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This study aims to investigate the implementation of flexible working arrangements and satisfaction, family work conflicts and the performance of educators. The potential benefits of FWA implementation for life balance highlight the importance of this research. The study’s results can be used as study material to make policies on implementing FWA for educators.

The research uses the survey method and conducts interviews with educators who are selected and willing to be interviewed. The research sample was taken by the non-probability sampling method from 245 participants. The analysis used is PLS-SEM.

The findings indicated that flexible working arrangements had no impact on job satisfaction. The variable that has the greatest influence on determining the performance of educators is job satisfaction.

The study provides information about the application of flexible working arrangements, provides flexibility for educators to change work schedules, do work from anywhere, regulate work patterns and regulate work duration. This study is unique as it focuses more on flexible work arrangements related to remote work arrangements for educators, as the authors understand that no previous study was conducted.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of the capital market on economic growth by considering the role of ṣukūk (Islamic investment certificates) and other capital market sub-components in Malaysia between 1998 and 2018.

The empirical investigation is based on the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration bounds test.

The results reveal the prevalence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between capital market variables and economic growth. As expected, bond market components (ṣukūk and conventional bonds) have a positive, albeit insignificant influence on economic growth. In contrast, in the long-term, stock market development – regardless of the indicator used on economic growth – is shown to have a significant and positive effect. The study suggests that stock market sub-components affect Malaysia’s economic growth the most.

The primary limitation of this study is that only corporate ṣukūk were considered, while government ṣukūk were excluded from the estimation due to a lack of requisite information, resources and data.

A strategic framework should be established, especially in pricing efficiencies. Furthermore, there is a need to create more awareness on the benefits of ṣukūk investment among conventional bond investors, including retail investors. Thus, there will be more players in the ṣukūk market, and this will help to improve market liquidity.

Apart from conventional capital market sub-components, this study takes into account ṣukūk as a sub-component in the capital market on economic growth using the ARDL framework. Also, this study particularly concentrates on the world’s largest ṣukūk issuer, Malaysia, rather than focusing on other ṣukūk-issuing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a large public university sustains its ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) for the past 20 years. At the same time, this paper also provides a snapshot on the problems and challenges faced and overcame by the university in its quality journey.

This is a case study and therefore it describes interventions and experiences within the university as the subject understudy.

There are four main phases of QMS that the university has undergone, namely, initiation, internalisation, alignment and improvement in the last 20 years. Critical success factors for implementing and maintaining the QMS are commitment from people, training and good communication. Some of the problems and challenges encountered have included a lack of knowledge and understanding of the processes and standards, lack of relevant skills, lack of commitment and cooperation from people, lack of resources and poor communication.

This paper provides insights into the world of QMS’s sustainability in a large public university that will be useful as a guide for academic managers and administrators. It also presents the issues of transitioning from the previous to the current standard experienced by the university which has not been discussed by many.

This paper aims to investigate how extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity influences the mediator variables, such as consumers’ brand image and materialism in the Indonesian banking sector (e.g. conventional and Islamic). It also examines how mediators influence consumers’ preferences.

The sample consists of 575 bank consumers. The experiment method was used to test the research hypotheses through three studies.

The empirical results indicate that religiosity positively affects consumers' decision-making process, precisely when bank products are based on Islamic principles. Furthermore, consumers' brand image and materialism partially mediate religiosity and consumers’ preferences.

This study was limited to Indonesian bank consumers. Therefore, future study is needed to analyze cross-region.

Bank managers and regulators need to enhance Islamic banks' products and services and the varying principle between conventional banks. They also need to enlighten consumers from the perspective of business and religiosity.

This study contributes to consumers’ behavior literature and the decision-making process of developing and testing a model of religious determinants of consumer preference toward bank products.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of actual evacuation decisions of victims of the unprecedented 2014 year-end flood disaster which wreaked havoc across two east-coast states in Malaysia.

