The aim of the present study is to examine the impact of personal characteristics namely: physical activity, smoking, drinking, and duration of computer use before taking breaks on performance at work of the "Generation Y" who employed in the Malaysian SMEs. The correlation analyses performed in order to gauge the relationship between individual characteristics and the performance of the 67 respondents who were working at the various SMEs. The key finding indicates that smoking found to have the highest effect. Therefore, this study filled the research gap pertaining to the effective management of manpower in the Malaysian SMEs.

Cross-cultural adaptation is a challenging process while sojourning abroad. The inability to understand cultural variation triggers psychological, physical or behavioral difficulties and maladjustment or misunderstanding. Socio-ecocultural underestimation is the root of intercultural resistance, stereotyping, ethnocentrism and racist sentiments among sojourners. Most of the cross-cultural adjustment studies have quantitatively demonstrated factors and predictors of adaptation success. However, the specific forms of cultural variation that impacted sojourning adaptability is blindly explained. Hence, this phenomenological paper autoethnographically observed the socio-ecocultural environment while sojourning in New Zealand. The findings highlighted that cultural awareness and sensitivity assist sojourner’s cross-cultural adaptability due to the socio-ecocultural variation.

Contribution/ OriginalityThis study contributes by giving further support on the use of shortened version of MPQ (MPQ-SV) and revised version of SCAS (SCAS-R). Additionally, the present study also gives additional understanding of the international mobility research by highlighting the importance of multicultural personality, especially social initiative trait on sojourners" cross-cultural adjustment.

The aim of the present study is to examine the impact of personal characteristics namely: physical activity, smoking, drinking, and duration of computer use before taking breaks on performance at work of the “Generation Y” who employed in the Malaysian SMEs. The correlation analyses performed in order to gauge the relationship between individual characteristics and the performance of the 67 respondents who were working at the various SMEs. The key finding indicates that smoking found to have the highest effect. Therefore, this study filled the research gap pertaining to the effective management of manpower in the Malaysian SMEs. Keywords: Individual characteristics; Generation Y; office workers; SMEs; job performance. eISSN 2514-7528 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs 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. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/jabs.v3i10.307