Automotive industry in Malaysia started in 1985 with the launch of the first national car. However after thirty years, overall performance of the industry is still far behind the neighboring countries like Thailand and Indonesia which ranked first and second top producers in the automotive industry. In order for the automotive players in Malaysia to be globally competitive, innovation is an important element to drive competitiveness. Thus, the aim of this study is to determine the relationship between NAP strategies and innovation performance in the Malaysian automotive component industry. NAP was launched in 2006 with six main directions and strategies. Study is focused on local automotive vendor and a completed survey was completed with 300 respondents. Data was ana-lyzed through structural equation modelling (SEM) using SmartPLS 3.0. Empirical evidence shows that NAP supports all types of innovation among automotive vendors in Malaysia. The study also found innovation mediates between National Automotive Policy (NAP) and vendor’s performance except in the process innovation. This supported previous research in this area where government policy partially mediates on firm competitiveness. The finding of the study suggests NAP is still relevant for the automotive vendors in Malaysia in improving innovation and performance.

A noteworthy feature in the monetary policy decision making is that interest rate can play a significant role in addressing economic uncertainty. Although the empirical studies on monetary policy reaction function routinely include the output gap and the inflation, not many studies take into account the exchange rate uncertainty and terms of trade uncertainty. To overcome this shortcoming, this paper examines the monetary policy reaction function by including the external economic uncertainty. Based on 30 selected countries, the estimation is relaxed by using the panel heterogeneous cointegration technique. The findings suggest that (i) the interest rate can serve as an important instrument for the central bank policy decision making to combat the economic uncertainty arising from output, inflation, exchange rate and terms of trade (TOT), and (ii) the economic uncertainty (i.e., output uncertainty, inflation uncertainty, exchange rate uncertainty and TOT uncertainty) can serve as a useful information for monetary policy action to avoid and/or mitigate a negative impact of uncertainty.

This study intends to cover the relationship between contract management and performance characteristics from the context of Indonesia. To address this objective, contract management is observed as the main independent variable while performance through nine items is considered as dependent variable. A questionnaire is developed through some selected factors and distributed among various respondents, dealing directly or indirectly with the projects. A sample of 70 respondents is finalized with no missing values. Empirical findings suggest that for the firm performance different variables such as nature of the solution, cost & benefit analysis are significantly associated with the contract length. While project delivery and project quality are negatively associated with the contract length. Findings of the study are highly recommended for the contract managers and similar individuals, responsible for the smooth business performance. However, future studies can be conducted with the addition of more explanatory factors for contract management with better sample size. Manage-rial implication of the study defines that Government and construction companies should reconsider the stated factors for the improved results through resolution of the conflict with the customers, cost benefit analysis and timely delivery of the project with budgetary compliance.

This study aims at discovering the relationship between the improvement in the capacity of tax authorities and its effect on the transfer pricing activities of foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises in four provinces/cities of Vietnam: Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh, Dong Nai, and Binh Duong province. These are the first localities in Vietnam to establish the Division of Transfer Pricing Inspectorate in local Tax Department, under the direction of General Department of Taxation of Vietnam. The paper then proposes a further study on how the tax authorities of Vietnam should improve their capacities to make FDI enterprises more compliant with the transfer pricing regulations in Vietnam. The authors deploy the method of quantitative research through collecting self-administered closed format questionnaires from people in charge of finance/accounting/transfer pricing of FDI enterprises operating in Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh, Dong Nai, and Binh Duong province of Vietnam. The findings suggest that there was a strong probability that the capacity of tax authorities would impact on the transfer pricing activities of FDI enterprises in Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh, Dong Nai, and Binh Duong of Vietnam. Vietnamese Government should enhance the capacity of the tax authorities; establish Transfer Pricing Inspectorate Division in all local Tax Departments of Vietnam. The authors believe that the improvement of tax officials’ capacity especially those in charge of transfer pricing auditing will prevent the FDI enterprises from transfer pricing manipulation, hence these enterprises will be more compliant to transfer pricing regulations of Vietnam. The most significant value of the study is to support Vietnamese policymakers, especially those in the field of Finance (Ministry of Finance, General Department of Taxation) to improve their capacity when carrying out transfer pricing audit in FDI enterprises. The more transparent and aggressive the tax officials are, the better these enterprises follow the regulations.

