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African Journal of Business Management Vol. 5(32), pp. 12632-12640,14 December, 2011Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBMDOI: 10.5897/AJBM11.2224ISSN 1993-8233 2011 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Multi-factor of employee values: A confirmatory factoranalytics (CFA) validation

M. R. Ab Hamid1*, Z. Mustafa2, N. R. M. Suradi2, F. Idris3 and M. Abdullah4

1Faculty of Industrial Sciences & Technology, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Lebuhraya Tun Razak, 26300 Kuantan,

Pahang, Malaysia.22

School of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science & Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKMBangi, Selangor, Malaysia.

3UKM-Graduate School of Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor.

4

Faculty of Defence Studies and Management, National Defence University of Malaysia, Sg. Besi Camp, 57000, KualaLumpur, Malaysia.

Accepted 19 September, 2011

Employees are an asset to the organisation and therefore, values that surround them have to beempowered for the benefit of the organisation. This article examines the factor structure of employeevalues which are fairness, consultative, mutual trust, acknowledgement, altruism and empowerment.Questionnaires were distributed to staff at the selected Higher Education Institution (HEI) in the eastcoast of Malaysia. The data collected was analysed using confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) approachin order to test the 6-factor hypothesized model of employee values. The revised hypothesized CFAmodel yielded a p-value of 0.180, normed chi-square of 1.329, CFI of 0.995, TLI of 0.990, GFI of 0.960 andRMSEA of 0.054 that suggested 4 core values, that is, fairness, consultative, mutual trust and altruismthat dominantly explained the universitys employee values in the selected university. Besides,

Bayesian estimation was then employed to cross-validate and support the modeling result obtainedfrom the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation. Both Bayesian and ML estimation results arecomparatively agreed to each other. The findings may pave the way forward for empowering valuesadoption and embracement for employees especially at the HEI in Malaysia.

Key words:Fairness, consultative, mutual trust, acknowledgement, altruism, empowerment.

INTRODUCTION

Organisations face a variety of changes and challengesthat will have a profound effect on organizational dyna-mics and performance (Abdullah et al., 2011). Part of the

challenge comes from within the organisation itself, thatis, the human resource of the organisation that revolvesaround the employee motivation and commitment,managing a diverse workforce, and ethical behavior ofworkforce (Abdullah et al., 2011). In order to overcomeand respond quickly to arising issues, organisations needto clearly underline, yet be flexible and bold in embarkingon a new paradigm of organisational core values deploy-ment, especially for employees. Values are said to be thefactor of the collapse of leading companies in the worldthat disregard values as addendum to organisational

*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].

success (Abdullah et al., 2011). Nowadays, it is importantto have the right people working in the organisationsrather than to have the right mission and vision. This is

due to the fact that the right people would form themission and vision for the organisation to move forwardand achieve excellence. As pointed out by Collins andPorras (1996), companies that enjoy enduring successhave values and a core purpose that remain fixed whiletheir business strategies and practices endlessly adapt toa changing world. The dynamic of preserving the valueswhile stimulating progress is the reason behind thesuccess of many leading organisations worldwide(Abdullah et al., 2011).

Many values have been found to be important for anemployee to embrace with. However, prior literaturemerely concentrates only on general term of values.Instead, this paper expounds the values that are closelyattached to employees in the organization, especially at


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Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Malaysia. This papersuggested 6 core values of employees which arefairness, consultative, mutual trust, acknowledgement,altruism and empowerment. The focus of this papermainly revolves around the core values that employees

should have which have been suggested by Abdullah etal. (2011). All these values were supported by theliteratures signifying their importance and relevance forinclusion in organizational undertakings.

Therefore, taking values as crucial matter for organi-zational excellence, the motives of this paper are twofold.Firstly, it aims at testing the psychometric properties ofemployee values instrument through value-basedindicators by using structural equation modeling (SEM)through confirmatory factor analytics (CFA) approach.Secondly, the aim is to cross-validate the hypothesizedCFA model results, using the default maximum likelihood(ML) estimation with Bayesian estimation for comparative

analysis. This cross validation process is conducted forseveral reasons that will be explained subsequently. Thispaper enhances its values through the use of multivariatestatistical analysis by using SEM in its analysis. In otherwords, this paper also indicated its strengths byemphasizing the most relevant values for employees toembrace with, especially in HEI setting in Malaysia. Inaddition, it contributes to the methodology, whereby thepsychometric properties of the value-based employeequestionnaire was empirically tested using SEM throughCFA approach. Besides that, this paper may form thebasis for future research to replicate in other countries tosee the values relevancy across the nation.

Further, literature review on employee values are put

forward, followed by methodology that consists ofhypothesized CFA model of employee values, sampling,instrumentation via questionnaire, screening of outliers inthe data set, validity and reliability analysis and themodeling strategy employed in this study. It is followed bythe findings that mainly discussed the assessment ofmodel adequacy and Bayesian confirmatory factoranalysis (CFA). A conclusion is further drawn.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Human resources or labour is an important asset

(Cravens and Oliver, 2006; Marzo et al., 2007; NikMustapha, 2003) to the success of the organization. NikMustapha (2003) asserts that for an organization tobecome more competitive, the potential of every workershould be polished. If this does not happen, it will hinderthe performance of the organization. By this approach,the workers will be directly involved in the managementof the organization (Nik Mustapha, 2003). On top of that,the management should also recognize the contributionof workers, either through ideas or skills possessed in thedevelopment of the organization (Cyert, 1993). Therefore,they should be of concern since these workers will bedealing with customers directly (Dzansi and Dzansi,

2010). For an organization to become more pro-activeand competitive in the global market, organizations must

Ab Hamid et al . 12633

be equipped with workers that embraced good values(Wan Jaafar et al., 2000).

Barney (1986) states that successful organizations im-prove their productivity through the values that recognizetheir employees. Values that are held or practiced by

employees in an organization can be reflected throughthe attitudes and behaviour in performing their duties andresponsibilities that are entrusted. These values directlyinspire employees to work better and resulted inimproved organizational performance. The study byCennamo and Gardner (2008) found that the values ofthe organization should work in tandem to eachindividual. Their study conducted in New Zealand listsseveral values for each employee and organizationalvalues, such as extrinsic, intrinsic, status, altruism, socialand independence. These values were tested on threegenerations of people (according to age category) in thesample. The study found that there were differences in

their adherence to the values of each generation in thesample but the difference is still acceptable, in anorganization that has many employees. They also foundthat the dissemination and sharing of values among theemployees of the organization provides many benefitsand gains that lead to excellence.

Successful organization is always looking for ways andmeans on how to motivate and reward employees inorder to enhance motivation as well as individual andorganizational performance (Burke and Hsieh, 2006;Martin and Petty, 2000). Besides that, one way for anorganization to be more innovative is to use the bestpossible expertise and capabilities of the existing humanresources (De Jong and Den Hartog, 2007). Human

resources in this organization are employees or staffmembers who should be the main focus in improvingorganizational performance. Mokhtar et al. (2003) definesemployee as the focus of the initiative to makeemployees think positively towards the organization andthe work done. Focus on employee satisfaction should beassessed from time to time in terms of clarity of tasksperformed, benefits, work environment, managementstyle and organizational leadership.

The main criterion is the welfare of workers whichcontribute to employee satisfaction in performing theassigned responsibilities. In addition, the organizationwould be better if each worker can work as a team that

can strengthen the organization from within. This part-nership forms a good and strong relationship especiallyfor staff to serve the organization towards achievingremarkable success. Therefore, the core values focus onemployees is very important to be applied by theemployee in the organization.

Table 1 derives the core values that are deemed appro-priate for the criteria of employee with the correspondingvalue-based indicators. These employee values and itsindication are adopted and adapted from Mokhtar et al.(2003) and Ab Hamid et al. (2010a).

Fairness issues should be taken into account in theperformance management system (Nik Mustapha, 2003)

because it is linked with the work environment (Moorman,1991; Taiwo, 2010). James (1993) defines fairness as an


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12634 Afr. J. Bus. Manage.

Table 1.Core values of employee and value-based indicators.

Core values Value-based Indicators

Fairness The degree of people that are promoted based on their merits and are given equal chance for promotion.

