The Organizational Systems And Efficiency

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

This chapter presents the basic knowledge with the introduction of the existing problems with references to detailing an explanation of the background of the research, problem statement, objectives, research questions, justification, significance and conclusion of the study. The background of the problems discussed is based on a regional scope. There are strong justifications for selecting the research problems in this study as they aim to improve the organizational systems and efficiency. The background of the study is hence closely linked to the proposed research problems.

INTRODUCTION

Job satisfaction is an issue that affects the lives of all workers (Sansgiry & Ngo, 2003) and unit trust agents are no exception. Salesperson turnover and job satisfaction are important issues; hence a major research effort to examine the sales force turnover problem is needed (Wotruba, 1990). Research, according to Muchinsky (1993), McCulloch (2003) and Spector (1997), showed that turnover was significantly correlated with job satisfaction. In the services sector, for example in banking, effective services rendition largely depended on the satisfied workforce (Fitzgerald, Johnson, Brignall, Silvestro & Ross, 1994). In addition, job satisfying factors and the antecedent of needs among the employees of a leading bank played significant roles in job satisfaction experienced by the bank employees affecting service quality (Lew & Liew, 2006).

The pace of growth in the unit trust industry in Malaysia has been phenomenal since the last decade. This is evidenced by the growth in terms of net asset value (NAV), which has increased 18% annually from RM43.3 billion in 2000 to RM226.8 billion in 2010 ("The opportunities and challenges faced by the Islamic unit trust industry in Malaysia," 2011). However, despite the growth, it has also encountered various challenges and problems, such as high growth and high turnover rate. Even though the Malaysian unit trust industry has grown to be the fastest sector within the finance industry in the last 20 years (Choong, 2005), it still lacks attention and research.

This lack of research on the job satisfaction outcome is particularly evident in the unit trust industry as compared to other industries. For example, job satisfaction has been comprehensively researched in the banking services (e.g. Rustam, Bibi, Zaman, Rustam, & Ui-Haj, 2011; Mohammad & Alhamadani, 2011), the insurance service (e.g. Ho, Fie, Ching, & Ooi, 2009), the health care facilities (e.g. Youssef, Nel, & Bovaird, 1995), and the telecommunication service (e.g. Loke, Taiwo, Salim, & Downe, 2011). It has also been researched in the online shopping services (e.g. Lee & Lin, 2005), universities and colleges (e.g. Karim, 2008; Cohen, 1974), and the fast food services (e.g. Zaman Abdullah & Liyana Bustaman, 2011). Other sectors researched have included the municipal government departments (e.g. Ellickson & Logsdon, 2002), the automobile industry (e.g. Dawal & Taha, 2006) and other service sectors (e.g. Keaveney, 1995). A literature review of the unit trust industry hence suggests that research is lacking in certain relationships. This involves the relationships between the perception of Islamic products, perception of internal service quality rendered by the agent’s company, leadership practices, span of control, attitude towards switching and agent’s job satisfaction. This study, therefore, aims to fill the gap in the Malaysian context.

The purpose and motivation of this study are to shed light into the above factors that could determine the level of job satisfaction affecting the unit trust agents.

1.2 UNIT TRUST INDUSTRY IN MALAYSIA

The Federation of Investment Managers Malaysia (FIMM) is a self-regulatory organization (SRO) which regulates the unit trust industry and is recognized by the Securities Commission of Malaysia. It regulates its members to ensure that investors are protected and at the same time public interests served. Since its formation, it has seen ups and downs in the growth of the unit industry. The history of the growth of the unit trust industry can be seen in four stages: the formative years: 1959 -1979, the period from 1980 to 1990, the period from 1991 to 1999, and the period from 2000 to current ("History of Unit Trust", FIMM, n.d).

1.2.1 The Growth of the Unit Trust Industry in Malaysia

In 1959, the British investors first established the Malayan Unit Trust Ltd. This was seen as start and birth of the unit trust industry in Malaysia. Unit trust was then not called mutual fund because the unit trust was ownership which was divided into units of entitlement. In the beginning, the growth of the unit trust was very slow because of lack of public interest.

The turning point came for the industry when the Malaysian government entered the industry and launched the National Unit Trust (NUT), a government sponsored unit trust. Its initial intention was to provide help and improve the indigenous Malays’ (Bumiputera's) social-economic status. Since then, the growth of the unit trusts (government and private funds), has been enormous, especially during 1991 to1996 but only to be impeded by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.

The rise in number of management companies from 13 in 1992 (the year when statistics were made available) to 40 in 2012 also signified the fast growth of the unit trust industry. Presently, there are about 603 funds, of which 436 are conventional and 16 Islamic.

1.2.1.1 The Growth of Unit Trusts-The Formative Years: 1959 -1979

Slow growth characterized the first two decades in the history of the unit trust industry. The existence of low sales of units and a lack of public interest in the new investment products resulted in only 5 unit trust management companies being established. A total of 18 funds was introduced over that period. During this time, regulatory bodies were formed to regulate the industry. They included the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, the Public Trustee of Malaysia, Bank Negara Malaysia and the Registrar of Companies. The most significant feature of the 1970s was the rapid establishment of state government sponsored unit trusts. They were established to help mobilise domestic household savings in response to the Federal Government’s call.

The Period from 1980 to 1990

This period witnessed an important transformation when the Skim National Unit Trust (ASN) was launched by Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) in 1981. It saw the start of the active government participation in the unit trust industry and the formation of a Committee "Informal Committee for Unit Trust Funds" to regulate the unit trust industry. The committee consisted of important representatives from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the Public Trustee of Malaysia, the Capital Issues Committee (CIC), and the Registrar of Companies (ROC).

The total units subscribed by the public rose to an unprecedented amount due to the overwhelming response to ASN, in spite of only 11 funds being launched during this period. There were also more unit trust management companies than before, which were subsidiaries of financial institutions. This enhanced the facilitation of marketing and distribution of unit trusts through a bank's branch network which reached out to more investors.

The Period from 1991 to 1999

This period saw the fastest growth of the unit trust industry with a record number of new management companies being established and funds under management. In making unit trusts a household product in Malaysia, three factors had played an important role: (a) the establishment of the Securities Commission on 1 March 1993, (b) the centralization of industry regulation, and (c) broad marketing strategies taken by the ASN and ASB (Amanah Saham Bumiputra). As a result, the total asset value of funds under management increased more than threefold to RM59.95 billion at the end of 1996 from RM15.72 billion at the end of 1992. However, the pace of growth of the local unit trust funds started to slow down since the financial crisis of 1997-1998.

The Period from 2000 to Current

This period signals a hugely promising start to the 21st century in the unit trust industry. The industry saw a double digit growth for the first 7 years, increasing from RM43 billion in Net Asset Value (NAV) in Year 2000 to RM270.9 billion as at 30 April December 2012. However, the financial crisis in 2008 interrupted this strong growth, which started with the effects of the fallout of the subprime loans in the USA, resulting in the collapse of the property, the crises with the banks, and the global credit crunch. Nevertheless, the industry’s Net Asset Value to Bursa Malaysia Market Capitalization was slowly able to increase from 12.1 billion in 2004 to more than 20% of the Bursa Malaysia Market Capitalization, as at April 2012 (see Appendix C). Today, the unit trust industry is a significant contributor to Malaysia’s economic growth. As reported, it still continues to provide employment opportunities to part-time and full-time people who excel in direct selling activities (Annual Report –FIMM, 2011). Table 4 in Appendix F shows the top ten unit trust companies in fund size.

However, despite all these growths and the prospect, the unit trust industry still faces several challenges and problems, such as coping with high growth, declining sales and high agent turnover. This is because the overall performance of any direct selling industry can be very much dependent on the success of its business in sales and agent turnover. Success of business in sales and agent turnover can, in turn, be directly influenced by salespersons’ job satisfaction level. For an example, Zoltners, Sinha, and Zoltners (2001) found that salespeople were the overall investment in sales force for large firms, which could be of the order of billions of dollars. On the other hand, Mulky (2011) said personal organization fit and sales directly influenced job satisfaction and turnover.

Figure1 (see Appendix G) shows the year to year increment in units of circulation of unit trusts in the industry, which represents the growth performance. It represents the demand trend for unit trusts. Units in circulation are sales units purchased and held by investors as an investment. As shown, there is a declining year to year sales increment in billions (units in circulation) for both funds, with Islamic funds being more severe in decline. Islamic funds recorded a sharp decline after 2007 and thereafter, making each increment lesser and lesser. Conventional funds also started to have a slight declining trend after 2007. On the overall, Figure 1 shows the incremental demand by investors for both funds falling from year to year.

Figure 2 (see Appendix G) shows the number of registered unit trust agents with Federation of Investment Managers Malaysia (FIMM), which license all unit trust agents before they can start to work as agents. Data from the Annual Report (2010) from FIMM show that there were 70,361 unit trust agents as at 31 December 2010 as compared to 74,640 in the previous year 2009. This represents a drop of 5.7% (4,279 agents). This drop was viewed as a falling demand for unit trusts (A. Tan, Vice-President of O.S.K, U.O.B Investment Management Berhad, personal communication, January 15, 2013). However, FIMM reported that this drop was purportedly attributed to agents failing to comply with the continuous eligibility requirements set by the Federation (Annual Report-FIMM, 2010).

Again, as at 31 December 2011, data from the Annual Report (2011) from FIMM show that the total number of unit trust agents had fallen to 60,394 as compared to 70,361 in the previous year. This drop of 16.5 % (9,967 agents), according to FIMM, was again attributed to the failure of a number of them to comply with the continuous eligibility requirements set by the Federation (Annual Report- FIMM, 2011). However, this drop was attributed to a falling demand for unit trusts.

As 2012 had no Annual Report made available at the time of this writing, it was forecasted that 2012 had recorded a 20% drop (12,079 agents) based on estimates (A. Tan, Vice-President of O.S.K, U.O.B Investment Management Berhad, personal communication, January 15, 2013).

Hence, one conclusion that can be drawn from Figures 1 and 2 is that unit trust agents could be dissatisfied with their job (A. Tan, Vice-President of O.S.K, U.O.B Investment Management Berhad, personal communication, January 15, 2013). This view is further supported by several unit trust agents who had participated in preliminary interviews and cited various reasons for the drop in registered agents. They were (a) difficulty in achieving high sales targets, (b) the inability to meet stringent maintenance requirements to be a registered agent of FIMM and (c) other demoralizing and dissatisfying factors. Turner (2007) also reported other important factors that could influence job satisfaction. For example, studies done in Malaysia on the influences of job stress (Ahsan, Abdullah, Yong, & Shah Alam, 2009), motivational factors (Golshan, Kaswuri, Aghashahi, Amin & Wan Ismail (2011), job satisfaction and conflict among technical employees (Lee & Chan, 1996), mentoring (Lo & Ramyah, 2011), and demographic characteristics (Ghafoor, 2012) showed significant influences on job satisfaction.

Hence, drawing from this framework of understanding, the problem statement can be summarized as follows.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Five problems of critical importance were identified earlier in the preliminary interviews. To address the shortcomings in the industry, a holistic approach rather than an isolation is taken. This will give an overall view of the agents under study about their job satisfaction outcome.

The first critical agency problem identified in the preliminary interviews is that most unit trust agents were dissatisfied with their up-line leaders. It was reported that unit trust supervisors preferred to use transactional leadership style and transactional practices to put pressure on their down-line groups to earn more commission from them (A. Tan, Senior Vice-President of O.S.K, U.O.B Investment Management Berhad, personal communication, June 23, 2012). A. Tan added that leader transactional relationships were not always perceived to be based on trust, respect, and mutual dependability; hence job dissatisfaction resulted among agents. Medley and Larochelle (1995) also reported that transactional leaders tended to show contingent reward management-by-exception behaviors, and they typically gave negative feedback, maintained the status quo and frequently used reward and punishment.

The second critical problem is the effects of the supervisor’s wide span of control on his/her agents. Span of control can be defined as the supervisor’s span under which he/she controls a group of agents, or the span under which an agent manager (for e.g. agent supervisor, senior agent supervisor, agent general manager etc.) controls a group of under-ranked agents. Wide spans tend to result in supervising agent-subordinate relationship problems, for example, a supervising unit trust agent who determines an incorrect size of span of control can affect his/her unit trust agents’ job satisfaction. In most cases, wide spans of control often resulted in the unit trust leaders having less sufficient time to develop and form good and intimate leader-follower relationships with their down-line agents as compared to smaller spans (J. M. Lew, Agency agent, personal communication, March 1, 2012). In addition to this, poor unit trust leader-follower distant relationship often resulted in the agent’s low performance and the agent’s perception of his/her supervisor as management-by-exception laissez-faire leaders (J. Lee, Agency Supervisor, personal communication, March 1, 2012). Avolio (1999) also reported that laissez-faire leadership exhibited "poor, ineffective leadership" and was "highly dissatisfying for followers".

A third critical problem is that unit trust agents often had poor internal service quality expectations. Unit trust agents would perceive the service rendered by their company to their customers and themselves as sub-optimal; therefore, this had made them unable to perform their duties well (M.L. Lim, Agency agent, personal communication, March 1, 2012). For instance, their company would give out poor fund details, charge high service charges and have poor coordination among departments. Hence when managing change initiatives, unit trust companies are perceived not to be able to ensure the development and provision of good internal service quality to their unit trust agents, and also to their customers. This is supported by research in which researchers found that perception and expectation were strong relative concepts that such perceptions were derived from how they could recognize service quality; and that expectation could be shaped through the influence of other people, like customers (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985).

A fourth critical problem in the unit trust industry is the development and existence of a positive attitude among some unit trust agents towards switching to another agency (R. Kwok, Agency agent, personal communication, March 1, 2012). R. Kwok said that a positive attitude to switch if acted upon, could result in high agent turnover due to job dissatisfaction. For example, unit trust agents, he added, are mostly part-time agents, and when they feel the pressure to perform under quota requirements, they simply resign and switch to another agency, for example, to insurance or real estate agencies, where the requirements may not be stringent.

Although research on job satisfaction using diverse theoretical models has increased a lot in various contexts, they have been scarcely used in the unit trust industry. Hence, there is an urgent need to apply these models in the unit trust industry. For instance, the agency theory model (e.g. Eisenhardt, 1989), leadership theory model (e.g. Bass, 1990), and the attitude theory model (e.g. Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005) have been extensively used in other industries. Similarly, span of control theory model (e.g. Gulick, 1937) and the service quality theory model (e.g. Parasuraman et al., 1985) have also been used or applied in these industries. Lin and Mattila (2006) reported that understanding how attitude towards switching behavior worked from a cultural perspective should be given the utmost importance as little has been examined in the unit trust context. Hence, there is still a lot of room for growth to study the behavioral aspect of the unit trust agents, particularly in terms of the above theories linking and integrating them to their actual practices aimed at understanding their switching behavior in the unit trust industry. However, this has not been sufficiently done. The problem lies in the supervisors, managers, and the industry being not competent in analyzing their problems.

The fifth critical problem that the unit trust industry faced was the negative perceptions of Islamic unit trust products by some unit trust agents, especially non-Muslim unit trust agents who were preferred not to sell Islamic funds (J. Lee, Agency Supervisor, personal communication, March 1, 2012). J. Lee said that the reasons were that the agents’ non-Muslim customers feared investing in Islamic unit trust funds because of Islamic investment rules, insufficient Islamic fund knowledge, low returns, and higher profitability of other conventional funds. These reasons were supported by various studies such as Loo’s (2010). Loo (2010) reported that non-Muslims did not concern themselves whether Islamic banking would succeed or not. He reported that they were unlikely patrons but might only use Islamic banks when the benefits were rewarding. In addition, his study found that non-Muslims perceived Islamic banking as one which did not yield consistently higher returns than conventional banks. His study concluded that they perceived poor performance of Malay-owned financial institutions affected non-Muslims who associated Malays with Islam.

