No abstract

Fuelled by rapid growth of online shopping, third-party service provider such as courier service company has become an increasingly important and crucial element in facilitating seamless movement of goods within the supply chain network. Nevertheless, courier service companies also faced operational challenges as they need to cope with the ever increasing demand from the ecommerce industry, with their customer satisfaction is at the stake. The objective of this research, therefore, is to measure the customer satisfaction towards parcel delivery service by a leading courier service company in Malaysia. In this research, customer satisfaction is observed through five independent variables, namely reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and price. 400 set of questionnaires was distributed to the targeted respondents, and the data collected was analysed using Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis. The result showed that reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and price positively affect customer satisfaction towards parcel delivery service of courier company. The impact of each variable towards customer satisfaction level is also discussed.

This paper investigates the effect of board structure of Malaysian private educational companies towards their firm's corporate performance. The average board size in this study is three and the percentage of women on board is about 40%. In addition, seventy six percent of the firm is having women as their director. By examining the relationship between board structure (board size and, woman on board) and the firm performance, our study shows that board size has a significant negative relationship with firm performance. However, women on board show significant positive effect on corporate performance. Our results imply that larger board will reduce firm performance, while women on board may create higher firm performance. These findings suggest that firm with large board size may encounter more agency issues in monitoring and controlling the members on board. On the other hand, firms with more women on board may have better corporate performance, as claimed by women are good in term of understand the market needs and bringing creativity and quality solution in decision making. More women in the board in some extent improve corporate performance in private education companies. The study could be extended with variables such as ownership, board meeting, director social network and other on corporate performance that could give significant interest of many stakeholders.

The spring-up of private nurseries in this era has triggered the trend for working parents to send their kids to private nurseries. This phenomenon has led to an increasing interest in assessing the service quality provided by nurseries. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between service quality and parents' satisfaction towards the private nursery. A total of 399 samples were obtained in this study through the distribution of questionnaires in Kuching city, Sarawak. Pearson's correlation is used to examine the direction of the relationship between independent variables (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) and dependent variable (parent satisfaction); while multiple regression analysis had also been used to determine the most dominant dimension that contributes to parents' satisfaction. The findings of this study revealed that the majority of the respondents have a high level of satisfaction towards the service offered by the private nursery in Kuching. Meanwhile, there is a significant relationship between SERVQUAL dimensions and parents' satisfaction except for the reliability dimension. In addition, findings also found out that the tangibility of the service is the most dominant dimension in enhancing parent satisfaction. The results suggest the service providers in nursery place should emphasize more on physical facilities of the nursery as well as maintaining hygiene to leverage parents' satisfaction.

This paper investigates the relationship between information sharing linkages (i.e. customer linkage, supplier linkage and internal linkage) and micro and small business performance in Sarawak, Malaysia. The empirical results reveal that customer linkage and supplier linkage have positively influenced business performance meanwhile internal linkage has negatively influenced business performance. Due to the challenge of obtaining the responses from business owners and managers of medium-sized enterprises, the responses are recorded only from micro and small businesses. This leads us to conclude that the findings can help small and medium enterprises, researchers and academicians to better understand on the importance of information sharing linkages that affect business performance. Additionally, the findings provide evidence on the ability of the enterprises to utilize the information sharing linkage as a resource to improve business performance. Contribution/ Originality: This study is one of very few studies which have investigated information sharing linkages towards business performance in service sector. This study documents the influencing factors of information sharing linkages and recommends ways to improve service-based business performance. 1. INTRODUCTION Small and medium enterprises are flourishing positively around the globe as it provides greater job opportunities compared to large firms (Noor and Siang, 2014). In Malaysia, SMEs contributed 36.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2016 as compared to 36.3 percent recorded in 2015 (The Office of Chief Statistician Malaysia Department of Statistic Malaysia, 2017). Practicing information sharing in small and medium enterprises is seen to benefit the organizations. It helps the suppliers to access the data of customers efficiently which help them in refilling production and arrange the schedule of shipment (Devaraj et al., 2007). Besides, it also helps to improve the quality of business performance which simultaneously satisfies the customers (Devaraj et al., 2007). From time to time, it is presumed a lot of information must be conveyed as the business is expanding.