The target population of this study is the group of victims affected by the December 2014 flood in the Malaysian east-coast states of Kelantan and Pahang. Sampling frames of the flood victims were obtained from the National Security Council offices of the two states. The empirical analysis of this paper is based on a unique data set obtained from a questionnaire survey of the flood victims. The final working sample consists of 372 respondents.

Important findings from this study are: victims who were given evacuation notices were five times more likely to evacuate, victims who participated in flood awareness programmes were less likely to move to evacuation centres, the further away victims’ homes were from the evacuation centres the more likely they were to evacuate, older victims were less likely to evacuate, larger households were more likely to evacuate, and victims with tertiary education were also less likely to evacuate.

This paper is unique because previous studies of Malaysian flood-related disasters are confined to floods of regular magnitude. This paper is also unique because it uses a semi-parametric estimation approach to obtain the marginal effects of the explanatory variables on evacuation decisions.

Oil palm is a labor-intensive crop where the labor issue is one of the most intransigent problems facing the industry. The negative perception toward this sector associated with the unattractive working environment which commonly refers to dark, dirty and dangerous has distress local youth to stay away from this occupation. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore the level of job satisfaction among oil palm plantation workers in Malaysia and analyze the factors that contribute to their satisfaction level.

The survey was conducted in 2014 through interviews from the selected samples of oil palm plantation workers who aged ranging from 16 to 40 years old, which was considered as youth category and staying within the location 5 km radius within the plantation area. The structural equation modeling is used to analyze the factors affecting job satisfaction among workers in the plantation sector.

The study found that the government and employer policies associated with plantation worker and economic profitability offered in this sector were the most significant factors that positively contribute to the joy of working among them. On the other hand, the negative relationship between working environment and perception of social job status with job satisfaction proven that these two factors were repulsion factors.

Currently, with the local youth negative perception on the agriculture sector and Indonesia’s economy booming and wages on the rise, Malaysia is struggling to attract new expatriate workers and retain those already active in the sector. Oil palm plantation companies have to counter this by enhancing worker’s welfare to ensure their job satisfaction in plantation environment. This study is to convince the organization that worker’s job satisfaction is a crucial factor to enhance their performance. With the strategy recommended by this study, employees will be getting higher level of job satisfaction, thus increasing their performance and enjoying working in the plantation sector.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, there are yet to be studies that look at the agricultural employees’ job satisfaction particularly in the plantation sector. Most of the previous studies in the field of plantation sector highlight on the labor productivity, economic performance of palm oil plantation sector and environmental impact of oil palm plantation. Thus, this study provides a better understanding of the factors that contribute to job satisfaction among plantation workers.

Changes in structure and conceptual underpinnings of ISO 9001 mean that quality management system (QMS) auditors require a wide knowledge base and skill set to effectively evaluate contemporary QMS and add value to the process. Hence, this study presents an open curriculum framework of the knowledge, skills and attributes for quality auditor education.

This study describes the first two phases of a three-phase study examining the educational requirements for external quality auditors (EQAs). Phase 1 involved a review of relevant international literature on auditor competence and education; Phase 2 involved the collection of qualitative data from a panel of experts, combined with the initial round of a Delphi study. A thematic analysis was used to analyze the findings from the questionnaire.

The findings of this study suggests there is a need to improve EQAs education, as most experts reported the quality of audit to be variable, inconsistent, poor and diminishing in value. The most important improvements to auditor education are to update and improve the auditors' knowledge on the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard and technology in business and skills such as report writing, communication, IT understanding and analytical ability. Some of the attributes reported as being desirable to instill in EQAs include the following: objectivity, integrity, ethics and professionalism; being observant, perceptive, articulate and confident; having good judgment; flexibility, adaptivity and diplomacy, fairness and open-mindedness.

This study highlights the need for wider EQA education based on the gap identified in its performance. The resulting framework can be adopted by accreditation and certification bodies to evaluate and improve their auditors' audit performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between microstructure and varied strain rates towards the mechanical properties and deformation behaviour of Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) lead-free solder wire at room temperature.

