well. She then chooses to go to Florence where Bertram is at war. She arrives there in disguise like a pilgrim only to hear of Bertram wishes of seducing Diana a beautiful virgin girl. This incident is more tragic as it makes Helena sadder and envious as she wishes to marry Bertram at all cost. More tragic events follow from the play. While in Florence Helena befriends the widow and Diana and informs them of her intention and love for Bertram. They both agree and trick Bertram to bed in which Bertram declares his love to Diana. In return Diana suggests trading her ring which she took from Helena and her virginity something that Bertram quickly agrees to. A tragic letter is also read by the King and rumors about Helena’s death also reach the King’s palace. Despite being rumors these rumors are still very tragic. Elements of tragedy also emanate from the last scene of this play when

Comparison Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Comparison - Essay Example Similarities Irrespective of whether communication is in-person or electronic, it consists of some basic elements that ensure the transfer of information. Both in-person and electronic communication therefore follows an outline, with specific elements of the communication process. The first element is the piece of information to be transferred as it forms the basis of communication. Further, there must be a sender. This party has the piece of information and wishes to transfer it to another party. The sender then uses an encoding process to disseminate the message in a form that can be understood by the receiver. The encoded information is then transmitted from the sender’s location to the recipient’s location. Once the receiver gets the information in its encoded form, he or she decodes the message into an understanding that generates reaction to the received message. Such a reaction facilitates a response to the sender to complete the communication process. The commun ication process, whether in in-person or electronic is also subject to noise in the transmission channel that develops barriers between the sender and the receiver. Electronic communication also has variety of features that corresponds to those of the different types of in-person communication. This is because it incorporates a majority of characteristics of in person communication elements. ... Incorporated voice applications have also been developed to allow for electronic voice communication. An example is using ‘skype’. This approach corresponds to a number of voice based in-person communication approaches with particular similarity to telephone and mobile phone calls. In both cases, the sender disseminates information and receives an immediate response through a dual line oral communication. Similarly, application of audio visual devices to electronic communication has establish its similarity to the interactive face to face in-person communication in which parties to a communication both hear and see one another during a communication process. The similarity compares meeting based communication in face-to-face communication to video conferencing in electronic communication. Both of the approaches offer an interactive forum in which parties to the communication can be organized into a discussion forum. These features identify electronic communication as a c omprehensive approach that combines different features of in-person communication towards application of a multipurpose communication method that can fit into different applications. Electronic communication and in-person communication also share a similarity in their ability to promote teamwork among members of a group. Based on the common features in both methods of communication, they link group members towards interpersonal communication and even interactions. As a result, they both develop interpersonal bonds and understanding that facilitates cohesion. This leads to focus on goals and a resultant corporation towards building teamwork. The features and functionalities of in-person communication and electronic communication also identify a

Curriculum Implementation and Evaluation Essay Example for Free

Curriculum Implementation and Evaluation Essay The 8th grade English curriculum is one of the student’s preparatory curriculum scheme that is entitled to provide efficiency in the learning process of English. It is a core process and procedure that is aimed any ensuring the student is able to achieve the most implicit English learning techniques. Though complex however, the curriculum system can be described in a brief manner that provides the most important factors in its implementation. At one level, it requires that the students demonstrate a clear understanding on what builds the English grammatical facets that is captured by both written and spoken English. This implies that, the student should demonstrate a concise command into English grammar in terms of punctuations marks, sentence structure and sentence use. Elsewhere, it incorporates the essence of student-teacher relationship both in class and assignments. This is synonymous to adequate communication and response between them in modeling an attractive English learning environment. Here, the student is required of his/her participation in class response and other subject modeling areas. ( http://www. rusd. k12. ca. us/4teachers/langarts/corenovels8. html) The system recognizes the importance of other forms and sources of learning English such as the media and texts. Here, he/she is required to gather the most appropriate information that may help him in the learning process which is not within the classroom environment. Comprehensions and passages are important. This is developed through engaging them in reading various comprehension texts and passages that help them to develop a more valuable support towards comprehending. (http://www. gisd. k12. nm. us/standards/eighth/8thLA_gisd. html) In the process of learning English, induced acquisition of new vocabulary is highly important. This is got from student’s ability to write different word meanings and pronunciation of words as well as their correct placement into English sentences. The process of adequacy in reading is required. A student should demonstrate ability in loud reading that is clear in terms of pronunciation and sentence clarity. Reading ability can be acquired through his/her role of reading the most appropriate materials equivalent of 25 books in Georgia English curriculum. Development of exemplary English knowledge should be accompanied by a student’s ability of acknowledging different English authors and their publications. The scope of student reading should be broad that help to provide him with acquiring new vocabulary and information from different study areas. Having read widely, he/she should produce concrete, well-formatted and grammatical writing. This should be coupled with competence in various English genres. Writing ability can be supported by comprehensive research into books, media, archives and the internet. (http://www. ncpublicschools. org/curriculum/languagearts/scos/2004/25grade8) Reference 8th Grade Language Arts Curriculum Links. Retrieved on 20th May 2008 from http://www. rusd. k12. ca. us/4teachers/langarts/corenovels8. html 8th Grade Language Arts Curriculum. Retrieved on 20th May 2008 from http://www. gisd. k12. nm. us/standards/eighth/8thLA_gisd. html Eighth Grade. Retrieved on 20th May 2008 from http://www. ncpublicschools. org/curriculum/languagearts/scos/2004/25grade8

Case Study. Champion Essay Example for Free

Case Study. Champion Essay CASE: Rebhan v. Pop Warner Little Scholars, INC FACTS: Gator Rebhan is the former head coach of Suniland Sundevils. They were two time National Champions, including a victoy of 56-6 in the championship game. That following week, Pop Warner suspended Rebhan indefinitely alleging he intentionally ran up the score, which is a violation of Pop Warner rules. Rebhan filed a suit claiming that Pop Warner did not follow their own rules, in two instances. First, the referees failed to reward the ball to the opponents after each score until the deficit was less than 36. Rebhan was also never contacted or interviewed by Pop Warner to get his side of the story. ISSUE: Was Pop Warner within its rights to suspend Rebhan for running up the score, without hearing from him first? HOLDING: According to â€Å"We Own This Game†, Gator Rebhan dropped his lawsuit against Pop Warner in the following year. RATIONALE: Although the suit was dropped, Rebhan did hold a very strong case to be reinstated. Pop Warner broke its own league rules by not interviewing him prior to his suspension. Had they done so, they might have come to a different conclusion after he argued that he was trying to protect his own players after the opposing team stacked the box with 11 men. They might also realize that had the officials done their part correctly, Rebhan’s team would never have been rewarded the ball after the deficit reached greater than 36. According to â€Å"We Own This Game†, Rebhan’s suspension expired, and there was no reason for him to follow through with the case. Gator Rebhan was allowed to coach the Suniland Sundevils for the following season.

