Business, Management, Finance and Economics

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    A hybrid multi-criteria decision making method for risk assessment of public-private partnership projects
    (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2016) Sarvari, Hadi
    As governments embark on Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects to develop their infrastructure, effective risk assessment has become an important step to ensure success of these projects. However, there are many unsuccessful stories of PPP projects that have been reported all around the world. Thus, it is essential for both public and private sectors to apply efficient risk assessment approaches to allocate and manage risks more effectively. Literature review revealed a continuous endeavor for better PPP project risk modelling and assessment. Various techniques have been developed for use in the management of risks in construction. However, these techniques are limited to addressing risks relating to only cost, schedule, or technical performance individually or at best a combination of cost and schedule risks. Previous work so far is lacking a comprehensive model capable of handling impact of risks on all project objectives simultaneously; namely cost, time and quality. Thus, the main objective of this study is to develop a hybrid risk assessment method that capable of capturing impact of risks on the three project objectives comprehensively. To achieve this aim, this research explores the risk assessment approaches and proposes a hybrid alternative method based on the Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) and Multiple Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO). The Fuzzy logic was used to convert linguistic principles into systematic quantitative-based analysis. Also, in order to consider the dependency and feedback between risks and criteria, ANP method is applied as a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method. Then, MOPSO, as a MCDM method, was used to assess the risks based on the project objectives. Objective functions have been developed to minimize the total time and cost of the project and maximize the quality. The research approach was a mixed-method approach and the field work included a series of questionnaires and interviews. It started with semi-structured interviews with PPP professionals. A mail survey was administered and more than 114 questionnaires were sent to construction and PPP professionals based in Malaysia. Out of 114, 88 valid responses have been received. An on-line survey was carried out as well in order to enrich the findings of the mail survey. The proposed hybrid approach was used to assess the collected data. A total of 30 significant risks were identified and evaluated. According to the results, it was found that “construction completion”, “construction cost overrun” and “interest rate volatility” are the highest ranks associated with the Malaysian PPP projects risks. Finally, the viability of the proposed hybrid approach was investigated through conducting semi-structured interviews with PPP professionals from construction and administration sector. It is concluded that the proposed hybrid MCDM method for risk assessment is a viable alternative to the existing practice. This may help bridging the gap between theory and practice of risk assessment in construction projects. It also can be applied through the public and private sectors to improve risk assessment and management. The research findings recommend further exploration of the potential applications of hybrid MCDM methods in construction management domain.
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    Delay in housing delivery process in Malaysia
    (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2014) Chai, Chang Sa'ar
    The challenges associated with housing delivery process in Malaysia have resulted in late delivery of housing supply and increasing numbers of sick and abundant projects. Although delays have been extensively investigated in the construction industry, it is still a common phenomenon especially for Malaysian housing industry. Therefore, there is a strong need to review the delay and reclassify delay factors in order to evaluate the housing delivery performance in Malaysia. This research aims at developing housing performance index to address delay in delivery process. As the delay factors are identified and classified, the factors which are gathered in an empirical survey are analyzed. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is conducted on the information obtained from a questionnaire survey held. A numbers of 23 delay factors are extracted from a total of 91 delay factors which are classified into 3 categories of new delay classification; structural, institutional and cultural in housing delivery stages. The most successful mitigation measures in housing delay avoidance are identified. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is performed to examine the causal relationship of new delay classification and housing delivery process. A housing delivery performance index is derived from such SEM model. Structural delay recorded the highest index coefficient (0.42) as compared to institutional delay (0.28) and cultural delay (0.30) respectively. This demonstrated that structural delay is a significant influence to the housing delivery performance. The performance index can be improved by trading off mitigation strategy and potential delay factors. The index is essential to benchmark the housing delivery performance and hence provides a preliminary guideline to the construction players in handling housing projects. The index is verified via a semi structured interview and three case studies which proves its functionality in practice
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    Relationship between neighborhood physical design and institutional changes: patterns and their effect on housing in Malaysia.
