Authors : Rozila Ahmad, Nor Azimin Zainol and Hamimi Omar
Abstract: The hotel industry is susceptible to environmental changes such as changes in law and regulations. In Malaysia, the hotel industry is afflicted by the increasing labour cost due to the implementation of a national minimum wage policy that started in 2012. As in other countries, the labour cost increased has affected organization’s employment practices. Despite being a labour intensive industry, literature on human resources issues focusing on Malaysian hotel industry in relation to Minimum Wage Order (MWO) is scarce. The hotel industry is labour intensive and many of its employees are minimum wage earners. Thus, it is crucial to investigate and discuss how the policy affects hotel organizations employment practices. For this purpose, twenty Langkawi hotel managers were interviewed. This study discovered that the impact of MWO varies and it is influenced by the hotel’s volume of business. Contradictory to the literature, it does not affect the employment of female in the workforce. This study contributes to human resource management literature by giving an insight to the impact of MWO on employment in hotels in a developing country. Besides adding number of literatures related to MWO and human resource issues, it may also serve as guide for the hotel managers in other developing countries that are new to MWO.
Rozila Ahmad, Nor Azimin Zainol and Hamimi Omar, 2016. The Impact of Minimum Wage Order on Employment in Langkawi Hotels. The Social Sciences, 11: 7172-7177.