Nowadays, there are many uncertainties and risks prevailed in environment especially for information technology (IT) projects in Pakistan context. Behavioural aspects of project management play important role to attain success. Soft dimension of project implementation profile consists of critical success factors like top management support and client acceptance. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and examines the relationship between behavioural factors and project success. There were 223 respondents from the population of Pakistan software board directory. The results indicate that client acceptance had a positive and significant relationship with project success. Moderation was performed categorical of leadership style; transactional and transformational leadership style.

Most previous studies of employee engagement and performance have been rooted in either Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) or the Social Exchange Theory (SET), giving often inconclusive outcomes. In fact, there are only a few researchers in social science focusing on the level of high po-tential employee’s engagement towards individual work performance through human resource management practices. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between employee engagement and individual work performance with mediation role of human resource management (HRM) practices for selected manufacturing organizations in Malaysia. Two hundred and fifty-two usable questionnaires are collected to empirically test the hypotheses using IBM SPSS software and Smart Partial Least Square (SmartPLS) version 3. The results suggest that high potential employee engagement positively and significantly influence on individuals’ work performance. Additionally, human resource management practices play significant role in mediating the relationship between employee engagement and individual work performance among high potential employees. There-fore, these results should provide insight towards managing high potential employees, especially in the manufacturing sector.

Saudi Ports, is one of the busiest seaports in the world and the biggest ports in the Middle East, which is facing challenges from different ports such as Salalah and Dubai ports especially in the cargo section, which can release their cargoes and goods in a short time without any congestion of stock. The current challenges of Saudi Ports Authority are the overstock of cargo which is the result of low performance of workers at cargo field. This paper investigated the root of this problem based on the role of the human resource practices such as training and development, reward, job analysis, social support, recruitment and selection, employee relationship and empowerment, employee satisfaction into employee performance. In other words, the current study explored to know whether HRM practices offer direct impact on the employee performance or through employees’ job satisfaction on employee performance to solve the said problem. The study analysed the 367 Saudi port authority employees’ data and found a positive significant relationship between HRM practices and employee performance. Furthermore, the current study revealed a positive relationship between employee job satisfaction and employee performance. Moreover, the present study found the insignificant relationship between HRM practices and employee job satisfaction but reported no significant mediating role of employee job satisfaction between HRM practices and employee performance.

Consumer online engagement has seen a sight of emerging attention by marketing literature, but how consumer involvement, with its dimensions (importance, pleasure, sign, risk consequence, and risk probability), is linked with consumer online engagement still requires additional empirical analysis especially in the context of airline and hospitality services. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between consumer involvement and its dimensions and consumer online en-gagement. The data are collected from the social media website and analyzed by using structural equation modelling through SPSS and Smart PLS 3.0 software. The findings imply that sign value was the major determinant of consumer online engagement. This indicates that marketers should acknowledge the importance of company’s symbolic value and design a suitable symbolic value to be parallel with the targeted consumers’ social status and personal images to increase consumer online engagement. Through examining the relationship among different variables, marketers could develop effective strategies to gain competitive advantages. The originality of this study lies within the research gap of the past researches on the antecedent of consumer online engagement. The antecedent considered is consumer involvement, suggested by previous researches.

Talented workforce is a main key to survive in challenging surroundings and quickly volatile busi-ness circumstances. This paper examines the fostering effect of talent management on organizational intelligence at food companies in Jordan through a quantitative approach. Both reliability and validity of measurement scale are evaluated. The paper demonstrates that talent management acts as a sig-nificant antecedent to organizational intelligence. Findings confirm the importance of enjoying tal-ented employees and recommend practitioners and executives to develop and retain their talent pool through a strategic human resource management system in order to better capitalize on intellectual capital and drive it towards realizing the organizational missions.

During the past three years, Malaysian Islamic banking Institutions’ (IBIs) asset has shown an aggressive growth of 13%. Furthermore, Malaysia is currently focusing to become the world hub leader in Islamic banking. Hence, these two factors have increased the competitiveness among IBIs to find qualified talents in various fields to be attracted. Despite abundant new talents in the job market, the IBIs could not attract the qualified or right talent into their institutions. This paper attempts to identify an appropriate EVP for new Malaysian IBIs talents to attract qualified talents. To do so, a study is conducted with a structured interview of the questionnaire. The questionnaires were evaluated by a group of Malaysian graduates on the required EVP for IBIs. The results indicate that basic salary, employee benefit package and flexible working hours play an important role for talent shortage.