Purpose The paper aims to identify the emerging themes on the challenges faced by the Malaysian private higher learning institutions (HLIs) in the provision of providing quality education. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were purposively conducted with 29 of the Malaysian private HLI internal and external stakeholders ranging from the relevant personnel of the institutions (the quality director, administrators and senior academics), regulatory agencies, prospective employer, students and parents. Thematic analysis was then applied to analyze the participants’ responses in determining and clarifying the challenges faced by the Malaysian private HLIs in the issue of providing quality education. Findings Eight overarching themes were identified, namely, Academics, Facilities, Students, Programs and curriculum, Competition, Accreditation, Finance and Research. Academics represent the most frequent challenge raised by the participants, whereas Research emerged as the least mentioned challenge during the interview sessions. Research limitations/implications The present paper focused solely on Malaysian private HLIs, and thus, the findings may not be applicable to the foreign private HLIs that are operating in Malaysia as well as to the public HLIs. Originality/value The findings are expected to provide valuable guidelines to the Malaysian Private HLIs in areas where resources need to be critically disbursed. To the regulatory agencies and policy-makers, the findings could enlighten them on the difficulties faced by these privately funded institutions so that further policies can be designed and implemented to assist these institutions in their operations and long-term survival.

Title: Multi-level strategic alignment within a complex organization Purpose: This paper assesses the utility of an approach to the design of multiple Balanced Scorecards within large / complex organisations, considers the relevance of 'emergent strategizing' in this kind of strategy implementation, and explores the project organisation and wider coordination issues that impact this type of work. Design/methodology/approach: A "Research Orientated-Action Research" research approach has been adopted, comprising qualitative observations of an ongoing programme within a major organisation in the Middle East. The case is based on feedback obtained from key actors (participants, facilitators) and the analysis of documentation produced by the project. Research limitations: The project relates to a continuing programme within the client organisation that was not explicitly established before it started as an action-research activity. This has limited and constrained the quality of the information reported. Findings: Over four years the project engaged directly with over 200 managers from the organisation's 35 most senior management units. Its purpose was to align the strategic aims of each unit with those of the organisation and introduce a new form of strategic control. The paper shows that consensus forming and the creation of locally relevant strategic agendas can be usefully and successfully embedded in a large scale strategic control and alignment programme. The paper notes the large resource implications and duration of such programmes, and the challenges of integrating the resulting processes with those already in place. The paper concludes that for the case organisation the resource investment appears to have generated useful outcomes. Originality/value: The scale of the project, the use of design methods that emphasis consensus forming and local relevance provide novel information and insights.

Abstract:The use of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for decision making is sometimes marred by the laborious effort of conducting a large number of pairwise comparisons, especially in the presence of a large number of criteria. The present empirical study attempts to investigate the possibility of eliminating insignificant criteria in order to reduce AHP computational time. Using Expert Choice software, findings confirmed that criteria assigned with comparatively lesser weights can be excluded from the hierarchy and thereby the total time required for making pairwise comparisons is reduced. To solve large-scale enterprise multi-criteria decision-making problems (that involve large number of criteria) by AHP, it is proposed that, at the very outset, decision-makers can apply nominal group technique to identify the more significant criteria and drop lesser important criteria from the list. This proposed methodology is expected to enhance the applicability of AHP in solving various kinds of larger sized multicriteria decision-making problems in any enterprise.

Motivation is one of the prerequisites in Japanese learning. A student who excels, but does not have enough motivation, will definitely not achieve the results as expected. This study is conducted to explore the three phases of motivation in the learning of Japanese language as a foreign language using the Model of Second Language Motivations (Dörnyei & Ottó, 1998). A quantitative survey consisting of 4 sections with items on the demographic profile and 39 items via Google Form using 5-Likert scales were used as the instruments. Questionnaires were answered by 255 students from three clusters; namely the clusters of Science and Technology, Arts and Humanities, and Business and Administration in a public university in Malaysia. Findings revealed that learners have the highest motivation during the actional stage as curiosity-driven has intrinsically motivated them to learn. Learners' initial motivation has reversed when they reached the actional stage due to their stress about the tests or examinations. However, learners' motivation bounce back during the post-actional stage and they are confident they will perform an excellent job on their assessments or assignments. This study reveals that instructors have a role to play to keep students motivated throughout the process of Japanese language learning. Further research can be done on preactional, actional and post actional stages by looking at the influence of external motivation by associating it with cognitive, affective, situational or circumstantial factors that will support and complement this study.

Over the last decade, online learning has grown significantly as the internet and education have merged to provide people with the possibility to learn new skills. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, online learning, or studying at home has become more centric in people's lives. The pandemic has caused schools, universities, and businesses to operate remotely, which has increased the use of online learning. Foreign language learning is also no exception. The purpose of this survey is to find out how students feel about learning from home. This research is based on Alderfer's ERG theory, which proposes three sets of essential needs: existence (E), relatedness (R), and growth (G). A quantitative survey which consists of four sections with 30 items and a 5-point Likert scale was employed. The survey had 109 responses. Findings revealed that learners feel a sense of existence, relatedness, and growth during studying from home. The learners also agreed that the advantages of learning from home outweigh the disadvantages.