Consultative

The degree of the staff to voice out their views/opinions and actively sought by the management in making

important decision.

Mutual trustThe degree to which the organisational management entrusts the staff to complete the given task andresponsibility and the differences in opinion are not perceived as a hindrance in achieving goal.

AcknowledgementThe degree to which the organisation gives recognition/appreciation to those who contribute to theorganisation and the staff achievements are made public.

AltruismThe degree of the management to encourage the staff to look after the welfare/needs of others as well asincentives/acknowledgement are given to staff who voluntarily sacrifices time and effort for the organisation.

EmpowermentThe degree of which staff are given authority to make decisions that are deemed necessary within their jobscope and level of authority.

individual or group of employees perception of theservices provided by the organization and behaviouralreactions to these perceptions. With the principles offairness among the staff, it will improve the performanceof the work done (Moorman, 1991; Carmeli and Tishler,2004). Fairness is also related to the promotion ofemployees within the organization either on merit orability of individuals or otherwise. This also implies givingequal opportunities between employees. Organizationsthat do fairness to the staff will create a harmoniousenvironment that can lead the organization to moveforward. Lam et al. (2002) stressed that the leadership ofthe organization should develop and implement organi-

zational policies and practices that focus on the conceptof fairness as a basic requirement in organizationaleffectiveness. Among others are the implementation ofpromotion exercise that should be based on merits.Through this, everybody would have equal chance forpromotion, etc. Hence, the value of fairness should bethe main focus in managing human resources inorganizations (Abdus Sattar et al., 2010).

In addition, the organization will be more robust if allthe employees in these organizations directly involve inproviding opinions or views in making important decisions(Alhabshi, 2003). Although the final say is based on thewisdom of top management, the opinion of staff isrequired to give their ideas in the interest of the

organization (Tayeb, 1979). This value is defined as thevalue of a negotiable or consultative; and this value alsovital in Islam as it is working-related matter (Tayeb,1979). Also, this value is consistent with the concept ofShura to emphasize the involvement of all stakeholdersin the management of which will eventually create anatmosphere or feeling of mutual respect for each other(Alhabshi, 2003). Besides that, this value is portrayedwhenever the management sought the employeesviews/opinions especially in making important decision(Mokhtar et al., 2003). The spirit of togetherness inreaching the consensus would yield a better result asevery idea is taken into account (Mokhtar et al., 2003). In

addition, the workers who embraced this value would find

their works easily done or run smoothly as theconsultation process is always practised for the benefit ofindividual and organisation alike.

Honesty is a very important value that should beadopted by the staff (JKTU, 2009). Employees who havea prominent impartiality in the organization will issue thetrust between each other. The mutual trust was found toimprove employee motivation to improve organizationalperformance (Carmeli and Tishler, 2004; Bartram andCasimir, 2007; Chami and Fullenkamp, 2002). Inaddition, organizations need to improve and monitor theethical performance of its operations to build a strongfoundation of mutual trust with respect to relationship with

the stakeholders (Wilson, 2000). Mutual trust betweenthe employee and the leadership of the organization isalso very important (Singh and Krishnan 2008). Thisvalue is also linked with the belief in the organization(Joseph and Winston, 2005) and it is very important to bepracticed by the fellow staff (Chami and Fullenkamp,2002). This value is portrayed whenever the manage-ment put the trust on the staff to execute their duties andresponsibilities. In addition, differences of opinion amongthe staff is not an obstacle in achieving organizationalgoals. Employees feel valued whenever their ideas areconsidered and would willingly contribute to theorganization (Chami and Fullenkamp, 2002; Harung andDahl, 1995).

Wallace et al. (1999) found that the acknowledgementsvalue has been identified as crucial value in theorganization. Acknowledgement value has also beenemphasized by De Jong and Den Hartog (2007) andRussell (2001) as a behavior that should be owned by aleader. This value that is the sub-value in employeeshould be taken seriously by the leader (Cravens andOliver, 2006; Cormican and OSullivan, 2004) to signify it.De Jong and Den Hartog (2007) refers acknowledgementas an appreciation given to the employee which performstheir work that features innovative values. Organizationsneed to provide rewards for this purpose. The rewardsystem may be in the form of financial and non financial

(Martin and Petty, 2000). The organizations need to


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provide acknowledgement / appreciation of the effortsand contributions of any staff. Besides that, this wouldspur a sense of belonging in providing good service andoutstanding achievements of staff should be wellpublicized for general information.

