Page 99 - SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES & COVID-19

12 What Next for Sustainable

Competitive Advantages in Post

Pandemic Outbreak Context

Bak Aun Teoh, Amlus Ibrahim

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper is to validate the sustainable competitive advantages (SCA) measures in Malaysian
electronics manufacturing organizations’ context after post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. In recent
years, Malaysia industrial approaches shifted from import-oriented to export-oriented on electronic manufacturing
operations (Rajah, 2015). Electrical and electronics clusters itself has become the backbone of Malaysia manufacturing
sector, where electrical and electronics industry has crowned the highest investments approved by government
within Malaysia manufacturing sector in 2013, with a total of 119 projects amounting RM 9.8 billion budget (Wahyuni
et. al., 2012). However, COVID-19 is significantly impacting product exports and caused supply chain disruptions for
electronics industries. Protocol and measures of COVID-19 aftermath in reconstruction and renewal of electronics
global supply chain crisis to sustain competitive has taken on a greater importance (Paul and Chowdhury, 2020).
Adoption of SCA strategies have become relatively crucial in this context. Electronics manufacturing organizations
in Malaysia may regain and sustain organizational competitive advantages in economic crisis if they are able to offer
valuable and essential goods to the world electronics market, and if it differs from the competition in terms of providing
a better quality product (Salem, 2015). Therefore, SCA practices conceived in this study include lower cost advantages
(LCA) and differentiation advantage (DFA).

STUDY DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

The study adopts quantitative research approaches, where electrical and electronics manufacturing industries in
Malaysia were to be studied. Managers and senior executive personals that have at least 3 years working experiences
across Malaysia electrical and electronics manufacturing industries are the suitable candidates for this study as they
can provide a whole insight on development and projects (Hilmi et.al., 2010), especially in post pandemic outbreak
context. The sample size will be determined using G*Power analysis. A systematic sampling technique will be used and
every nth element after the first element will be selected from the list of Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM)
directory. Questionnaires will then email to the selected senior executives or managers and two weeks will be given to
participants to respond and complete the survey. The study adopted Narentheren and Haim (2014) conceptualization
and operationalization of sustainable competitive advantages measures with two dimensions, namely LCA and DFA.
This research selects lower cost and differentiation advantage typology to study the Malaysian electronic manufacturing
industries in in post pandemic outbreak as these two dimensions has been successfully used in past researches which is
easily be understood by most respondents (Auzair and Langfield, 2005). The respondents will be given a total of eleven
items as shown in Appendix to respond on the statement in a five-point ordinal Likert scale ranging from “1” indicates
“Strongly Disagree” to “5” indicates “Strongly Agree”. Structural equation modelling (SEM) method will then be used to
test on the measurement’s content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity.

FINDINGS

The study is expected that all two dimensions, LCA and DFA are highly suited for measuring sustainable competitive
advantages of Malaysia electronics industries in post pandemic outbreak context. Besides, the findings are expected
to ascertain the strategies to sustain the competitive advantages within an organization, which is underpinned by
resource-based theory.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

This paper is a novel research in post pandemic outbreak context, and the result of study is expected to contribute to the
knowledge by examining the SCA measurements in Malaysian context as measurement validations studies are barely
found. The application of SEM in this study also helps to promote a better quality and accurate research results which

98 International Conference on Sustainability
(5 Sustainability Practitioner Conference)
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