While the five critical problems could be examined holistically, there are other problems that are related to religion or culture, which require a more isolation approach. For example, dissatisfaction of non-Muslim agents, in particular, calls for in-depth investigation and hence requires an isolation approach.

OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH

The objectives of this study will be:

1) To investigate the relationship between the leadership of supervisors and agents’ job satisfaction.

a) To investigate the relationship between transformational leadership dimension and agents’ job satisfaction.

b) To investigate the relationship between transactional "Contingent Reward" leadership dimension and agents’ job satisfaction.

c) To investigate the relationship between management-by-exception leadership dimension and agents’ job satisfaction.

d) To investigate the relationship between laissez-faire leadership dimension and agents’ job satisfaction.

2) To investigate the relationship between the supervisor’s span of control and agents’ job satisfaction.

3) To investigate the relationship between perception of Islamic unit trust products and agents’ job satisfaction.

4) To investigate the relationship between internal service quality provided by the company and agents’ job satisfaction.

5) To investigate the mediating effect of attitude towards switching behavior on the relationship between:

a) Perception of Islamic products and agents’ job satisfaction.

b) Internal service quality of the company and agents’ job satisfaction.

c) The leadership practices and agents’ job satisfaction.

d) The supervisor’s span of control and agents’ job satisfaction.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Based on the research background and the research objectives, this study intends to address the following research questions:

Does the leadership of the supervisors have a significant influence on the agents’ job satisfaction?

a) Does transformational leadership dimension have a significant influence on agents’ job satisfaction?

b) Does transactional "Contingent Reward" leadership dimension have a significant influence on

agents’ job satisfaction?

c) Does management-by-exception leadership dimension have a significant influence on agents’ job

satisfaction?

d) Does laissez-faire leadership dimension have a significant influence on agents’ job satisfaction?

Does the supervisor’s span of control have a significant influence on the agents’ job satisfaction?

Does the perception of Islamic unit trust products have a significant influence on the agents’ job satisfaction?

Does the internal service quality provided by the company have a significant influence on the agents’ job satisfaction?

Does the mediating effect of the attitude towards switching behavior have any significant influence on the relationship between:

Perception of Islamic products and agents’ job satisfaction.

The internal service quality of the company and agents’ job satisfaction.

The leadership practices and agents’ job satisfaction.

The span of control of supervisors and agents’ job satisfaction.

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The main focus of the study will be on the four independent variables and their effect on the agents’ job satisfaction, with the mediator attitude towards switching. The four variables are perception of the unit trust agents towards Islamic unit trust products, their perception of the internal service quality as provided by their company, their perception of their leader’s leadership practices and the supervisor’s span of control. Some of these variables had varying results in other studies with other dependent variables in other industries. However, this study will look into their combined effect on the agents’ job satisfaction and examine to what degree attitude towards switching mediates the relationship between them. The focus and concentration are, hence, on these five influencing factors which have not been studied in considerable depth. The scope will restrict data collection to Johor Bahru with the unit trust agents being the unit of analysis.

1.7 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

1.7.1 Theoretical point of view:

The study will be significant as it will help to enrich the current literature review made available for the researchers. By adding more findings from the new theoretical framework that is lacking in the current Malaysian scenario, it would also enrich the literature. Hence, a contribution to the literature is made as a result of combining many findings from the previous studies to come up with one framework. For an example:

"Perception of Islamic unit trust products" is new because other studies have different variables like "perception of products" but not "Islamic unit trust", "customers’ perception towards Islamic Banking/Insurance", "attitudes and perceptions towards Islamic Banking". Most importantly, they do not have job satisfaction as the dependent variable, and they examine from the perspective of customers or consumers, or corporate entities (see Table 2, Appendix D).

