THE EFFECT OF VIRTUAL WORKING TEAM ON JOB PERFORMANCE: A STUDY OF AEROSPACE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

Job performance is one of most businesses’ measures to ensure that their business is sustainable, lucrative, and expandable. It is also an important level indicator in Malaysia aerospace manufacturing industry to maintain competitiveness in the global market. By the end of 2019, when a pandemic had hit the world, the situation became more challenging where the government-imposed movement controls to prevent the disease from spreading. This situation led most aerospace manufacturing companies to explore alternative measures to maintain their business operations, including introducing work from home as a virtual working team for their indirect workers. As this strategy just introduced in Malaysia aerospace manufacturing sector, the concern arises as to the extent of its impact on their job performance. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence factors in the virtual working team environment and its relationship to job performance. This study uses a quantitative causal method for analyzing the effect and relevance of independent variables on dependent variables. The scope is limited to the Malaysian aerospace manufacturing sector and its employees when dealing with global suppliers and customers. The study focuses on the employees who have worked in virtual communicate during the pandemic from the year 2020 to 2021. Therefore, the findings hope to provide valuable insights to Malaysian manufacturing organizations in effectively managing their virtual working team and enhancing their employees' job performance.