The Attractiveness Of Public Employment : A Study Of Perception Among Final Year University Students In Peninsular Malaysia
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Date
2010-11
Authors
Woo, Kuan Heong
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Dissatisfaction with the performance of the Malaysian civil service has called into question the ability of the civil service to attract needed manpower. This study uses a clustered-stratified random sample of 1,200 final year students of four public universities to examine the attractiveness of public employment to graduates and the ability of the civil service to attract graduate manpower for ensuring capacity and representativeness.
After identifying the job characteristics that are important to respondents, the study examines how respondents rate the attractiveness of these job characteristics in the public sector and which characteristics are mainly responsible for pulling respondents to or pushing them away from public employment. The method of logit regression is then used to assess the importance of the attractiveness of job characteristics as well as respondents’ personal and background characteristics in influencing the choice of public employment.
Ratings on job characteristics suggest that the civil service is seen as more than averagely attractive. The pull factors of job security, fringe benefits, lower job demands; and the push factors of unattractive pay, poor promotion prospects, and not interesting and challenging job, are the main factors responsible in pulling respondents to or pushing them away from the civil service. Other factors besides job characteristics are also significant in influencing the choice of public employment. These are language proficiency, academic major, race, family background, place of growing up and type of school attended
The ability of the civil service to attract graduate manpower for ensuring capacity and representativeness is assessed by examining the adequacy of the pool of respondents who prefer public employment. The study finds that the Malaysian civil service is able to attract more than its fair share of graduate manpower except from Chinese respondents. The pool does not have enough high-CGPA Chinese for merit-based representative recruitment. This is mainly because of perceived discrimination in promotion among Chinese respondents.
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Keywords
The attractiveness of public employment , final year university students in peninsular Malaysia