The spirit of cooperation among the staff are alwaysencouraged (JKTU, 2009). This type of partnership willcreate a higher value of altruism. Singh and Krishnan(2008) and Russell (2001) define altruism as the behaviorof concern for others. Organ (1988) also defines altruismas helping other colleagues in the organization inperforming tasks such as helping new employees on avoluntary basis and assist employees who have a highwork load or replacing the place of absent colleagues.However, Liu and Cohen (2010) questioned that thisvalue is only meant for helping a colleague at workwithout considering the implications on the effectivenessof the organization. Nevertheless, this value is definitely

characterise good nature of employee values that alwaysput other colleagues first in the organization. It is also oneof the five dimensions in organizational citizenshipbehavior (OCB) (Moorman, 1991). It is also directed tothe attitude that is willing to sacrifice the time and energyfor the organization. Staff who exhibit this value shouldbe given appropriate incentives as guidance or exampleto others in the organization. In short, value of altruism isclosely related to the spirit of cooperation within theorganization (Chami and Fullenkamp, 2002).

JKTU (2009) also strongly recommend organization tocreate an organizational structure and a clear delegationof powers, transparent work flow and accountability,optimum utilization of resources and information

management system that is efficient and effective to helpthe organization achieve its goals; empowerment aimedat improving accountability and responsibility at all levelswithin the organization. Leaders are responsible fornurturing and managing human resources within theorganization by empowering the staff (Branson, 2008).Empowerment emphasizes cooperation and reflects thesimilarity (Russel, 2001). Sharifah et al. (2010) found thatempowerment influenced dominantly on the commitmentof civil servants in Malaysia. Therefore, it is important toembrace this value (Sharifah et al. (2010)), especiallyamong the staff to drive the organization towardsexcellence.

METHODOLOGY

Here, the sampling technique, instrumentation and the datascreening procedure were discussed prior to the confirmatory factoranalysis (CFA) technique in testing the hypothesized model as inFigure 1. Ab Hamid et al. (2010b, 2011a, b) gives examples of CFAuse.

The hypothesized CFA model

Henceforth, all six core values that focus on the employee criteriadiscussed are very important in an organization. The values beingdiscussed are critical values that are important to drive the

organization towards achieving overall performance excellence.However, the list of values are not exhaustive but to the extent of

Ab Hamid et al. 12635

Figure 1.Hypothesized model of factorial structure for employeevalues.

this research, these employee values are considered to be thecritical values of employee in the organisation that should beembraced in bringing the organisation towards achievingorganisational excellence. The CFA model of employee focusvalues hypothesizes a priori that the responses to the items in thequestionnaire can be explained by 6 factors, that is, fairness,consultative, mutual trust, acknowledgement, altruism andempowerment. Secondly, each item has a nonzero loading on theculture values it was designed to measure and zero loadings on allother factors (values). This is vital for supporting the convergentvalidity through factor loading > 0.7 (Hair et al., 2010). This means

that the designed items are solely meant for measuring the latentfactor under study. Thirdly, the values were hypothesized to becorrelated to each other and the error/uniqueness terms associatedwith the item measurements are uncorrelated. A schematicsrepresentation of this model is shown in Figure 1.

Sampling

This is an exploratory study that involves only one selected publicuniversity in east coast of Malaysia. This study employed stratifiedsampling method as it involves 2 strata, that is, academic and non-academic staff. The responses are anonymous since they are notrequired to indicate their identification. Respondents were chosenconveniently in each strata. In other words, the population is first

divided into mutually exclusive groups that are relevant, appropriateand meaningful in the context of the study (Sekaran, 2006).


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Table 2.Items with the associated core values.

Core values Code Items

FairnessEF1_1 Staff promotion is based on merit.

EF2_1 Each staff has equal chance at promotion.