Analysis of the Hotel Industry in Malaysia

Analysis of the Hotel Industry in Malaysia CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Overview Basically, this chapter is an introduction of the research topic. In the Section 1.2, it briefly introduces the background of this study. Introduction of hotel industry in Malaysia is included in Section 1.3. Next, problem statements are explained in Section 1.4 while the research objectives are laid out in Section 1.5. Besides, Section 1.6 and Section 1.7 have included the scope of study and the significance of this study respectively. Lastly, Section 1.8 is about the explanation of the organization of this study with a flow chart attached depicting the tasks to be carried out. 1.2 Background of Study In todays increasingly competitive and complex business environment, being sustainable in the business arena is no longer the mission of any of the organization, but to grow. Competitive advantage gives organization to shield and isolate itself temporary from the intensive competitive environment. This advantage could be taken away when competitors improved their products or services that potentially make more appealing to customers. Therefore, organization requires a never-ending process of continuous improvement. The word kaizen has been used by Japanese for describing this ongoing process of unending improvement by setting and achieving of ever-higher goals that involves both managers and workers (Imai, 1996; Heizer Render, 2006). Over the years, organizations from every industry keep coming out new products, either with a different exterior or equipped with better and more advanced features. For example, todays mobile phones have almost the same function as a computer except with a smaller screen and size, auto industry comes out cars that strongly emphasize on performance, safety, comfortably, elegance and so forth. Same thing goes to services, organizations come out with services that are tailored to every customers. As a result, this provides what the customers are really wanted and undoubtedly, customer satisfaction increased. For instance, Tune Hotels has made all services as optional, from breakfast, air-conditioned room to water-heated bathroom (TuneHotels.com, 2009). All of these are normally being provided as a package in any other hotels. As a consequence, customers have the right to select which services they want and they are being charged according to what services they have selected. To sum it u p, organizations in 21st century are being very innovative in serving their customers. Instead of merely come out with novel products and services, organizations have to look into the quality issue of the products or services produced. Customers will never be satisfied if the products or services they received have no quality, regardless of how novel and unique it is. Here we need to look into quality issue. According to Blankenship and Petersen (1999), W. Edwards Deming is known most widely for his work in quality management. Demings 14 points help Japan in achieving very high levels of quality in products and turn out to be a great shock for the westerners because Japanese goods were perceived at low quality and cheapness before this. He used statistics to examine production processes for flaws and greatly influenced Japanese industry as it rebuilt in the years after World War II. Today, TQM is a popular topic for quality management. TQM is called total because it entire the whole organization, from the supplier to customer (Sharmma, 2008). In other words, TQM talks about the satisfaction of customer, supplier, and employee. Furthermore, quality assurance systems such as statistical process control, quality control and better conformance quality are lined to better business performance (Dick, 2000). Other than that, people in todays world are relatively concern with the quality of the products and services they purchase. With the advancement of Information Technology (IT), gathering information regarding quality for various products has no longer a time-consuming task. All of this information can be gathered with only a few clicks. For that reason, quality has become one of the considerations at customers pre-purchase stage. Since the quality has become more and more important nowadays, a non-govermental organization (NGO) named International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has published the ISO 9000 series of quality standards at year 1987 (Dick, 2000). The ISO 9000 series of international quality system standards provides a framework for a basic quality assurance system and a good starting point for achieving total quality (Evan Lindsay, 1999). Generally speaking, businesses can base the development of their products and services on reference documents which have broad market relevance. This, in turn, means that they are increasingly free to compete on many markets around the world. As on the customer side, the worldwide compatibility of technology which is achieved when products and services are based on International Standards brings them an increasingly wide choice of offers (ISO, 2009). By implementing TQM, both the organizations and customers can enjoy ever greater benefits. From the aspect of organizations, in reality, both the tangible and intangible ones are offered by TQM, such as cost savings for the employer and greater job satisfaction for the employee (Gunasekaram, Goyal, Martikainen, Yli-Olli, 1998). According to Shemwell, Tavas, Bilgin (2008), the key to sustainable competitive advantage lies in delivering high quality service that will in turn result in satisfied customers. In addition, Dick (2000) has proven that better quality does have a consistent positive relationship with improved business performance. Figure 1.1: Two Ways Quality Improves Profitability (Adapted From: Heizer and Render, Operations Management, 2006.) Also, Heizer and Render (2006) says profits can be increased by improved quality as the figure depicted above. Firstly, improved quality generally leads to both sales gains and reduced cost. This is because improved response, higher prices and improved reputation are all make sales gain happened. Moreover, reduction of cost happens when productivity increases, rework and scrap costs decreases and warranty costs decreases. Therefore, profits will be increased when expenditures (costs) have been lowered and revenue (sales) has been increased. 1.3 Hotel Industry in Malaysia As a sub-sector to services sector, tourism has an increase in foreign exchange earnings from RM17.3 billion in year 2000 to RM46.1 billion in 2007 (Bank Negara Malaysia [BNM], 2008). It shows that tourism had a growth in its revenue for 166% in a period of only 7 years. This is largely due to the effects of campaigns â€Å"Visit Malaysia Year† (Poon Low, 2005) and â€Å"Cuti-cuti Malaysia†. Up-to-date, tourism has recorded total receipts of RM49,561.2 million for the year 2008, an increment of RM3,491.2 million from year 2007 (Tourism Malaysia Corporate, 2009). Spillover effects have been generated by the increase in tourism activities into other sectors of the economy. In other words, the steadily growth of tourism industry has contributed to the growth of all related industries and businesses. These included hotel industry, retail businesses, restaurants and transportation (Bank Negara Malaysia [BNM], 2008). Hotel industry plays a very important role in complementing tourism as it provides accommodation to travelers and tourists. Nevertheless, hotel industry has been a major player in the growth of the Malaysian economy, which contributing approximately 50 percent of the nations real GDP (Awang, Ishak, Radzi, Taha, 2008). As today, there are approximately 105 hotels with different ratings and sizes in Kuala Lumpur alone (Malaysian Association of Hotels [MAH], 2009). This has shown that Kuala Lumpur has an incredibly high density of hotels. Here the problem arises, how is the hotel industry in Kuala Lumpur cope with the never ending increase of tourists and travelers? In this context, it seems not possible to provide more rooms by simply adding the number of hotels in Kuala Lumpur. This is because the land area of Kuala Lumpur has only 244km ², meaning that there will be 1 hotel in every 2.3km ². In this sense, hoteliers have to find other ways to increase their productivities. In recent years, governments from all over the world have been putting more and more emphasis in developing services industry in their countries. They are all now aware of the unique characteristic of services and its importance in supporting a countrys economic growth. Business services showed the strongest growth in terms of value added and economic productivity (Wirtz Ehret, 2009). Theoretically, any organization in developing countries must endeavor continuously to improve productivity in order to increase profitability (Oluleye Olajire, 2001). As a consequence to the Malaysia economy, a higher amount of GDP will be recorded, more and more employment will be provided and so on. Hence, these have made hotel industry as a key sub-sector to services industry and these social responsibilities should not be overlooked by hoteliers in Malaysia. 1.4 Problem Statements In general, Malaysian will have perception saying that things made by western countries and Japan have higher quality, things from China have no quality and so forth. This is partially true in reality, majority of the Malaysians opt to buy import goods where there is an option for them. Therefore, local made products are usually having less supports from Malaysian as it has been perceived to be low quality in terms of unreliable and unattractive (Damodaran, 2009). This shows that local made products have lesser competency even in local market. Consequently, government encourages both the manufacturer and services provider to look seriously in quality issue by giving several incentives (Malaysian Rubber Export Promotion Council [MREPC], 2009). However, the outcomes of it are not up to the expectation. This may due to the inadequate research carry out in Malaysia. Thus, organizations especially the small size ones will definitely lack of information when trying to implement quality man agement system. Kuala Lumpur is one of the major cities in Malaysia with an estimated of 1.6 million of population at the year 2005 (KL City Plan 2020, 2009) and it is to be said as the fastest growing region in Malaysia. This figure says that Kuala Lumpur is the most densely populated district in Malaysia. Moreover, Kuala Lumpur has a vast number of tourists and it increases over years. Just to name a few, its major tourist destinations include Dataran Merdeka (the Independence Square), House of Parliament, the Istana Budaya, the Istana Negara (National Palace), the Kuala Lumpur Tower, the Muzium Negara (National Museum), Petaling Street and etc (Tourism Malaysia, 2009). With the limited land that Kuala Lumpur has, it is almost impossible to build more hotels in order to cater the increasing number of tourist in the near future. Therefore, several actions have to be taken in order to best serve the tourists with the limited number of hotels in Kuala Lumpur. This is to ensure that the receipts from tourism will not be negatively affected while the hotel industry can continuously contribute significantly to GDP. As time goes by, Human Resource Management (HRM) has become a popular topic than ever before. Organizations have understood the importance of employees (human resources). At the same time, empirical research studies have been done by researchers to further understand and prove those theories related to motivate and compensate employees. Dessler (2005) says that employee satisfaction and performance are positively related. Therefore, hoteliers must understand the importance to maximize their employee satisfaction as this could lead to greater business performance. However, by solely compensating employees with both monetary and non-monetary rewards has its limitation. Performance will stop increasing when the problem arises are not come from employees but the management. For instance, it could be lacking a well-planned system in executing tasks, ineffective communications in organization and so forth. In other countries, TQM has been so popular for a period of time as it helps organiz ations to achieve even higher of performance. In other countries, plenty of research studies have been carried out to investigate which TQM factors are the most influential to the particular country. Unlike in Malaysia, the number of TQM study that can be applied is limited and lacking of guidelines for hoteliers is still a major problem. Someone could say that hoteliers can simply use the findings from other countries as a guideline for implementing the TQM. But, there is always a high possibility that those mentioned as important factors are not important in Malaysia, when compared to the original country that the research is carried out. In other words, it is imperative to understand the applicability of the findings from other countries. The applicability of some of the findings from research still remains questionable. For example, information and analysis, one of the TQM factors is said to be extremely important to developed and developing countries but it is not persuasive enough to apply on third world countries. This is because they probably lack of necessary infrastructure. Therefore, it can be said that Malaysias hoteliers are actually lack of a blueprint when initially applying TQM to their respective hotels. In other words, hoteliers may not known which factors of TQM can generally lead to better performa nce in the Malaysia. Furthermore, with the limited of number of such research available to Malaysia, it has nothing to show hoteliers how strong the impact of TQM factors is to labor productivity, thus lack of motivation to change their routine and ways of doing business. When this occurs, Malaysia hotel industry can never be improved, previously owned competitiveness can be competed away and GDP can be affected. 1.5 Research Objectives The general objective of this study is to identify the impact of each of the selected TQM factors towards the labor productivity. Next, it is then to be expressed in term of its level of correlation between each of the independent variables and the dependent one. Therefore, this result could be used by the Malaysia hoteliers in increasing their labor productivity as these findings will show which of the independent variables plays a more important role in achieving higher labor productivity in the Malaysia context. The following objectives are specifically derived from the problem statements: To identify the relationship between the chosen independent variables and dependent variable; To investigate the level of impact for each of the chosen TQM factors towards labor productivity; To determine whether high TQM commitment hotels will generally generate higher labor productivity than the low TQM commitment hotels; and To provide insights and recommendations for improvement to Malaysias hoteliers at the end of the research. 1.6 Scope of Study The scope of this study covers a discussion on TQM as well as the importance of productivity. As the scope of both TQM and productivity are broad, this study will primarily focus on the aspect of TQM factors and labor productivity. Besides, this study investigates the relationship between selected TQM factors and labor productivity. Theoretically, those selected TQM factors is to be said to have influences on the labor productivity. Therefore, this research is also carried out with the intention to identify the degree of impact of the selected TQM factors towards labor productivity, either a stronger or a weaker one. Moreover, this research is intended to provide useful and relevant findings for hoteliers in Malaysia, in order to achieve the ever higher labor productivity in Malaysia hotel industry. Therefore, it is targeted to hoteliers in Malaysia primarily located in Kuala Lumpur. Lastly, a questionnaire has been included in this study and carried out on hoteliers of Kuala Lumpur in order to measure the impact of TQM factors towards labor productivity. 1.7 Significance of Study The importance of this study is to explore the relationship between the selected TQM factors and labor productivity in the context of Malaysia hotel industry. Similar research studies have been done to prove the relationship between the TQM factors and productivity. However, most of it were not focusing on the hotel industry. Some of them might have focused in hotel industry, but the issue of applicability remains noticeable. For that reason, this study is focusing in the Malaysia hotel industry as an applicable guideline and reference for the Malaysia hoteliers. Besides that, this study will be able to contribute relevant information to the Tourism Malaysia Promotion Board (Malaysian Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism). In Section 1.3, it shows the importance of tourism is to the nation GDP. Furthermore, hotel industry is relatively important to the country as an accommodation means for tourists to visit Malaysia. In addition, through this study, government is now able to identify unsuitable approaches and strategies. Therefore, essential action such as coming out new incentives scheme can be taken to effectively replace the old ones. Thus, national resources can be distributed and used even more effective and efficient than ever. As to hoteliers, this study helps to lighten their worries when first implementing the TQM as they are now getting more supporting evidence from this study. According to Yesawich (1997), building customer loyalty is one of the biggest challenges for the hotel industry. Successfully implemented TQM contributes to customer satisfaction. From customer satisfaction, loyalty and profits are positively related. In other word, TQM can potentially overcome one of the biggest challenges in hotel industry. At the same time, organizations can enjoy the benefits from TQM such as creating competitive advantage, providing unique services and so forth. 