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Despite years of industrialisation, Johor is still a leader in agriculture. The state is Peninsular Malaysia's major agricultural producer, and it has the third-highest official agricultural productivity in Malaysia. The growing of oil palms, various fruits and vegetables, poultry, pigs, cut flowers, and ornamental fish are among Johor's top agricultural strengths. This study brings new understanding to the existing literature, highlights new ways of looking at Malaysian micro farmers. Through this study, a better understanding of the challenges faced by micro farmers. Several sessions of semi-structured interviews were conducted with the selected farmers. Due to the Controlled Movement Order, we had to carry out the interviews via Google Meet. That was a great challenge in our data collection. The problems identified from this study are market price of crops, ownership of land, quality of crops, latex yield, pest infestation and workforce. Unlike the larger plantations, they depend on government subsidies and assistance during the trying times. They also made suggestions to overcome day-to-day farming challenges that may help them improve their economic and personal life for themselves and their families.

The growing clamor about the climate crisis has brought into focus the need for action to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, particularly from the road transport sector. This systematic literature review examines the nexus between fossil fuel subsidies, fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions from the road transport sector. Despite numerous research contributions that provide the foundation on this topic, the body of research appears to be quite fragmented with regard to the stated nexus. This systematic literature review consolidates currently available research and provides the basis for further research on the connection between fuel subsidy, fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions. Keywords: Fossil Fuel Subsidy; Transport Emissions; Subsidy Reform; Systematic Literature Review eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6i16.2721

Reformation of higher education (HE) institutions is fundamental in improving and strengthening its academic institutions of HE independence. Moving on now to consider the present academic community must undergo a process of change to improve the teaching, research, management functions, and operations of the institutions, which are incremental in a sustainable manner. In essence, there are many indicators of success that have been identified in studies conducted for other industries. The major trend currently observed is the reformation of the HE institutions in major countries mimicking the for-profit industries to make them more competitive. This paper integrates and advances pertinent factors that enable an effective and successful reformation process from the Asian HE perspective by reviewing relevant reformation literature on the matter. This systematic review has developed three (3) core themes relating to the importance of leadership, policy development and governance, and autonomy, which regards higher institutional practices from within the Asian region reviewed. And to conclude, the internal factor is dominating the indicators for HE reforms success. This finding seeks to offer future research to be extended from established institutions from other developed countries as a comparison when planning and implementing change initiatives at the institutional level.

The fundamental principle of true sale is based on the ownership state of the subject matter of sale where the selling party must own the asset legally and keep full ownership of the goods before making the sale. In the riba-free system, the Islamic bank assumes a role of a trading entity. It undertakes a trading position and exposes itself to business risk as the asset is booked on its balance sheet. It follows that the profit rate it charges the customer will reflect an additional risk-premium to account for the business risk exposure. Due to business risk exposure, this study introduces the financial infrastructural constraints on the use of true sale-based Islamic financing namely 1) economic capital requirement for the on-balance sheet holding of tradable assets and 2) the tax charges by the fiscal authority on the purchase of tradable assets by the bank. Thus, based on this premise, the objective of this study was formulated to empirically investigate the impact of these constructs (cost of fund, overhead, default risk, capital charges, tax burden and profit rate) on profit rate of true sale-based financing. A Survey questionnaire and a semi structured interview were the tools used for data collection. The analysis was done by using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique and the findings revealed that all independent variables except for cost of fund, have positive and significant impacts towards profit rate charged. Given the findings of this study, it is recommended that the true sale-based Islamic financing is to be funded by investment fund rather than deposit fund. Hence, the additional capital and tax charges will be absorbed by the investors. From this study, we hope that future research could be expanded further by investigating cross border Islamic banking practices in terms of the pricing of true sale model and closer comparison can be made between Malaysian Islamic banks and Foreign Islamic banks.

Food Safety issues have been arising around the world and have led to many adversarial effects to consumers. Purchasing decisions has become more complex as it is impacted by many intrinsic and extrinsic factors that triggered changes in consumers’ behaviour. Few reviews have been conducted on the intrinsic and extrinsic factors related to food safety on consumers’ purchasing decisions. According to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA Statement) procedure and Web of Science (WoS) as the main database, 25 related studies were identified. Furthermore, these articles resulted with two main types of consumers’ purchasing decisions that lead towards consumer satisfaction which are willingness-to-pay and purchasing intention. These two themes were further analysed to identify food safety factors which produce several intrinsic and extrinsic factors including consumers’ characteristics, role of media, product characteristic, credence attributes and supply chain actors. Several recommendations are suggested for future in qualitative and quantitative studies, to produce a standard methodology for review in research synthesis in the context of consumers’ purchasing decision and food safety such as tracking of citation and reference searching techniques.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to establish a link between marketing resources, procurement process coordination (PPC) and firm performance. To allow for greater understanding in the field of supply chain management, the present study looked into the coordination between the construction firms and their main building materials suppliers. Design/methodology/approach – This study employed the quantitative method where stratified random sampling and self-administrated questionnaires were sent to respondents in the construction industry. The research framework was tested using structural equation modelling technique. Findings – The empirical result revealed that marketing resources have positive and significant effects on PPC dimensions. It was also found that PPC (mainly joint operation planning and supplier relationship development dimensions) has significant positive relationship towards firm performance. Research limitations/implications – This study focused solely on the firms in the construction industry and data collection was on a single respondent basis. Practical implications – The findings of this study underlines some implication and suggests that construction industry players adopt and emphasise such orientations in order to enhance their performance – operational and customer performance in particular. Originality/value – This study employed a newly developed framework based on the existing theoretical arguments to empirically examine the link between marketing resources, PPC and firm performance and offers fresh insights on the effects of PPC in linking marketing resources and firm performance. Besides that, since there are very limited studies that have taken the initiative to specifically list down the activities involved in the PPC, mainly in the context of the construction industry, this study offers a significant contribution.