ConsultativeEF3_1 Staff are encouraged to voice their views/opinion.

EF4_1 Staff views have always been looked into by the management in making crucial decision.

Mutual trustEF5_1 The management place their trust on the staff to complete their tasks and responsibilities.

EF6_1 Difference in opinion among the staff does not hinder the university in achieving its aims

AcknowledgementEF7_1 The university recognizes/appreciates staffs efforts and contributions.

EF8_1 Excellent performance by staff is widely publicized

Altruism

EF9_1 The management encourages the staff to care for the welfares of their co-workers.

EF10_1 The management provides incentives to staff who have sacrificed their time and effort in the nameof the university

EmpowermentEF11_1 Staff are empowered to make the necessary decision within their job scope and authority.

EF12_1 The top management decentralizes certain powers to the responsibility of center/department/unit.

The questionnaires were distributed to the respondents throughthe departments and faculties and they are required to return thequestionnaire within 2 weeks to the person-in-charge at theuniversity. The population size at the selected university isapproximately 1500 staff. According to Krejcie and Morgan (1970),a minimum sample size of 306 is required. More than 500questionnaires were distributed in order to increase the response

rate. However, 210 answered questionnaires were obtained. Thisaccounted for 40% of response rate which is considerably acceptedfor the purpose of this study. Since this study used questionnaire asmethod of data collection and it is important to consider the non-response bias (Pillay, 2009), the non-response bias would beovercome with the use of bootstrapping method through Bayesiananalysis by re-sampling on the existing samples. This wouldcompensate the non-response from the samples in this study.

Instrument

The instrument was adopted and adapted from Mokhtar et al.(2003), Fazli (2004) and Hong et al. (2009); and used 11-pointLikert-scaled type of measurement. The scale represents the levelof visibility in terms of core values in the organisation that gives an

anchor value of 0 = not visible to 10 = very visible. The wide rangeof Likert scale is used in order for the respondents to freely ratetheir perceptions of things occurring in their university environment.This is vital in ensuring that the respondents would give theirsincere and truest answers as smaller gaps of indication wouldprobably lead to condone their wisdom of rating. This would alsogive variation in the data as this is important in statistical analysis.The questionnaire consisted of 12 items from 6 core values. Everycore values consist of 2 corresponding items each. As in Bollen(1989), 2 items per core values were used as the minimum numberof indicators required for using SEM through CFA.

Before the questionnaire is administered to the respondents, itwas referred to the experts panel for content validity. Following thesuggestions from the experts panel, the questionnaires were thenpilot tested and revealed an overall Cronbach alpha of more than0.70. The data obtained was keyed in the Predictive AnalyticsSoftWare (PASW) version 18 for the modeling procedure (Table 2).

Data screening and analysis

The 210 dataset were coded and saved into PASW and analysedusing AMOS version 18. During the process of data screening formultivariate outliers, several datasets were removed due toMahalanobis distance values more than the 2 value (2=42.31;n=12, p


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0.88

0.94

0.93

0.70

0.80

0.84

0.82

0.92

0.90

0.6

0

0.

89

0.84

0.97

0.94

0.97

0.90

0.9

2

0.70

0.80

0.

84

0.81

Figure 2. Revised CFA model of employee focus values.

FINDINGS

In this study, confirmatory factor analytic approach (CFA)was used to determine the construct validity of the surveyitems. It means how well the construct explained thevariables under study. In other words, whenever thecorrelation of the items within the same construct isrelatively high it is said to have the construct validity.Also, the factor loading and the squared multiple corre-lations (SMC) of the items are significantly correlated tothe specified construct would also contribute to theconstruct validity comprehension.

From the initial findings of CFA in Figure 1, thehypothesized model yielded several offending estimates.The offending estimates occurred for the factor loadingthat are greater than 1 whereas it should be in the range

of 0 and 1. This resulted in a non-fit model of single order

measurement CFA model of employee values. Therefore,careful checking was conducted by deleting the valuesthat are of insignificant in the model. It is probably due tothe low reliability coefficients that contribute to theoffending estimates for certain values that wereacknowledgement and empowerment. Therefore, Figure2 is the revised model.