1.8 Organization of Study The organization of this research study comprises of 5 chapters. This research study begins with Chapter 1 that covers the introduction for the chosen topic. It consists of the background of study and hotel industry in Malaysia. Next, problem statements, research objectives, scope of study and the significance of study are laid out in different section. Lastly, organization of study that shows the overall flow of this study ends the Chapter 1. Chapter 2 provides the literature review for the chosen topic. It includes all the related empirical studies that have been done by the previous researchers. Several of viewpoint, definition and argument have been included in this chapter as well. For instance, different point of views from different researchers for the same variable can be found here. Chapter 3 outlines the overall methodology being used in this research study. It shows the research framework together with the explanation and hypothesis of the framework. Besides, data collection method, sources of data, sampling method and sampling size will be discussed in separated section. Furthermore, there is the outline of the questionnaire development and scaling techniques before discussion of data analysis and measurement close the chapter. Chapter 4 discusses the findings and the results of this research study. Therefore, all related chart, graph, data will be included in this chapter. This chapter basically ends with the interpretation and discussion regarding all of the findings. Finally, conclusions and recommendations will be formed and given to readers. It concludes which TQM factors have a stronger effect and vice versa. Besides that, limitations of this study will also be included. The following figure shows the overall outline of this study. Figure 1.2: Flow Chart of Study CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Overview This chapter develops and provides the foundation for this research study. Previous works done by other researchers that relate to labor productivity, total quality management, customer focus, human resource management, information analysis, leadership and strategic management are all presented in this chapter. Besides, in order to gain a better understanding of this research, viewpoints from different researchers are then compare and contrast in this chapter. 2.2 Labor Productivity In the 21st century, productivity growth plays an important role in GDP growth of any nation. According Chapman, Murray Mellor (1997), the use of sales per employee has been widely used to measure labor productivity for individual companies. Besides, Sauian (2002) says that in knowledge-based economy, competitive advantage can be maintained through â€Å"high productivity† and efficiency. In the other way round, labor productivity is an important element used to gauge competitiveness in producing goods and services (Sauian, 2002). Moreover, Hoffman Mehra (1998) argues that high productivity effects are impossible to sustain without a quality-based process-oriented environment which emanates from the support of employees, upper management, and the organization. Malaysia registered a productivity growth of 2.9 percent from RM 48,113 in year 2007 to RM 49,526 in year 2008. Furthermore, productivity contributed 62.2 percent while employment contributed 37.8 percent to the GDP growth of 5.98 percent. This growth surpassed several major countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As shown in Figure 2.1, the Rep. of Korea recorded a productivity growth as much as 3.6 percent, the USA (2.1 percent), the Japan (0.8 percent), the Australia (0.4), the Germany (0.1 percent) and the rest had zero or negative growth (Malaysia Productivity Corporation [MPC], 2009). Figure 2.1: Productivity Growth of Malaysia and Selected OECD Countries, 2008 (Adapted From: MPC, Annual Productivity Report 2008) Thomas (1994) defined the simplest form of labor productivity (LP) as the hours of work divided by the units of work accomplished. In general, LP is a measure of output from a production as per unit of input. Therefore, it can be expressed as: LP From the above formula, LP consists of the total output and total input. It can be in terms of a particular production, a department, an organization or even a nation. In general, if we want to increase productivity, it is necessary to increase the systems output, if the input is to remain constant. Similarly, if the systems output is to maintain the status quo, then we need to utilize less input. From a different aspect, if both output and input are increased, then it is mathematically obvious that the rate of increase of output should be higher than the rate of increase of input, if productivity needs to be improved (Sauian, 2002). Therefore, in order to achieve higher LP, input and output should be manipulated in various ways. Schonewille (2001) said the effectiveness of training is lower compared to initial education when comes to contributing to labor productivity. Even thought training has smaller effects on labor productivity, still the estimated coefficient is positive (Schonewille, 2001). A number of researchers have proven the positive impact of quality on productivity, whereas both can influence positively profitability (Bylund Lapidoth, 1994). This relationship has been generally accepted within the manufacturing industry (Chase Aquilano, 1995). However in reality, LP is a much more complex phenomenon which largely depends on quite diverse factors such as workers competence, motivation, supervision and so forth. Also, management does affect LP (Enshassi, Mohamed, Mayer, Abed, 2007). Chapman and Al-Khawaldeh (2002) has investigated the relationship between TQM implementation and labor productivity in industrial companies in Jordan, as shown in Figure 2.2. The results of data analysis indicate that there is a positive relationship between TQM (and each TQM element) and labor productivity. Interestingly, it is found that companies with ISO 9000 certification has high positive slope whereas companies without ISO 9000 certification has low positive slope. 2.3 Total Quality Management (TQM) TQM emerged in the mid-1980s in response to Japans invasion of US markets with their high quality-low price automobiles and electronic products. Quality has been defined differently as conformance to requirement (Crosby, 1979), fitness for use (Juran, 1979), continual improvement (Deming, 1982) and as define by customers (Ford, 1990). Whereby, Spitzer (1993) called TQM â€Å"the only source of sustainable competitive advantage†. Also, TQM is continually satisfying agreed customer requirements at lowest cost through harnessing everyones commitment (Burton Franckeiss, 1994). In theory, TQM seems to assure performance improvement for any organization. But, in practice, TQM works for some organization and not for others (Terzioski, 2006). According to Chapman and Al-Khawaldeh (2002), TQM is a key strategy for maintaining competitive advantage and is a way of managing organizations to improve its overall effectiveness and performance towards achieving world-class status. During the last two decades or so, simple inspection activities have been replaced or supplemented by quality control, quality assurance has been developed and refined, and now most companies are working towards TQM (Dale Bunney, 1999). Dale (1999) indentifies four discrete stages: inspection, quality control, quality assurance and TQM, as shown in Figure 2.2. Figure 2.3: The four levels in the evolution of Total Quality Management (Sources: Adapted from Dale Bunney, Total Quality Management Blueprint, 1999) Inspection is defined as â€Å"activities such as measuring, examining, testing or gauging one or more characteristic of an entity and comparing the results with specified requirement in order to establish whether conformity is achieved for each characteristic† (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). Quality control is defined as â€Å"operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfill requirements for quality† (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). Quality assurance is defined as â€Å"all the planned and systematic activities implemented within the quality system and demonstrated as needed to provide adequate confidence that an entity will fulfill requirements for quality† (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). TQM is the highest level which involves the application of quality management principles to all aspects of the business, including customers and suppliers. It is then defined as the management approach of an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organization and to society (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). A number of research studies have been carried out to investigate the impact of TQM factors and implementation (Sila Ebrahimpour, 2005; Khan, 2003; Terzioski, 2006). Miller (1993) reported that success with TQM depends on the facilitating conditions. Leadership, human resource management and some other TQM factors are found to have positive impact on business results (Sila Ebrahimpour, 2005). Therefore, these findings can be reasonably useful in assisting managers so that they can allocate resources to improve their typical routines to obtain the best results. Next, five TQM factors have been selected as the independent variables for this study, namely (1) Customer Focus, (2) Human Resource Management (HRM), (3) Information and Analysis, (4) Leadership and (5) Strategic Planning. It is said that customer focus pays more attention on the customers whereas the rest of TQM factors have focused on the internal aspect of the organization. As for HRM, it focuses on the practices involved in carrying out the â€Å"people† of a management position. Information and analysis is said to be the information and communication technology used to further enhance labor productivity as automation has been widely