Transformational leadership has two salient characteristics: intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Recent studies in this area reveal that the effect of such leadership characteristics on job performance is indirectly affected by empowerment. The nature of this relationship is interesting, but little is known about the mediating effect of empowerment in leadership management models. Therefore, this study was conducted to measure the effect of transformational leadership characteristics and empowerment on service quality by using 110 usable questionnaires gathered from employees working in a city based local authority (CBLAUTHORITY) in Sarawak, Malaysia. Outcomes of a stepwise regression analysis showed that the relationship between empowerment and selected transformational leadership characteristics (i.e. intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration) is positively and significantly correlated with service quality. The result confirms that empowerment does act as a full mediating variable in the leadership model of the organization under study. This paper also discusses implications and limitations, as well as directions for future research.

The objective of this study is to identify the perceptions of Generation Y employees regarding work-life balance practices. As increasing numbers of Generation Y enter the workforce, questions regarding how they perceive work, family and self-related issues, challenges and coping strategies in balancing personal and professional commitments became issues of interests for employers. This study uses interviews to collect data from six informants in Generation Y and the data were analyzed through content analysis. The results indicate that Generation Y employees do indeed have issues and challenges with balancing work and family. However, unlike the older generation of employees, Generation Y employees perceive managing work-life balance only through segmentation or separation strategies. This particular finding indicates that if organizations want to attract and retain these employees they should adapt a strategy specifically designed to target this employee group.  Keywords: Gen Y; work-life balance; issues and challenges; coping strategies; segmentation

The study examined the level of the Three-Component Model of organisational commitment (TCM) and its relationship with psychological empowerment. The sample was selected through a three-stage cluster random sampling among academic staff from three public universities in Malaysia. Cross-sectional survey research questionnaires were used as instruments of data collection. All variables under study have met the testing standard of reliability, validity and normality. SPSS version 22 was used to analyse the data obtained from 225 respondents of the study. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the levels of organisational commitment, and inferential statistical techniques such as Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression were used to examine the relationship between organisational commitment and psychological empowerment. The levels of organisational commitment of respondents were reported to be generally moderate but variations exist across its three different components namely the affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. The results of Pearson’s correlation indicated a significant and positive relationships between all these three components of organisational commitment and overall organisational commitment with overall psychological empowerment and its four-dimensional components. The strongest relationship was identified between overall organizational commitment and psychological empowerment’s dimension of impact. The multiple regression analyses indicated that more than 20% of the variance in the overall scores of organizational commitments could be predicted by the overall psychological empowerment and its four-dimensional components. In addition, the multiple regression analyses indicated that the two strongest predictors of organisational commitment were the dimension of meaning and impact. Overall, the study has provided evidence of a significant relationship between excellent empowerment practices with organisational commitment among the academic staff in public universities in Malaysia.  The study has its implications towards enhancement of policies and administration in higher education in Malaysia.

The study explores factors behind Generation Y employees' retention from the perspective of managers in a financial services sector. A qualitative method was employed, by interviewing eight managers as informants. The results show ten factors affecting Generation Y employees’ retention are compensation and pay, personal development, job security, job satisfaction, work-life balance, reward and recognition, training, leadership, relationship and communication, and work environment. Seven main challenges to retain Generation Y employees identified are loyalty, their love for a challenging job, communication, strategy, working style, satisfaction, and traits. The study discusses implications and suggestions for organisational level strategies to retain Generation Y employees.

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