. This study differs in that it investigates from the perspective of the seller (the agents themselves) in his/her organisation, who perceive his/her own company’s products/services whether they are acceptable to his/her customers or not. Since little or less research has been done in the unit trust industry, using the variable "Perception of Islamic unit trust products" will make a contribution.

"Supervisor’s Span of control" is new because it is the number of people assigned to a supervising agent (manager, supervisor, etc.). It is not the number of full time equivalents (FTEs) as compared to the general definition of span of control used in other studies. The general definition of span of control is a measure of the total number of persons-full time equivalents (FTEs) being supervised by a superior. It also differs from the others in other studies in which the span of control to be examined in this study is restricted to a quota as stipulated in the agency contract. Public Mutual Bhd, for example, restricts the span to 49 agent recruits under each supervising agent. Since little or less research has done in the unit trust industry using this variable "Supervisor’s Span of control", using it in this study will make a contribution (see Table 2, Appendix D).

This study is also significant as it will be able to utilize the theory of attitude in this industry. It will ultimately help scholars to enhance their understanding of the relationship between all the variables. Hence, the variables studied will contribute by increasing and enhancing their roles in relation to the agents’ job satisfaction. Replicating this study of the variables will enrich their quality and contribution.

Methodological point of view

The study is significant as it will use a multi-informant approach. It differs from a key informant approach. In a study examining industrial customer satisfaction, Homburg and Rudolph (1999) found that using a key informant approach (only focusing, e.g. on the purchasing manager's perspective) had resulted in a significant loss of information. Thus, the quality of information relating organizational phenomena obtained from key informants was, therefore, questionable. In line with this thought, this present study will use a multi-informant approach of organizational issues using the internal (employees) and external customers as key informants. This approach widens the range of interviewees and perspectives. Hence, this multi- informant approach will involve different levels of agents: the lowest ranked agents, supervisory agents and managerial agents, and customers’ opinions. It will involve interviews of customers to confirm what the agents have said. Some open ended questions will be used to avoid response bias.

As little research has been done on the number of key informants from the selling side, especially in the unit trust industry, this study will contribute to the methodological perspective and thus the existing literature.

1.7.3 Practical point of view:

This study is significant as it will help managers understand the agents’ attitude better, particularly non-Muslim agents’, to make policies more efficient and suitable to the problem. The inclusion of the study of the behavioral aspects of attitude to explain attitude further will enhance behavioral understanding of the financial systems in which agents, customers and unit trust companies operate. The contribution to literature is that practitioners, who implement policy research and marketing channel initiatives, can benefit from a much better understanding of any implementation of training programs and putting in place correct intervention measures whenever needed.

As not much research has been done by academicians on unit trust agents on this issue, it will be recommended that they should do it. The significance lies in helping the Malaysian government to achieve the objective of making the unit trust industry in Malaysia a prominent industry. This study also hopes to see the unit trust industry achieving high deposit savings and a higher equity penetration rate of 20% or more. Presently, the rate is at 20.3% of Bursa Malaysia market capitalization as at 2012 (see Table 1, Appendix C). The contribution to literature is that academicians can repeatedly test and come up with revised economic theoretical models. The objective is to find an equilibrium level of an equity penetration point. .

Lastly, Malaysia's unit trust industry is unique because the unit trust agents are the main and most successful distribution channel. Unlike most other countries, their funds are distributed by brokers, fund managers or banks (FIMM's UTC Annual Convention, 2011). Since Malaysia has been successful in using unit trust agents as a main thrust, it is significant to consider further enhancing this quality distribution channel, or consider a higher mixed composition and also to strengthen Malaysia as the world number one Islamic hub and provider of Islamic and conventional instruments as compared with her regional countries. The contribution to literature is a dual distribution channel/agency approach that can be copied and applied to other Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, which might provide further synergistic benefits among member countries.

JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY

The unit trust industry occupies an prominent place in the national economy of Malaysia and is growing rapidly. It is one of the most service-oriented based industries as it involves a great deal of the workforce of salespersons, which provides direct employment to about 60,394 registered agents (Annual Report –FIMM, 2011), not inclusive of other essential workforces. There have been only a few research studies in the unit trust industry, but not much on research on job satisfaction of agents. In view of the limited research-based on job satisfaction and the lack of knowledge existing in this field, any further research will increase understanding of job satisfaction that is related to perception, services, leadership, and span of control. Hence, this has, therefore, motivated the researcher to examine and analyze the actual practices in the unit trust industry of Malaysia.

1.9 DEFINITION OF TERMS AND CONCEPTS

a) Job satisfaction

Spector (1997) defines job satisfaction in terms of how an employee feels about his/her jobs and the different aspects of them.

b) Perception

Perception is the process by which people select, organize and interpret information to create a meaningful picture of the world (Kotler & Armstrong, 2001).

c) Service Quality

Service quality is defined as the difference between customer expectations, of service and perceived service he/she receives. If expectations exceed performance, perceived quality is less than satisfactory, and this results in customer dissatisfaction (Parasuraman et al., 1985).

d) Internal Service Quality

Hallowell, Schlesinger, and Zornitsky (1996) defined internal service quality as the amount of satisfaction an employee has or shows for the services he/she received from internal service providers. Othman and Owen (2001) added dimension of Compliance (the ability to apply the principles of Sharia) to improve the way of providing services and products to customers, such as ensuring Islamic banking products are assessed based on whether they are free of riba (interest).

e) Internal Customer

An internal customer is defined as any member (employee) of the organisation receiving service and product from other members of the organizations to carry out his or her job (Zeithaml & Bitner, 1996). Employees are internal customers of the organization, who represent the internal market within the organization.

f) Leadership

Bass and Avolio (1997) defined "leadership as a full range leadership model on a continuum of transactional and transformational leadership where the person attains one’s fullest potential over time". It consists of four leadership styles: transformational, transactional, management-by-exception, and laissez-faire.

g) Supervisor’s Span of Control

A supervisor’s span of control has been defined as the number of people that a supervisor can effectively manage/oversee i.e. the number of people assigned to a manager, not the number of full time equivalents (FTEs) or full-time equivalent positions assigned (Laschinger & Wong, 2008). This includes workers who are paid by the organization and includes full-time, part-time and casual staff; casual staff is defined as an employee working less than normal full-time hours (as defined by the organization) who does not commit to a regular schedule (Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) Provincial Health Report, Feb 11, 2011)

h) Attitude Towards Behaviour

Ajzen (1985) defined Attitude toward the behavior as the individual's positive or negative feelings about performing behavior. He added that it was determined through an assessment of one's beliefs regarding the consequences arising from behavior and an evaluation of the desirability of these consequences.

i) Unit Trust Agents/Consultants

Unit Trust Agents or Consultants mean individuals who have passed the unit trust examination conducted by FIMM and who are duly registered with FIMM. They include any persons dealing with unit trusts, any staff, employee or personnel under a contract of employment with an institutional unit trust advisor (IUTA). Such persons are authorized to market and distribute unit trust funds (Federation of Malaysian Unit Trust managers, 2007, October).

j) Unit Trusts

A unit trust fund is an investment fund that is professionally managed. Its purpose is to pool the savings of investors who have the same investment objectives. It is also known as a collective investment scheme. The unit trust fund has its investment objectives and any pooled monies in the unit trust fund that will be invested in a diversified portfolio of securities and other assets must follow the Securities Commission’s (SC) Guidelines on Unit Trust Funds (Crist & Yoong, 2009).

k) Operationalisation

Operationalisation is the process of strictly defining variables into measurable factors. The process defines unclear concepts and allows them to be measured, empirically and quantitatively.

l) Attitude towards switching behavior

Switching behavior can occur in services or products. Keaveney and Parthasarathy (2001) and Sathish, Kumar, Naveen and Jeevanantham (2011) define customer switching in services as an act of being loyal to one service category, and switching from one service provider to another occurs as a result of dissatisfaction.