used. Leadership is important as it creates synergy for achieving favorable business results whereas strategic planning is a set of process undertaken in order to develop a range of strategies that will contribute to achieve organization direction. Further elaboration and review for each variable will be discussed in different sub-section lat er. 2.3.1 Customer Focus According to Dean and Bowen (1994), customer focus is as important as many other TQM practices to organizational performance. Being customer-focused keeps us aware of quality, or rather it focuses our quality initiatives on what really matters to the customers (Cox, 1997). Also, Piercy (1995) says that TQM has too much focused on the internal aspect of the organization and much less attention on the customers. Customer satisfaction begins by discovering precisely what customers want and gearing every practice to their exact expectations (Kearney, 1994). Customer focus has changed mass production to mass customization. In addition, being far from depersonalizing the world, technology has the power to return us to being treated as individuals while getting all the benefits inherent in large-scale enterprise (Cox, 1997). Sousa (2003) pointed out the importance of customer focus lies in the fact that it is the starting point of any quality initiative. However, it has not received enough attention from quality management researchers (Cai, 2009). In the final decade of twentieth century, the term, customer-centered competition has been introduced. Customer-centered company is a company that focuses on customer developments in designing its marketing strategies and on delivering superior value to its target customers (Kotler Armstrong, 2008). It is common to hear the statement â€Å"customer is always right† in any organization. This could be the trend that organization is to focus on customer needs to be customer-led, to be market-oriented, to care for customers and so forth (Piercy, 1995). These are to make total customer satisfaction a strategic foundation for achieving competitive advantage (Kearney, 1994). Customer focus has been therefore defined as the degree to which firms continuously satisfy customer needs and expectations (Philips, Chang, Buzzell, 1983). The difference between customer focus and customer understanding is, according to Lagrosen (2001), mainly a matter of perspective. Customer focus means the activities of the companies are intended to benefit the customer but the customer is seen from the companies own perspective. Therefore, effects are usually being made to gain information about the customers needs and wants, although always in a set framework that originates in the companies view of the product and its features. Whereby, customer understanding needs perspective to be shifted. It means the company needs to gain entry to the customers own perspective and adopt the customers framework of viewing the product (Lagrosen, 2001). Cai (2009) found that organizational customer focus affects customer relationship practices, which subsequently influence production performance and customer satisfaction, and production performance and customer satisfaction lead to financial outcomes. Ooi, Bakar, Arumugam, Vellepan, and Loke (2007) says TQM practices such as teamwork, reward and recognition, customer focus and organizational trust are positively associated with job satisfaction within their organization. For instance, customer focus was found to have a direct influence on emplo Analysis of the Hotel Industry in Malaysia Analysis of the Hotel Industry in Malaysia CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Overview Basically, this chapter is an introduction of the research topic. In the Section 1.2, it briefly introduces the background of this study. Introduction of hotel industry in Malaysia is included in Section 1.3. Next, problem statements are explained in Section 1.4 while the research objectives are laid out in Section 1.5. Besides, Section 1.6 and Section 1.7 have included the scope of study and the significance of this study respectively. Lastly, Section 1.8 is about the explanation of the organization of this study with a flow chart attached depicting the tasks to be carried out. 1.2 Background of Study In todays increasingly competitive and complex business environment, being sustainable in the business arena is no longer the mission of any of the organization, but to grow. Competitive advantage gives organization to shield and isolate itself temporary from the intensive competitive environment. This advantage could be taken away when competitors improved their products or services that potentially make more appealing to customers. Therefore, organization requires a never-ending process of continuous improvement. The word kaizen has been used by Japanese for describing this ongoing process of unending improvement by setting and achieving of ever-higher goals that involves both managers and workers (Imai, 1996; Heizer Render, 2006). Over the years, organizations from every industry keep coming out new products, either with a different exterior or equipped with better and more advanced features. For example, todays mobile phones have almost the same function as a computer except with a smaller screen and size, auto industry comes out cars that strongly emphasize on performance, safety, comfortably, elegance and so forth. Same thing goes to services, organizations come out with services that are tailored to every customers. As a result, this provides what the customers are really wanted and undoubtedly, customer satisfaction increased. For instance, Tune Hotels has made all services as optional, from breakfast, air-conditioned room to water-heated bathroom (TuneHotels.com, 2009). All of these are normally being provided as a package in any other hotels. As a consequence, customers have the right to select which services they want and they are being charged according to what services they have selected. To sum it u p, organizations in 21st century are being very innovative in serving their customers. Instead of merely come out with novel products and services, organizations have to look into the quality issue of the products or services produced. Customers will never be satisfied if the products or services they received have no quality, regardless of how novel and unique it is. Here we need to look into quality issue. According to Blankenship and Petersen (1999), W. Edwards Deming is known most widely for his work in quality management. Demings 14 points help Japan in achieving very high levels of quality in products and turn out to be a great shock for the westerners because Japanese goods were perceived at low quality and cheapness before this. He used statistics to examine production processes for flaws and greatly influenced Japanese industry as it rebuilt in the years after World War II. Today, TQM is a popular topic for quality management. TQM is called total because it entire the whole organization, from the supplier to customer (Sharmma, 2008). In other words, TQM talks about the satisfaction of customer, supplier, and employee. Furthermore, quality assurance systems such as statistical process control, quality control and better conformance quality are lined to better business performance (Dick, 2000). Other than that, people in todays world are relatively concern with the quality of the products and services they purchase. With the advancement of Information Technology (IT), gathering information regarding quality for various products has no longer a time-consuming task. All of this information can be gathered with only a few clicks. For that reason, quality has become one of the considerations at customers pre-purchase stage. Since the quality has become more and more important nowadays, a non-govermental organization (NGO) named International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has published the ISO 9000 series of quality standards at year 1987 (Dick, 2000). The ISO 9000 series of international quality system standards provides a framework for a basic quality assurance system and a good starting point for achieving total quality (Evan Lindsay, 1999). Generally speaking, businesses can base the development of their products and services on reference documents which have broad market relevance. This, in turn, means that they are increasingly free to compete on many markets around the world. As on the customer side, the worldwide compatibility of technology which is achieved when products and services are based on International Standards brings them an increasingly wide choice of offers (ISO, 2009). By implementing TQM, both the organizations and customers can enjoy ever greater benefits. From the aspect of organizations, in reality, both the tangible and intangible ones are offered by TQM, such as cost savings for the employer and greater job satisfaction for the employee (Gunasekaram, Goyal, Martikainen, Yli-Olli, 1998). According to Shemwell, Tavas, Bilgin (2008), the key to sustainable competitive advantage lies in delivering high quality service that will in turn result in satisfied customers. In addition, Dick (2000) has proven that better quality does have a consistent positive relationship with improved business performance. Figure 1.1: Two Ways Quality Improves Profitability (Adapted From: Heizer and Render, Operations Management, 2006.) Also, Heizer and Render (2006) says profits can be increased by improved quality as the figure depicted above. Firstly, improved quality generally leads to both sales gains and reduced cost. This is because improved response, higher prices and improved reputation are all make sales gain happened. Moreover, reduction of cost happens when productivity increases, rework and scrap costs decreases and warranty costs decreases. Therefore, profits will be increased when expenditures (costs) have been lowered and revenue (sales) has been increased. 