Tensile tests with different strain rates of 1.5 × 10⁻⁶, 1.5 × 10⁻⁵, 1.5 × 10⁻⁴, 1.5 × 10⁻³, 1.5 × 10⁻² and 1.5 × 10⁻¹ s⁻¹ at room temperature of 25°C were carried out on lead-free Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) solder wire. Stress-strain curves and mechanical properties such as yield strength, ultimate tensile strength and elongation were determined from the tensile tests. A microstructure analysis was performed by measuring the average grain size and the aspect ratio of the grains.

It was observed that higher strain rates showed pronounced dynamic recrystallization on the stress-strain curve. The increase in the strain rates also decreased the grain size of the SAC305 solder wire. It was found that higher strain rates had a pronounced effect on changing the deformation or shape of the grain in a longitudinal direction. An increase in the strain rates increased the tensile strength and ductility of the SAC solder wire. The primary deformation mechanism for strain rates below 1.5 × 10⁻¹ s⁻¹ was grain boundary sliding, whereas the deformation mechanism for strain rates of 1.5 × 10⁻¹ s⁻¹ was diffusional creep.

Most of the studies regarding the deformation behaviour of lead-free solder usually consider the effect of the elevated temperature. For the current analysis, the effect of the temperature is kept constant at room temperature to analyze the deformation of lead-free solder wire solely because of changes of strain rates, and this is the originality of this paper.

This paper aims to investigate the characteristics of ultra-fine lead-free solder joints reinforced with TiO₂ nanoparticles in an electronic assembly.

This study focused on the microstructure and quality of solder joints. Various percentages of TiO₂ nanoparticles were mixed with a lead-free Sn-3.5Ag-0.7Cu solder paste. This new form of nano-reinforced lead-free solder paste was used to assemble a miniature package consisting of an ultra-fine capacitor on a printed circuit board by means of a reflow soldering process. The microstructure and the fillet height were investigated using a focused ion beam, a high-resolution transmission electron microscope system equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS), and a field emission scanning electron microscope coupled with an EDS and X-ray diffraction machine.

The experimental results revealed that the intermetallic compound with the lowest thickness was produced by the nano-reinforced solder with a TiO₂ content of 0.05 Wt.%. Increasing the TiO₂ content to 0.15 Wt.% led to an improvement in the fillet height. The characteristics of the solder joint fulfilled the reliability requirements of the IPC standards.

This study provides engineers with a profound understanding of the characteristics of ultra-fine nano-reinforced solder joint packages in the microelectronics industry.

The findings are expected to provide proper guidelines and references with regard to the manufacture of miniaturized electronic packages. This study also explored the effects of TiO₂ on the microstructure and the fillet height of ultra-fine capacitors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the wettability and intermetallic (IMC) layer formation of Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305)/CNT/Cu solder joint according to the formulation of solder paste because of different types of fluxes.

Solder pastes were prepared by mixing SAC305 solder powder with different flux and different wt.% of carbon nanotube (CNT). Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to identify functional groups from different fluxes of as-formulated solder paste. The solder pastes were then subjected to stencil printing and reflow process. Solderability was investigated via contact angle analysis and the thickness of cross-sectionally intermetallic layer.

It was found that different functional groups from different fluxes showed different physical behaviour, indicated by contact angle value and IMC layer thickness. “Aromatic contain” functional group lowering the contact angle while non-aromatic contain functional group lowering the thickness of IMC layer. The higher the CNT wt.%, the lower the contact angle and IMC layer thickness, regardless of different fluxes. Relationship between contact angle and IMC layer thickness is found to have distinguished region because of different fluxes. Thus it may be used as guidance in flux selection for solder paste formulation.

However, detail composition of the fluxes was not further explored for the scope of this paper.

The quality of solder joint of SAC305/CNT/Cu system, as indicated by contact angle and the thickness of IMC layer formation, depends on existence of functional group of the fluxes.