In an era of globalisation and competitiveness, employers are looking for versatile graduates who are able to drive their organisations to compete successfully in the market place. Now-a-days, obtaining a good degree is no longer sufficient to get a job. Graduates should equip themselves, not only with technical skills, but more importantly, with soft skills. The main objectives of this study are to identify Malaysian graduates' employability skills, to identify the priority of each skill and to highlight the gap between the importance of graduates' employability skills to employers and their level of satisfaction on those skills. In general, the results of the gap analysis showed that employers perceive graduates' employability skills performance as being lower than the importance assigned to those skills. The widest gap was found in communication skills, especially the skill of the English language usage. Using the importance-performance analysis (IPA), 13 attributes fell into the improvement quadrant.

Purpose-The main aim of this study is to provide an empirical analysis on the practice of quality management among employees of Malaysian public hospitals at the district, state and national level hospitals. This paper aims to perform a comparative analysis on quality management practices among the three levels of hospitals. Design/methodology/approach-The main method of data collection was self-administered questionnaire, and cluster sampling was used to select the respondent hospitals, while respondent employees were selected by stratified random sampling. Altogether 23 public hospitals throughout Peninsular Malaysia participated in the survey. Findings-Practice of quality management was found to be significantly higher in district hospitals than in the national referral centre. However, there was no significant difference in perception on implementation outcome between the three levels of hospitals. Among the factors of quality management, teamwork was found to be significantly higher in district hospitals than in state hospitals and the national referral centre. Leadership and management commitment were found to be significantly higher in district and state hospitals than in the national referral centre. The effect of organizational structure could have an effect on practice of quality management. Originality/value-Empirical studies on the effect of organisational structure on practice of quality management among employees of Malaysian public hospitals have never been conducted before and this thus contributes to the body of knowledge in this discipline of research.