1.3 Hotel Industry in Malaysia As a sub-sector to services sector, tourism has an increase in foreign exchange earnings from RM17.3 billion in year 2000 to RM46.1 billion in 2007 (Bank Negara Malaysia [BNM], 2008). It shows that tourism had a growth in its revenue for 166% in a period of only 7 years. This is largely due to the effects of campaigns â€Å"Visit Malaysia Year† (Poon Low, 2005) and â€Å"Cuti-cuti Malaysia†. Up-to-date, tourism has recorded total receipts of RM49,561.2 million for the year 2008, an increment of RM3,491.2 million from year 2007 (Tourism Malaysia Corporate, 2009). Spillover effects have been generated by the increase in tourism activities into other sectors of the economy. In other words, the steadily growth of tourism industry has contributed to the growth of all related industries and businesses. These included hotel industry, retail businesses, restaurants and transportation (Bank Negara Malaysia [BNM], 2008). Hotel industry plays a very important role in complementing tourism as it provides accommodation to travelers and tourists. Nevertheless, hotel industry has been a major player in the growth of the Malaysian economy, which contributing approximately 50 percent of the nations real GDP (Awang, Ishak, Radzi, Taha, 2008). As today, there are approximately 105 hotels with different ratings and sizes in Kuala Lumpur alone (Malaysian Association of Hotels [MAH], 2009). This has shown that Kuala Lumpur has an incredibly high density of hotels. Here the problem arises, how is the hotel industry in Kuala Lumpur cope with the never ending increase of tourists and travelers? In this context, it seems not possible to provide more rooms by simply adding the number of hotels in Kuala Lumpur. This is because the land area of Kuala Lumpur has only 244km ², meaning that there will be 1 hotel in every 2.3km ². In this sense, hoteliers have to find other ways to increase their productivities. In recent years, governments from all over the world have been putting more and more emphasis in developing services industry in their countries. They are all now aware of the unique characteristic of services and its importance in supporting a countrys economic growth. Business services showed the strongest growth in terms of value added and economic productivity (Wirtz Ehret, 2009). Theoretically, any organization in developing countries must endeavor continuously to improve productivity in order to increase profitability (Oluleye Olajire, 2001). As a consequence to the Malaysia economy, a higher amount of GDP will be recorded, more and more employment will be provided and so on. Hence, these have made hotel industry as a key sub-sector to services industry and these social responsibilities should not be overlooked by hoteliers in Malaysia. 1.4 Problem Statements In general, Malaysian will have perception saying that things made by western countries and Japan have higher quality, things from China have no quality and so forth. This is partially true in reality, majority of the Malaysians opt to buy import goods where there is an option for them. Therefore, local made products are usually having less supports from Malaysian as it has been perceived to be low quality in terms of unreliable and unattractive (Damodaran, 2009). This shows that local made products have lesser competency even in local market. Consequently, government encourages both the manufacturer and services provider to look seriously in quality issue by giving several incentives (Malaysian Rubber Export Promotion Council [MREPC], 2009). However, the outcomes of it are not up to the expectation. This may due to the inadequate research carry out in Malaysia. Thus, organizations especially the small size ones will definitely lack of information when trying to implement quality man agement system. Kuala Lumpur is one of the major cities in Malaysia with an estimated of 1.6 million of population at the year 2005 (KL City Plan 2020, 2009) and it is to be said as the fastest growing region in Malaysia. This figure says that Kuala Lumpur is the most densely populated district in Malaysia. Moreover, Kuala Lumpur has a vast number of tourists and it increases over years. Just to name a few, its major tourist destinations include Dataran Merdeka (the Independence Square), House of Parliament, the Istana Budaya, the Istana Negara (National Palace), the Kuala Lumpur Tower, the Muzium Negara (National Museum), Petaling Street and etc (Tourism Malaysia, 2009). With the limited land that Kuala Lumpur has, it is almost impossible to build more hotels in order to cater the increasing number of tourist in the near future. Therefore, several actions have to be taken in order to best serve the tourists with the limited number of hotels in Kuala Lumpur. This is to ensure that the receipts from tourism will not be negatively affected while the hotel industry can continuously contribute significantly to GDP. As time goes by, Human Resource Management (HRM) has become a popular topic than ever before. Organizations have understood the importance of employees (human resources). At the same time, empirical research studies have been done by researchers to further understand and prove those theories related to motivate and compensate employees. Dessler (2005) says that employee satisfaction and performance are positively related. Therefore, hoteliers must understand the importance to maximize their employee satisfaction as this could lead to greater business performance. However, by solely compensating employees with both monetary and non-monetary rewards has its limitation. Performance will stop increasing when the problem arises are not come from employees but the management. For instance, it could be lacking a well-planned system in executing tasks, ineffective communications in organization and so forth. In other countries, TQM has been so popular for a period of time as it helps organiz ations to achieve even higher of performance. In other countries, plenty of research studies have been carried out to investigate which TQM factors are the most influential to the particular country. Unlike in Malaysia, the number of TQM study that can be applied is limited and lacking of guidelines for hoteliers is still a major problem. Someone could say that hoteliers can simply use the findings from other countries as a guideline for implementing the TQM. But, there is always a high possibility that those mentioned as important factors are not important in Malaysia, when compared to the original country that the research is carried out. In other words, it is imperative to understand the applicability of the findings from other countries. The applicability of some of the findings from research still remains questionable. For example, information and analysis, one of the TQM factors is said to be extremely important to developed and developing countries but it is not persuasive enough to apply on third world countries. This is because they probably lack of necessary infrastructure. Therefore, it can be said that Malaysias hoteliers are actually lack of a blueprint when initially applying TQM to their respective hotels. In other words, hoteliers may not known which factors of TQM can generally lead to better performa nce in the Malaysia. Furthermore, with the limited of number of such research available to Malaysia, it has nothing to show hoteliers how strong the impact of TQM factors is to labor productivity, thus lack of motivation to change their routine and ways of doing business. When this occurs, Malaysia hotel industry can never be improved, previously owned competitiveness can be competed away and GDP can be affected. 1.5 Research Objectives The general objective of this study is to identify the impact of each of the selected TQM factors towards the labor productivity. Next, it is then to be expressed in term of its level of correlation between each of the independent variables and the dependent one. Therefore, this result could be used by the Malaysia hoteliers in increasing their labor productivity as these findings will show which of the independent variables plays a more important role in achieving higher labor productivity in the Malaysia context. The following objectives are specifically derived from the problem statements: To identify the relationship between the chosen independent variables and dependent variable; To investigate the level of impact for each of the chosen TQM factors towards labor productivity; To determine whether high TQM commitment hotels will generally generate higher labor productivity than the low TQM commitment hotels; and To provide insights and recommendations for improvement to Malaysias hoteliers at the end of the research. 