If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The aim of this research is to attempt to reveal the difference between what fresh graduates expect and their actual experiences pertaining to the working environment. Design/methodology/approach -Using a set of self-administered questionnaires, data were collected from 128 graduates. They were asked to indicate their preferences on organizational culture, leadership, communication, decision making, team working, motivation, and development. Using the same dimensions, the respondents then reported their actual experiences, thus enabling gaps to be determined. Findings -The results from paired-sample t-tests suggest that significant expectation gaps exist in all the areas surveyed. While communication, decision making and motivation are found to be significantly related to job satisfaction, none of the seven variables is found to be significantly correlated to organizational commitment. Research limitations/implications -The study focuses only on a rather limited sample size of Malaysian graduates; therefore it cannot ensure generalization of results obtained. Practical implications -The resulting expectation gaps, and their influence on the graduates' job satisfaction and organizational commitment, have implications for the important roles played by employers, higher learning institutions, and graduate themselves. Originality/value -This study makes significant contributions in three key areas. First, it is perhaps one of the earliest studies to comprehensively address the issue of expectation gaps using a myriad factors. Second, it is also one of the few that examines the influence of the expectation gaps on job satisfaction and commitment. Third, instead of focusing on employees as a whole, which has been the practice of prior research, this study concentrates only on fresh graduates who have been in the workforce for less than two years.

This study examines the effect of hiring managers' demographic characteristics on employee selection preferences, and the strength of the manager's selection preferences towards candidates' demographic characteristics when the candidate's relative qualification changes. A sample of 156 respondents from various industries in Malaysia was acquired and analysed using cross-tabulation, Chi-square and t-test of differences in means. Six variables examined were age, gender, race, religion, marital status, and locality of education. The effect of hiring managers' demographic characteristics on the decision to hire a candidate is significant for two variables: race and religion. Also, the strength of preference, based on the candidate's race and religion, remains high even though their qualification was lower. Implications of the study are discussed.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of attitudinal belief of “Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior” (DTPB) on actual e-learning behavior among university academics in Sri Lanka. The study applied a quantitative method by using questionnaire to collect data among university academics. Explorative and Confirmatory Factor analysis was used to examine the reliability and validity. And this study carried out Structural Equation Modeling to assess model fit and through path analysis, the association between variables was investigated. The study resulted that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, compatibility, attitude, behavioural intentions and actual behaviour met the indices for model fit. The findings showed perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use associated with attitude while compatibility is not. Attitude significantly and positively associated with behavioural intention. While behavioural intention positively associated with the actual usage this mediates the relationship between attitude and actual behaviour. The e-learning usage of academicians will help to enhance the quality of higher education system in Sri Lanka as well as to magnify the number of university intake as the country seeks to achieve its vision to be “the knowledge hub in the region and a leader in higher education in Asia by 2020”. Though the e-learning adoption studies are growing trend of education and system researchers as evidenced by extant literature, studies on attitude and intention of academicians especially in an emerging economy like Sri Lanka is still lacking. This study attempts to establish the attitudinal factors that contributes actual e-learning behavior of academicians.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between people-related total quality management (PTQM) practices and employee work attitudes, as well as the impact of the specific PTQM practices on work attitudes in the context of the Sri Lankan apparel industry.Design/methodology/approachThe five PTQM practices included top management commitment, employee empowerment, training, employee involvement and teamwork. Employee work attitudes comprised of job satisfaction, affective commitment, job involvement and turnover intention. Data collected from the machine operator-level employees in the top 100 apparel exporters in Sri Lanka were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).FindingsThe findings suggest that the PTQM practices were significant drivers of job involvement but not of job satisfaction, affective commitment and turnover intentions. It was also found that teamwork, training and employee involvement were the most important PTQM practices towards employee work attitudes. Top management commitment drove affective commitment and job involvement, while employee empowerment was important only for job involvement.Research limitations/implicationsThe research only considered the top 100 export- apparel manufacturers in Sri Lanka; hence, care has to be taken for the findings to represent the entire manufacturing industry in Sri Lanka.Originality/valueBased on the perceptions of floor level employees, which is scarcely investigated in the PTQM domain, the paper presents an interesting and unique perspective on the relationship between the PTQM practices and employee work attitudes, challenging majority of previous research findings. Besides making theoretical contributions, the findings offer valuable insights into the management of Sri Lankan apparel companies by highlighting the PTQM practices, which need to be strengthened.

The purpose of this research is to assess the impact of human resource practices on intention to leave with a mediating impact of job satisfaction among the Generation Z with respect to the telecommunication sector of Sri Lanka. Employees are the most valuable asset for any organization and making them feel satisfied and retaining them at work has become the key challenge for many companies. A study was conducted with the sample of 308 Generation Z employees working in the telecommunication sector. Exploratory Factor Analysis, Multiple Regression and Structural Equation Modeling were applied with use of SPSS and AMOS to analyze the relationships of these variables. Further, to reconfirm the findings interviews were conducted and data was gathers based on thematic analysis. However, having  flexibility was most significant among all the factors which led to job satisfaction among these young employees and job satisfaction has a negative significant towards intention to leave. The outcomes of the survey results with imperial knowledge on the future workforce and how to gain employee engagement for better productivity for all organization.

Total Quality Management (TQM), adopted by organizations to improve performance, has often been reported to have failed. This paper reviews people-related TQM practices, organizational culture, organizational justice, and employee work attitudes (job satisfaction, turnover intention, and job involvement) to gain further insights into implementing TQM to yield anticipated quality performance. Employee work-related attitudes are posited as mediators in the relationship between people- related TQM practices and quality performance. In a unique contribution, the paper conceptualizes the synergistic effect of people-related TQM practices and other people-related factors (organizational culture and organizational justice) as predictors of enhanced employee work-related attitudes and quality performance.

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