Assessment of model adequacy

The revised model as in Figure 2 showed the results ofthe CFA of employee values. The fit indices yielded a p-value of 0.180, normed chi-square of 1.329, CFI of 0.995,TLI of 0.990, GFI of 0.960 and RMSEA of 0.054. The


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item that best explained the construct is the items thathave higher loadings on the same construct. It can alsobe seen that the factor loadings of all observed variablesor items are adequate, ranging from 0.84 to 0.97 andsuccinctly, the convergent validity for employee focus

values was also supported as the factor loadings of latentto observed variable should be above 0.70 (Hair et al.,2010; Byrne, 2010). This indicates that all of theconstructs conformed to the construct validity test whichmeans that all items belonged to the specified corevalues. The interfactor correlations between the factorswere considered to be acceptable and give support fordivergent validity despite the correlation between valuesof fairness and consultative, r = 0.92, but it can beconsidered of little concern. The discriminant validity caneasily be checked through the checkings of cross-loadings in the output.

As a result, the insignificant chi-square goodness-of-fit

statistics suggested that the proposed model didgenerate the observed covariance matrix. Similarly, thevalue of RMSEA marks insignificant discrepanciesbetween the observed covariance and implied matricesand thereby supporting the degree of fit (Nordin, 2001).All fit indices are more than adequate to conclude thatthere is not enough evidence to conclude that this re-specified CFA model is incorrect. In other words, itindicated that the model fits the data reasonably well. Italso means that there was no significant differencebetween the revised model and the observed model afterre-specification or revision on the initial hypothesizedCFA model.

Bayesian confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)

Byrne (2010) argued that maximum likelihood (ML)estimation of Likert-scale items produces negligibleeffects of non-normal non-continuos data whenever eachvariable/item has at least 5 categories of response andlarge sample size. However, severe effects of non-normalnon-continuos data occur whenever each variable has 4or less categories of responses and small sample sizewhich is less than 200. Under this condition, this studycould only use 113 questionnaires for analysis andtherefore, Bayesian estimation is recommended for re-

affirming the previously conducted CFA. The BayesianCFA analysis was conducted in AMOS software toestimate the unstandardised weights produced by thisanalysis with the unstandardised loading obtained in theCFA using maximum likelihood (ML) procedure.

Basically, the fundamental concept in ML estimation,the true values of the model parameters are fixed butunknown, while the estimates from a given sample areconsidered to be random but known (Byrne, 2010;Arbuckle, 2009). Bayesian estimation works in a situationwhere any unknown quantity is a random variable and aprobability distribution is assigned to it (Byrne 2010). Inother words, in Bayesian estimation, the true model

parameters are unknown andconsidered to be random.The parameters are assigned a joint distribution, that is,

Table 3. Comparative analysis (maximum likelihood andBayesian estimation) through unstandardised regression weight.

Loading ML Bayesian

Fairness > EF1_1 1.000 -

Fairness > EF2_1 1.200 1.192Consult > EF3_1 1.000 -

Consult > EF4_1 1.035 1.031

Mutual Trust > EF5_1 1.000 -

Mutual Trust > EF6_1 1.050 1.041

Altruism > EF9_1 1.000 -

Altruism > EF10_1 1.191 1.189

prior distribution (before the data are observed) andposterior distribution (after being observed) which will becombined together. This joint distribution is based on theformula which is called as Bayes theorem.

There are two important elements of the jointdistribution for CFA analysis which are the mean of theposterior distribution as the parameter estimate and alsothe standard deviation of posterior distribution that servesan analog to the standard error in ML estimation (Byrne,2010). It is an added advantage for the researcher toconduct analysis based on both methodologicalapproaches and then conduct the comparative analysisfor the parameter estimates (Byrne, 2010). Therefore, theresult of the comparative analysis is shown in Table 3.

The result in Table 3 is the comparison between theunstandardised factor loading estimates for the MLmethod versus Bayesian posterior distribution estimates.