1.6 Scope of Study The scope of this study covers a discussion on TQM as well as the importance of productivity. As the scope of both TQM and productivity are broad, this study will primarily focus on the aspect of TQM factors and labor productivity. Besides, this study investigates the relationship between selected TQM factors and labor productivity. Theoretically, those selected TQM factors is to be said to have influences on the labor productivity. Therefore, this research is also carried out with the intention to identify the degree of impact of the selected TQM factors towards labor productivity, either a stronger or a weaker one. Moreover, this research is intended to provide useful and relevant findings for hoteliers in Malaysia, in order to achieve the ever higher labor productivity in Malaysia hotel industry. Therefore, it is targeted to hoteliers in Malaysia primarily located in Kuala Lumpur. Lastly, a questionnaire has been included in this study and carried out on hoteliers of Kuala Lumpur in order to measure the impact of TQM factors towards labor productivity. 1.7 Significance of Study The importance of this study is to explore the relationship between the selected TQM factors and labor productivity in the context of Malaysia hotel industry. Similar research studies have been done to prove the relationship between the TQM factors and productivity. However, most of it were not focusing on the hotel industry. Some of them might have focused in hotel industry, but the issue of applicability remains noticeable. For that reason, this study is focusing in the Malaysia hotel industry as an applicable guideline and reference for the Malaysia hoteliers. Besides that, this study will be able to contribute relevant information to the Tourism Malaysia Promotion Board (Malaysian Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism). In Section 1.3, it shows the importance of tourism is to the nation GDP. Furthermore, hotel industry is relatively important to the country as an accommodation means for tourists to visit Malaysia. In addition, through this study, government is now able to identify unsuitable approaches and strategies. Therefore, essential action such as coming out new incentives scheme can be taken to effectively replace the old ones. Thus, national resources can be distributed and used even more effective and efficient than ever. As to hoteliers, this study helps to lighten their worries when first implementing the TQM as they are now getting more supporting evidence from this study. According to Yesawich (1997), building customer loyalty is one of the biggest challenges for the hotel industry. Successfully implemented TQM contributes to customer satisfaction. From customer satisfaction, loyalty and profits are positively related. In other word, TQM can potentially overcome one of the biggest challenges in hotel industry. At the same time, organizations can enjoy the benefits from TQM such as creating competitive advantage, providing unique services and so forth. 1.8 Organization of Study The organization of this research study comprises of 5 chapters. This research study begins with Chapter 1 that covers the introduction for the chosen topic. It consists of the background of study and hotel industry in Malaysia. Next, problem statements, research objectives, scope of study and the significance of study are laid out in different section. Lastly, organization of study that shows the overall flow of this study ends the Chapter 1. Chapter 2 provides the literature review for the chosen topic. It includes all the related empirical studies that have been done by the previous researchers. Several of viewpoint, definition and argument have been included in this chapter as well. For instance, different point of views from different researchers for the same variable can be found here. Chapter 3 outlines the overall methodology being used in this research study. It shows the research framework together with the explanation and hypothesis of the framework. Besides, data collection method, sources of data, sampling method and sampling size will be discussed in separated section. Furthermore, there is the outline of the questionnaire development and scaling techniques before discussion of data analysis and measurement close the chapter. Chapter 4 discusses the findings and the results of this research study. Therefore, all related chart, graph, data will be included in this chapter. This chapter basically ends with the interpretation and discussion regarding all of the findings. Finally, conclusions and recommendations will be formed and given to readers. It concludes which TQM factors have a stronger effect and vice versa. Besides that, limitations of this study will also be included. The following figure shows the overall outline of this study. Figure 1.2: Flow Chart of Study CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Overview This chapter develops and provides the foundation for this research study. Previous works done by other researchers that relate to labor productivity, total quality management, customer focus, human resource management, information analysis, leadership and strategic management are all presented in this chapter. Besides, in order to gain a better understanding of this research, viewpoints from different researchers are then compare and contrast in this chapter. 2.2 Labor Productivity In the 21st century, productivity growth plays an important role in GDP growth of any nation. According Chapman, Murray Mellor (1997), the use of sales per employee has been widely used to measure labor productivity for individual companies. Besides, Sauian (2002) says that in knowledge-based economy, competitive advantage can be maintained through â€Å"high productivity† and efficiency. In the other way round, labor productivity is an important element used to gauge competitiveness in producing goods and services (Sauian, 2002). Moreover, Hoffman Mehra (1998) argues that high productivity effects are impossible to sustain without a quality-based process-oriented environment which emanates from the support of employees, upper management, and the organization. Malaysia registered a productivity growth of 2.9 percent from RM 48,113 in year 2007 to RM 49,526 in year 2008. Furthermore, productivity contributed 62.2 percent while employment contributed 37.8 percent to the GDP growth of 5.98 percent. This growth surpassed several major countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As shown in Figure 2.1, the Rep. of Korea recorded a productivity growth as much as 3.6 percent, the USA (2.1 percent), the Japan (0.8 percent), the Australia (0.4), the Germany (0.1 percent) and the rest had zero or negative growth (Malaysia Productivity Corporation [MPC], 2009). Figure 2.1: Productivity Growth of Malaysia and Selected OECD Countries, 2008 (Adapted From: MPC, Annual Productivity Report 2008) Thomas (1994) defined the simplest form of labor productivity (LP) as the hours of work divided by the units of work accomplished. In general, LP is a measure of output from a production as per unit of input. Therefore, it can be expressed as: LP From the above formula, LP consists of the total output and total input. It can be in terms of a particular production, a department, an organization or even a nation. In general, if we want to increase productivity, it is necessary to increase the systems output, if the input is to remain constant. Similarly, if the systems output is to maintain the status quo, then we need to utilize less input. From a different aspect, if both output and input are increased, then it is mathematically obvious that the rate of increase of output should be higher than the rate of increase of input, if productivity needs to be improved (Sauian, 2002). Therefore, in order to achieve higher LP, input and output should be manipulated in various ways. Schonewille (2001) said the effectiveness of training is lower compared to initial education when comes to contributing to labor productivity. Even thought training has smaller effects on labor productivity, still the estimated coefficient is positive (Schonewille, 2001). A number of researchers have proven the positive impact of quality on productivity, whereas both can influence positively profitability (Bylund Lapidoth, 1994). This relationship has been generally accepted within the manufacturing industry (Chase Aquilano, 1995). However in reality, LP is a much more complex phenomenon which largely depends on quite diverse factors such as workers competence, motivation, supervision and so forth. Also, management does affect LP (Enshassi, Mohamed, Mayer, Abed, 2007). Chapman and Al-Khawaldeh (2002) has investigated the relationship between TQM implementation and labor productivity in industrial companies in Jordan, as shown in Figure 2.2. The results of data analysis indicate that there is a positive relationship between TQM (and each TQM element) and labor productivity. Interestingly, it is found that companies with ISO 9000 certification has high positive slope whereas companies without ISO 9000 certification has low positive slope. 