Biofertilizantes

The purpose of undertaking this thesis was to explore how ICT companies in Malaysia can address their employee turnover problem by using human resource practices. The decision to use human resource practices as an intervention to address the turnover problem was made following the consensus in strategic HRM and IT/ICT employee management literature that employees react positively to employee-friendly and advanced human resource practices, and are likely to remain with their employers; thus, lowering the companies’ employee turnover rates.

The literature review for this thesis spans across three different research areas: 1) global strategic HRM, 2) Malaysian strategic HRM and 3) IT/ICT employee management. The review highlighted two main limitations; the first limitation is that the three research areas are dominated by quantitative studies that employ the positivist research paradigm; therefore, the research areas have many studies that predict the statistical relationship between antecedents such as human resource practices and employee/company outcomes but lack in-depth explanation on the subject. The second limitation is that the three research areas do not have empirical evidence from the ICT companies in Malaysia; thus, little is known about how the ICT companies in Malaysia manage their

employees and how the practices affect employees and employers. There is also a confusion in the three research areas because each study has used different human resource practices; thus, implying that their list of practices is most ideal for employers to follow in order to produce positive

employee/company outcomes.

Accordingly, the following research questions were developed to address the gaps in the research areas:

 What are the human resource practices adopted by ICT companies in Malaysia?

 How do organisational factors influence adoption of human resource practices among the Malaysian ICT companies?

 What are the employee outcomes in the Malaysian ICT industry?

 What are the employee retention outcomes from the Malaysian ICT companies? The literature review was followed by a comprehensive discussion on the methodology deemed most suitable for this thesis. The first section of the third chapter explains that the thesis adopts the constructivist paradigm, exploratory qualitative method and constructivist grounded theory

approach. They are used because they complement and support one another in producing a detailed understanding and a theory about how human resource practices influence employee and employer outcomes. All three of them also support the existence of multiple realities instead of a single reality and allow the researcher and respondents to cooperate with one another in constructing and presenting the findings (Charmaz, 2003). The second section of the chapter focused on the research design and explained how the sample was selected, the interview programme, data analysis

approach and how the thesis complies with the Lincoln University’s ethic requirements.

The analysis and results for this thesis are covered in Chapters 4 and 5. Both chapters are organised according to the research questions. The analytical procedure adopted in this thesis combines the initial and focused coding strategies described in Charmaz (2006) with constant comparison, clustering and construction of types and typology. The first research question is addressed by

constructing three types of human resource practices: Paternalistic, Formal and Informal. The Formal set has the most number of advanced human resource practices and formal guidelines. The Informal set hardly has any formal human resource guidelines because most practices are implemented on an ad-hoc basis by the senior managers according to their business needs. The Paternalistic human resource practices demonstrate highest level of care for employees’ well-being and seek to establish a long-term employment relationship between employees and employers. The second research question was answered by identifying the founding factor as the factor that influences a company’s

adoption of human resource practices, whereby, companies founded from government-linked companies have Paternalistic practices, companies founded from established multinationals have Formal practices and companies founded on their own or from new set-ups have Informal practices. Organisational factors of the sampled companies were then used to compare the companies against each other, which result in the construction of four types of Malaysian ICT companies: Large home- grown company, Shared Service company, Powerhouse and Small Business.

The third research question was addressed using simple statistics and qualitative analysis. Simple statistics revealed that most respondents want to remain with their existing employers and that most of them have reasonably long employment tenure with their existing companies. Simple statistics also revealed that employees who experience Formal practices are the ones who intend to resign because they are dissatisfied with the practices. No employees in companies with Paternalistic practices indicated an intention to resign whereas employees who are managed informally indicated intention to resign because of personal reasons; thus somewhat signalling their acceptance of the Informal practices. Qualitative analysis led to the construction of four types of employee outcomes: Complacent (experience Paternalistic practices), Satisfied (Formal practices), Optimistic

(Formal/Informal practices) and Intrinsically Motivated (Informal practices). The triangulation between statistical and qualitative analysis provides a complete picture of the employee outcomes. For example, the triangulation reveals that employees who experience Paternalistic practices want to remain with their present employers not because they are completely satisfied with the practices, but because they are too comfortable in their jobs and they feel that their current employments are good enough for them.

The fourth research question was also answered using simple statistics and qualitative analysis. Simple statistics revealed that companies with Formal practices have the highest employee turnover rate whereas companies with Paternalistic practices have the lowest turnover rate; thus, supporting employee feedback under the third research question. Qualitative analysis revealed that employee turnover rate is an ineffective indicator of companies’ employee retention outcome because some companies have low turnover rate, but they are dissatisfied with their employees, which is why they are categorised to have Dysfunctional employee retention. On the other hand, there are companies with high turnover, but they are satisfied with their employee retention outcome and believe that they have the right employees to support them, which is why they are categorised to have Functional employee retention. Findings from the four research questions were compiled and used to construct the four realities in the Impact of Human Resource Practices on Employees and Employers typology. Finally, Chapter 6 discussed the four realities and explained four ways of how human resource practices affect employees and employers:

1. Paternalistic human resource practices do not completely benefit employees and employers in companies that are linked with the government within the Malaysian ICT industry because the practices encourage complacency.

2. Informal human resource practices serves as a beneficial option for employers of reputable companies who pursue cost reduction strategy but employees are likely to experience some dissatisfaction due to unmet expectations.

3. Informal human resource practices benefit employees who have high intrinsic motivation and small companies because the flexibility and freedom accorded by the Informal practices allow both parties to employ the practices to fulfil their needs.

4. Formal human resource practices benefit employees more than employers if the practices are not aligned with the company’s business needs.

The chapter also discussed the theoretical contributions of this thesis to strategic HRM and IT/ICT employee management literature. The last section of the chapter outlines the practical contributions of this thesis to Human Resource Managers and ICT employers.