We can observe that only a small difference existbetween the loadings generated from ML estimation andBayesian estimation. In addition, based on the review ofthe diagnostics plots, these estimates are very closepertinent to first and second order factor loadings. Thisgives evidence that the CFA using ML estimation in thisstudy is acceptable and re-specified model fits the data.In other words, the findings speak well for the validity(Byrne, 2010) of the hypothesized structure of employeevalues.

Again, through Bayesian CFA, this study offeredevidence to those four-dimensions of CFA model that didgenerate the data collected from the universitys staff in

one of the HEI in east coast of Malaysia. Based on thefindings, it shows that promotion of the staff at thesampled HEI is based on merit and thus each staff hasequal chance for promotion exercise that exhibit thefairness in the process. In addition, the staff areencouraged to voice their views and opinions as the staffwere also consulted by the management in makingcrucial decision. Besides that, the university managementplace trust on the staff to complete their tasks andresponsibilities. Also, the difference in opinion among thestaff does not hinder the university in achieving its aimswhile taking this as an added advantage to move forwardtowards success. In light of that, the management also

encourages the staff to care for the welfares of their col-leagues so as to promote the spirit of being togetherness


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and cohesive to each other. It is also probably clear thatthe management also provides incentives to staff whohave sacrificed their time and effort for the university.

However, the exclusion of two values mentioned earlierrevealed that these values are still vague in practise

among the employees in the sampled HEI or simply said,those values were still not that visible based on therespondents perception. Therefore, the university ma-nagement must also find way to further deploy the valueof empowerment and acknowledgement in the universityenvironment since all the core values are important foremployees to practise and fully embrace with. In thecontext of this study, possibly the management is still notlooking for the best method in order to recognize andappreciate the staffs efforts as well as contributionstowards the university. Also, there is less publicity on thestaff who exhibit excellent performance. These were thepoints in the questionnaire that were meant to measure

the value of acknowledgement.Besides that, the staf are still not empowered formaking necessary decision within their job scope andauthority. Perhaps, the management still practised thecentralised system whereby top management onlyinvolve in the decision making process throughout theuniversity. Therefore, the delegation process is notoccurring in the university environment. Many factorsaffect the results of the study. Among others are probablythat the sampled university is still about 9 years inoperation and still new with a lot of things that have to belooked into. Besides that, the embracement of valuesitself have to be empowered from the management to thestaff at all levels. If this is realised, maybe all the six core

values are salient and in action.

Conclusions

In this study, the hypothesized CFA model fits the sampledata fairly well and we may conclude that the four-dimension of employee focus values fit the universityvalue-based employee CFA model. In other words, thereis no proof that the model is incorrect (Nordin, 2011).From the overall re-specified model, we can simply saythat the university employees must embrace the corevalues of fairness, consultation, mutual trust and altruism

in order to gear up for achieving excellence by infusingthe values into employees. However, this does not implythat the value of empowerment and acknowledgementare not important employee values.

In the sampled HEI, these values were perceived to bedominant among the university staff and universitymanagement should be aware of this and take advantageof these four values to further strengthen the valuesamong employees in order to create and realise thevalue-based organisation endeavour further. This isimportant if an organisation wants to be institutionalized itmust be infused with values (Abdullah et al., 2011;Collins and Porras, 1996; Selznick, 1957).

Caveats should also be taken when interpreting theresults of this study since the sample size of this study is


very small. However, by using bootsrapping method inSEM, this study could possibly be well generalised to allthe population of university staff in Malaysia.Furthermore, since all universities in Malaysia are placedunder one ministry, there is not much different between

the employess in each university (Nur Riza, 2008). Sincethis study is conducted in Malaysia, possibly, the valuescould also be extended to other types of organisation andnot only in higher education sector but also service andpublic sector etc.

Finally, this research contributes to the methodologywhereby the instrument validation, that is, the value-based questionnaire, was empirically tested usingstructural equation modeling (SEM) through CFAapproach. Besides that, the questionnaire itself could beused for other organisations to measure their employeesperceptions on the values that they embrace. Other thanthat, this study values itself in terms of measuring the

intangibles, that is, the core values based on theperceptions of human resources as an indication forachieving excellence by empowering the core valuesadoption in the organisation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial supportreceived in the form of a research grant (OUP-UKM-FST-2011) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).

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