2.3 Total Quality Management (TQM) TQM emerged in the mid-1980s in response to Japans invasion of US markets with their high quality-low price automobiles and electronic products. Quality has been defined differently as conformance to requirement (Crosby, 1979), fitness for use (Juran, 1979), continual improvement (Deming, 1982) and as define by customers (Ford, 1990). Whereby, Spitzer (1993) called TQM â€Å"the only source of sustainable competitive advantage†. Also, TQM is continually satisfying agreed customer requirements at lowest cost through harnessing everyones commitment (Burton Franckeiss, 1994). In theory, TQM seems to assure performance improvement for any organization. But, in practice, TQM works for some organization and not for others (Terzioski, 2006). According to Chapman and Al-Khawaldeh (2002), TQM is a key strategy for maintaining competitive advantage and is a way of managing organizations to improve its overall effectiveness and performance towards achieving world-class status. During the last two decades or so, simple inspection activities have been replaced or supplemented by quality control, quality assurance has been developed and refined, and now most companies are working towards TQM (Dale Bunney, 1999). Dale (1999) indentifies four discrete stages: inspection, quality control, quality assurance and TQM, as shown in Figure 2.2. Figure 2.3: The four levels in the evolution of Total Quality Management (Sources: Adapted from Dale Bunney, Total Quality Management Blueprint, 1999) Inspection is defined as â€Å"activities such as measuring, examining, testing or gauging one or more characteristic of an entity and comparing the results with specified requirement in order to establish whether conformity is achieved for each characteristic† (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). Quality control is defined as â€Å"operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfill requirements for quality† (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). Quality assurance is defined as â€Å"all the planned and systematic activities implemented within the quality system and demonstrated as needed to provide adequate confidence that an entity will fulfill requirements for quality† (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). TQM is the highest level which involves the application of quality management principles to all aspects of the business, including customers and suppliers. It is then defined as the management approach of an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organization and to society (BS EN ISO 8402, 1995). A number of research studies have been carried out to investigate the impact of TQM factors and implementation (Sila Ebrahimpour, 2005; Khan, 2003; Terzioski, 2006). Miller (1993) reported that success with TQM depends on the facilitating conditions. Leadership, human resource management and some other TQM factors are found to have positive impact on business results (Sila Ebrahimpour, 2005). Therefore, these findings can be reasonably useful in assisting managers so that they can allocate resources to improve their typical routines to obtain the best results. Next, five TQM factors have been selected as the independent variables for this study, namely (1) Customer Focus, (2) Human Resource Management (HRM), (3) Information and Analysis, (4) Leadership and (5) Strategic Planning. It is said that customer focus pays more attention on the customers whereas the rest of TQM factors have focused on the internal aspect of the organization. As for HRM, it focuses on the practices involved in carrying out the â€Å"people† of a management position. Information and analysis is said to be the information and communication technology used to further enhance labor productivity as automation has been widely used. Leadership is important as it creates synergy for achieving favorable business results whereas strategic planning is a set of process undertaken in order to develop a range of strategies that will contribute to achieve organization direction. Further elaboration and review for each variable will be discussed in different sub-section lat er. 2.3.1 Customer Focus According to Dean and Bowen (1994), customer focus is as important as many other TQM practices to organizational performance. Being customer-focused keeps us aware of quality, or rather it focuses our quality initiatives on what really matters to the customers (Cox, 1997). Also, Piercy (1995) says that TQM has too much focused on the internal aspect of the organization and much less attention on the customers. Customer satisfaction begins by discovering precisely what customers want and gearing every practice to their exact expectations (Kearney, 1994). Customer focus has changed mass production to mass customization. In addition, being far from depersonalizing the world, technology has the power to return us to being treated as individuals while getting all the benefits inherent in large-scale enterprise (Cox, 1997). Sousa (2003) pointed out the importance of customer focus lies in the fact that it is the starting point of any quality initiative. However, it has not received enough attention from quality management researchers (Cai, 2009). In the final decade of twentieth century, the term, customer-centered competition has been introduced. Customer-centered company is a company that focuses on customer developments in designing its marketing strategies and on delivering superior value to its target customers (Kotler Armstrong, 2008). It is common to hear the statement â€Å"customer is always right† in any organization. This could be the trend that organization is to focus on customer needs to be customer-led, to be market-oriented, to care for customers and so forth (Piercy, 1995). These are to make total customer satisfaction a strategic foundation for achieving competitive advantage (Kearney, 1994). Customer focus has been therefore defined as the degree to which firms continuously satisfy customer needs and expectations (Philips, Chang, Buzzell, 1983). The difference between customer focus and customer understanding is, according to Lagrosen (2001), mainly a matter of perspective. Customer focus means the activities of the companies are intended to benefit the customer but the customer is seen from the companies own perspective. Therefore, effects are usually being made to gain information about the customers needs and wants, although always in a set framework that originates in the companies view of the product and its features. Whereby, customer understanding needs perspective to be shifted. It means the company needs to gain entry to the customers own perspective and adopt the customers framework of viewing the product (Lagrosen, 2001). Cai (2009) found that organizational customer focus affects customer relationship practices, which subsequently influence production performance and customer satisfaction, and production performance and customer satisfaction lead to financial outcomes. Ooi, Bakar, Arumugam, Vellepan, and Loke (2007) says TQM practices such as teamwork, reward and recognition, customer focus and organizational trust are positively associated with job satisfaction within their organization. For instance, customer focus was found to have a direct influence on emplo

Woman To Man :: essays research papers

Woman to Man At first glance, the title seemed to have more than one connotation. "Woman to Man;" is the woman giving something to the man, maybe a gift? "Woman to Man." Maybe the title is trying to compare the two genders? I was slightly confused when I read this poem at first, but it became apparent from the rich metaphors, that it was about the sexual relation between the woman and man. It is also about conception - or rather the potential of creating a child from this sexual act - told from the woman's point of view. Judith Wright was very bold in writing such a poem since it was published in 1949, when such issues weren’t discussed in the public, but as a well regarded poet, she had achieved a good reputation for expressing herself, and therefore could write a subjective poem about this issue. The main idea of this poem, is based upon female sexuality and sensuality, and that sex is symbolic of life, or death if pregnancy fails. The title seems to mean now, "Woman to Man" as if the woman is offering herself to the Man, offering her body to create a child, through the act of sex. It also means that the woman has something to give to the man, not only the pleasure, but through blood and pain, a child. The language compliments the mood of this poem, as it varies from a sad and melancholy cry, to a voice of hope, all in a constant confident feel, and by this, the poet's reflections and contemplation’s are communicated successfully to us, making us feel in the same way she has felt. The first stanza begins with a bold and confident entry describing in a simple way the sexual relation between the man and the woman; or better said; Woman to Man. The ‘seed’ which the woman holds - has the potential of becoming a child. The image of the day of birth as a ‘resurrection day’ is important in this respect for, just as the resurrection of Christ defeated death, so too, does each individual conception and birth. The use of alliteration in this first stanza contributes a crescendo of confidence, which relates to the pain, and stress building up until the conception. This also can be interpreted as the excitement during the sexual act. The relief following is shown in the three remaining stanzas which are quieter, and are more explanatory, and by this the poet has intended to show us the relief emancipated from the mother after the birth, or also, after their sexual act.