    (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2014) Misnan, Siti Hajar
    Housing neighborhoods, in the context of urban economics can be viewed as a nexus of contracts that assign property rights over private and shared resources, and over various neighborhood attributes. However, previous studies have indicated that the fragile assignment of property rights in the conventional open neighborhood can contribute to the neighborhood instability over time. As a result, through the process of institutional change, new and more efficient institutional forms will gradually emerge. While, a vast amount of studies suggested neighborhood privatization as a possible solution to the problem of instability with assignment of property rights, it appears that not all neighborhoods are able to transform under the existing neighborhood conventions and laws. Thus, there is a crucial need to study and consider other forms of institutional innovation that can resolve those problems. Therefore, this research proposes a theoretical foundation based on property rights and new institutional economics to initiate the analysis of the transformation of physical design and institutional arrangement in urban neighborhood development in Malaysia. This research takes advantage of the institutional transformation in Malaysia over the year 1960-2010. It is noticed that some conventional open neighborhood can be reinforced into guarded neighborhood and enjoy the benefits similar to that of gated community, while the others cannot. Therefore, this research aims to identify the dynamic interrelationship patterns between neighborhood physical design and institutional arrangement that contribute to maximize housing price benefits and strengthen the conventional open neighborhood institution in Malaysia. The research begins by examining the unique features of the causes, process and outcome of institutional change through extensive literature reviews, interviews, and field observations. Secondly, a conceptual framework has been developed based on the identified unique features of institutional and physical design characteristics. Third, the framework is used to evaluate the effect of institutional change on housing price and appraise those relationships through critical comparisons of two neighborhoods. This research found a unique anomaly when one developer has developed two identical neighborhoods in the same township, but under different land titles. The gated community is developed under the strata title, while the guarded neighborhood developed under the individual title. These differences generated an exogenous allocation of property rights across the neighborhood, enabling researchers to measure their effect on housing price. This research identified the dynamic interrelationship that has taken place in two dimensions. First, in order to avoid further neighborhood conflicts, both physical and institutional designs of conventional open neighborhood (CON) ‘reinforce’ into guarded neighborhood (GN) and ‘accompanied’ each other during the transformation process. Second, learning from the previous obstacles, the physical and institutional designs of the emerging new guarded neighborhood (GN) ‘adopted’ the same physical and institutional designs similar to that of gated community (GC). Finally, this research recommends a conceptual framework that demonstrate the relationship between the neighborhood physical design and institutional arrangement of CON, GN and GC, and provides urban policy-makers with an objective reference to strengthen the conventional open neighborhood institution. The conceptual framework may also be a strategic tool in understanding the local institutional change in other cities and a foundation to provide research directions for future studies in this area
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    Market learning orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, innovation capability, trust and their impact on the performance of contract farming in Malaysia
    (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2020) Abdulah Fahim, Noraindah
    Contract farming (CF) is facing a number of issues which require farmers to change their traditional business approaches to strategic orientation (SO). In addition, innovation capability (IC) has been promoted as mechanism for growth and sustainability in various sectors. However, the study on the adoption of both SO and IC are still low. Previous studies have been done in manufacturing or technologyrelated sectors and towards large firms from the developed nations. Nevertheless, most studies have ignored the small and medium-sized firms in developing nations, particularly the agricultural sector. Motivated by this phenomenon, a better understanding on the adoption of SO and IC are provided in this study to fill the existing gap, using the Malaysia’s fruits and vegetables contract farming (FFV CF) as an analysis. Additionally, this study regards IC as mediator, while trust as moderator between SO and farm performance relationship. The relationship between SO-Trust-IC which are summarised as SOTI Model is one of the mechanisms to improve FFV CF performance in Malaysia. The quantitative method was employed and were guided according to the integration of Resource-Based View (RBV), Dynamic Capabilities view (DCV) and Commitment and Trust theory to achieve the objective of this study. 300 questionnaires were distributed to FFV CF and only 228 usable questionnaires were analysed and assessed using the Partial Least Square (PLS) technique. Finding shows that both SO of Market Learning Orientation (MLO) and Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) were significant towards IC. IC was the only variable which gives positive and significant impact to farm performance and fully mediates the relationship between MLO, EO and farm performance while trust do not moderate the relationship of MLO, EO and IC. However, the direct effect of Trust to IC was substantial. Therefore, the study shows that MLO, EO, Trust and IC were important variables in influencing FFV CF performance in Malaysia. Besides, this study offers conclusive insights to various stakeholders, such as academician, practitioners and policy makers to engage in various strategies in enhancing the strategic business approach of FFV CFs. In summary, this study has concluded that the influence of SO of MLO, EO, Trust and IC towards farm performance in the context of FFV CF were significant, solidified by providing empirical evidence and suggestions for improvement, particularly to FFV CF and the agricultural sector as a whole.
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    Factors influencing the purchase intention of organic personal care products
    (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2019) Mohammad, Noorita
    Purchase intention measures the behaviour of the consumer in buying a product. The emergence of organic market has created a demand for beauty and personal care products. Therefore, many factors that lead to the purchase intention of consumers need to be realised by marketers in order to maximise sales and competitiveness in the current marketplace. This study investigated consumer values of personal (environmental consciousness, religious obligation) and perceived (quality and safety) that influence attitude toward the purchase intention of organic personal care product as well as the mediating effect of attitude and mediator roles of brand trust. Hence, purposive sampling technique was employed and a total of 165 female respondents has participated in the quantitative survey of structured self-administrative questionnaires following its validation and constructions before subjected to analysis using structural equation model in SMARTPLS Software. The findings revealed that purchase intention in the consumers was moderate and attitude were powerful force in influencing the buying behaviour. This study also extends the Theory of Planned Behaviour by including perceived value dimensions as the antecedents of attitude in the model. The findings supported most of the hypothesised relationships linking the personal and perceived factors with attitude toward consumer’s purchase intention of organic personal care products. Improved labelling on the packaging would lead to a more positive attitude toward purchase intention by increasing consumer’s confidence via brand trust. In contrast, perceived safety value was not important in predicting attitude. Similarly, the influence of religion obligation on purchase intention was not supported. In terms of ranking with regards to the prediction of purchase intention, environmental consciousness was the most important predictor followed by the perceived quality value.