Organizational effectiveness of universities in Malaysia

Abstract

<p>This study was concerned with the assessment of organizational effectiveness of human resource development and education in Malaysia. The universities in Malaysia were selected for this study, because it is believed that Malaysia has been one of the most successful countries in Southeast Asia in developing its human resource through its effort in planning and implementing an excellent educational program. The objectives of this study were: (1) To test the applicability in Malaysia of an instrument initially designed and used by Dr. Kim S. Cameron to assess organizational effectiveness of universities in New England. This instrument has been modified to suit the situation and conditions in Malaysia. (2) To identify dimensions of effectiveness for universities in Malaysia, and to compare each with the other based upon these dimensions;Five universities with full undergraduate programs participated in this study. Four of them were established after the independence of Malaysia. The respondents to the questionnaire were the dominant constituencies. They were the vice-chancellor, the deputy vice-chancellors, the deans and the deputy deans, the department heads, the registrar and assistant registrars, the treasurer and assistant treasurers, the librarian and assistant librarians of each university;The collected data were analyzed using the Factor Analysis Procedure and Analysis of Variance package program of the Iowa State University Computer Center. The results indicated there are ten dimensions of organizational effectiveness of these five universities. Three out of these ten dimensions are organizational climate, student dissatisfaction, and administrative concerns, were not found to be significantly different among the universities. They seemed to have been given the same level of concern from all dominant constituencies of all universities. This analysis failed to differentiate the findings of one university as distinguised from the others. Each university had different level of performance in each of the other seven dimensions of organizational effectiveness. These differences suggested the variety of backgrounds and specific missions of each university.</p>