Malaysian construction industry is one of the key economic sectors that has a significant contribution on national economic development with a steady contribution around 3-5% towards Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the past 20 years. However, despite its growth and contribution to the GDP, this fragmented sector has a poor coordination among its project participants, leading to horrific material control with time and cost overrun. As such, there is a need to investigate the coordination aspect of the business conduct among project participants, particularly the procurement process that is considered as the initiator of construction project. At the same time, the firms’ internal resources such as human success factor (HSF) and information technology (IT) play a significant part in determining the operational performance of construction project. Thus, the main objective of this study is to propose a conceptual framework on the relationships of internal resources (HSF and IT) and performance, mediated by procurement process coordination (PPC). The framework is using resource-based view as the underpinning theory to explain the relationships of the variables used. The scope of study is on one of the key business processes in supply chain management (SCM) and concentrating on one of the groups (G7) in the population. Future empirical research is expected to be carried out in effort to test this proposed conceptual framework.

This paper reviewed the concept of value chain upgrading of emerging companies in the global value chain. Moving up the value chain or upgrading is the way forward for manufacturers in the future. By manufacturing higher value added products or more significant components, firms will position themselves at a higher tier position within the global value chains. The chosen industry for the study is the Malaysian aerospace industry. The National Aerospace Blueprint launched in 1997, targets at making Malaysia a major aerospace player in the global scene by 2015. The blueprint identifies four focus areas mainly: (1) aircraft parts and components manufacturing, (2) maintenance, repair and overhaul, (3) avionics and systems integrations and (4) aerospace training. The study will adopt an explanatory case method ( Yin, 2009 ). This allows an in-depth understanding of the global value chain in the Malaysian aerospace industry. Initial findings from the preliminary interviews have found that the industry has achieved commendable success as a first-tier manufacturer of specialized components and equipments for BOEING Inc.

This study is to examine the socio-economic background and consumption pattern of rural and urban recipients of government aid or BRIM and behavioral response towards acceptance of government aid or BRIM. It also tries to explore the factors which influence the acceptance of the recipients; importance factor, perception towards government sincere incentives or political motives. A survey was conducted in Klang Valley and Kedah, where 250 respondents were interviewed via structured questionnaires. Findings derived from this study revealed that the main consumption of both rural and urban was basically towards necessity goods. Results showed that there was a significant and positive relationship between acceptance and government sincere initiatives, yet relationship between acceptance and political motives was not supported. The study concluded that people accepted BRIM as a sincere government incentive to help people rather than a political agenda.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of selected environmental, situational and individual factors in the training transfer process. Design/methodology/approach – This study proposes and tests a framework via structural equation modelling by including supervisor and peer support, instrumentality and learner readiness on 503 Malaysian bank employees. It proposes a modified and improved scale for learner readiness previously developed by Holton et al.. Findings – As hypothesized, supervisor and peer support increase the motivation level of the trainee to transfer the learned skills. The findings of this study will help researchers to resolve the conflict among past researchers about the role of peer and supervisor support in training transfer process. In addition, an improved scale of learner readiness is used and the result indicates a significant relationship between learner readiness and transfer motivation. Furthermore, this study explains the importance of intrinsic rewards and finds that intrinsic rewards make trainees retain more skills and learned skills are transferred to the work place. Practical implications – The findings of this research would be helpful for human resource development professionals to develop effective strategies in order to maximize the training transfer and effectively manage the training program. The findings of this research explained the role of stakeholders – trainers, trainees, supervisors, peers and top management – which will maximize the training transfer at the work place. Originality/value – This paper examines new relationships among different factors which resist transfer motivation and training transfer at the workplace.

This study is to examine the socio-economic background and consumption pattern of rural and urban recipients of 1Malaysia Peoples’ Aid (BRIM) and behavioural response towards acceptances and perception towards government sincere act and political motives. A survey was conducted in Klang Valley and Kedah, where 250 respondents were interviewed via structured questionnaires and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Finding revealed that the main consumption of both rural and urban was necessity goods and indicated a positive significant relationship between acceptances and government sincere act, and otherwise for political motives. The study concludes that people accept BRIM as a sincere government act rather than a political agenda. Keywords: government, sincere, political motives. eISSN 2514-7528 © 2018 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.

Supply chain (SC) is basically a network of firms involved in complex activities andmulti processes. With such complexities, this management of interdependencies require to be coordinated to improve the performance of SC i.e. on flow of information,services, money and material. Various areas of supply chain management (SCM) havebeen explored by the researchers including supply chain coordination (SCC) andmanaging supplier relations. The initial part of this paper presents a conceptualdiscussion and framework of the link between market orientation, procurement process coordination and performance in the construction industry. It is supported with the result from a pilot case study in the building construction sector. The discussion from the pilot case study concentrates on the importance of market orientation and each activity in the procurement process coordination. Finding from this study illustrates that the importance of procurement process coordination in the construction industry slightly varies from manufacturing. While, several means of coordination could be adopted, information sharing and supply contract were demonstrated to be visible. Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Market orientation, Procurement, performance& construction