Impact of foreign workers on labour productivity: analysis of firm level data Online publication date: Mon, 29-Jun-2015
by Rahmah Ismail
International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management (IJPQM), Vol. 16, No. 1, 2015
Abstract: The majority of foreign workers in Malaysia are unskilled and more than half come from Indonesia. Nowadays, labour productivity is the main concern of firms in a bid to reduce the cost of production and be more competitive. Therefore, the issue is whether foreign workers have an adverse effect on labour productivity in Malaysia. The present paper attempts to investigate this issue using data from 279 companies in 2011 collected by means of a field survey. The companies are located in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Pahang, Terengganu and Johor in Malaysia. The labour productivity model is estimated using local and foreign workers, skilled labour, semiskilled labour and unskilled; labour as independent variables. The results show that skilled foreign workers do not contribute significantly to labour productivity. Instead, the unskilled and semiskilled foreign workers have a significant and negative impact on labour productivity.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management (IJPQM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook