Correlates of Stakeholders Engagement towards Government Programs

(GP) in Malaysia

Faridah Ibrahim

, Siti Maziha Mustapha

, Kho Suet Nie

, Amli Hazlin Ahmad Mokhtar

, Dil Froz

Jan Salem Shah

Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur,Kajang, Malaysia

Taylors University, Malaysia

Keywords:

Stakeholders, Engagement, External Public, Government Programs, Participation.

Abstract:

The implementation of government’s program is vital to the development and economic growth of a country.

Stakeholder engagement theory posits that the successful implementation of policies and programs will depend

on how well the programs are accepted by both internal and external stakeholders. This study looks into the

external stakeholders, namely the citizens of Malaysia and their engagement towards government programs.

This study is carried out using survey research method via self-administered questionnaires on 361 respon-

dents in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. Research questions were formulated to answer the following: to what

extent is the level of participation among the stakeholders in government programs; to identify what factors

that are related to stakeholders’ engagement; and to determine which predictors contribute most to stakeholder

engagement. From the survey, it was found that several important factors were related to the stakeholders’

engagement towards government programs. Among the correlates were media dependence, governmental

proximity, leadership, community integration and perception of current issues. The study found that gov-

ernmental proximity and leadership are the most important predictors of stakeholder engagement. The study

implied that strong participation empowered the people to be engaged either physically or virtually towards

the implementation of the government programs. It is recommended that future government programs include

peoples’ participation in terms of idea contributions and decision making for the successful implementation of

the programs.

1 INTRODUCTION

The early Stakeholder Engagement theory (SET) is

concerned with the understanding of relationships be-

tween organisation and individuals and groups who

can affect it or be affected by it, which could be en-

gineered to achieve success (Freeman, 1983). Stake-

holder engagement has become an important factor

in organisations, both private and public, and ﬁnd-

ings from research have shown a strong link between

engagement and outcomes of organisations. Nalick

et al. (2016) found in their study that there is an

intersection between organisation and stakeholders

where there is a two-way information ﬂow and this

will encourage acceptability among the stakeholders

through sustained collaborative relationships. Studies

by various researchers (Freeman and McVea, 2001;

Greenwpod, 2007; Saks, 2006; Ali and Sonderling,

2017) have shown that the key drivers of engagement

are communication, bottom-up information ﬂow, and

proximity or close relationship between stakeholders

and committed organisational leaders. These stud-

ies have also identiﬁed gaps and issues pertaining to

predictors of engagement and the factors that could

help to increase engagement. Studies also showed

that much of the research has been done in the U.S

and hence more research is needed to explore in other

countries where the concept of engagement is still in

its infancy.

Employee voice can be deﬁned as the capacity for

employees to provide ideas and views into decisions

that are made by organisations for the wellbeing of

the people (Bahtiar et al., 2018). It has been found

that one of the main drivers of employee engagement

is for the employees to have the chance to provide

feedback from bottom-up (Truss et al., 2006). In an

organisational setting, employee involvement is con-

sidered as a ‘soft’ strategy by the leaders to tap greater

participation and productivity. Likewise, in a larger

organisation such as the government, it is imperative

406

Ibrahim, F., Mustapha, S., Nie, K., Mokhtar, A. and Shah, D.

Correlates of Stakeholders Engagement towards Government Programs (GP) in Malaysia.

DOI: 10.5220/0009184704060413

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education and Humanity (ICoSEEH 2019) - Sustainable Development in Developing Country for Facing Industrial

Revolution 4.0, pages 406-413

ISBN: 978-989-758-464-0

to get people’s engagement in policies and govern-

mental programs in order to achieve optimum output

for the effort and initiatives invested. According to

Ali and Sonderling (2017), lack of genuine participa-

tion in development process could be one of the ma-

jor reasons for the failure of development projects in

achieving their goals.

2 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Stakeholder engagement, also known as ‘Citizenship

Participation’ is an important element in nation build-

ing and maintaining an equitable power balance in an

organisation or a country is vital (Greenwpod, 2007;

Ihugba and Osuji, 2011). Stakeholders, who can

be categorised as internal and external stakeholders

according to Hill and Jones (2001), are deﬁned as

“those groups and individuals who can affect or are

affected by the achievement of an organisation’s ob-

jectives”(Freeman and McVea, 2001).

Strategic use of stakeholder engagement will re-

sult in cost effective investment and successful im-

plementation of programs or policies by an organi-

sation or a country. This study looks at the relation-

ship of selected factors with stakeholders engagement

in the implementation of the Malaysian government

programmes (GP) under Pakatan Harapan (PH). The

Malaysian corporate entities and the higher echelon

have been talking about engagement in recent years

ever since US former President Barack Obama in-

troduced global engagement in his country’s foreign

policy. Where Malaysia is concerned, stakeholder en-

gagement in GP is a necessity since it may lead to

the successes or failures of programs initiated by the

government. Hence, it is important to explore to what

extent stakeholders engagement contribute to the suc-

cessful implementation of government programs and

to what extent are the relationships between the criti-

cal factors and stakeholders’ engagement.

3 PROBLEM STATEMENT

Stakeholder engagement is a crucial factor in national

development and nation building. Various studies in

this area have found that stakeholder engagement can

positively beneﬁt both the organisation and society

(Freeman and McVea, 2001; ?; Sandeep et al., 19;

Ihugba and Osuji, 2011; Faridah et al., 2019). Like-

wise, Noland and Philips (2010) argued that stake-

holders engagement must be intergral to an organisa-

tion’s strategy if it is to achieve real success (Noland

and Philips, 2010; Idris, 2018).

Malaysia as a nation that can be considered as “an

organisation” has implemented various programs for

the sake of national development. Under the previous

govenment, the Government Transformation Program

(GTP), through GTP 1.0 and 2.0, were aimed at im-

proving the quality of life of Malaysian citizen. Ear-

lier studies by the Performance Management Deliv-

ery Unit (PEMANDU) of Malaysia found that more

than half of the respondents were aware of GTP’s tra-

jectory and goals. However, on average the rakyat’s

perception of the GTP came in at 7.4 out of 10. This

study by PEMANDU surveyed 2040 respondents to

assess the general public awareness and perception of

the GTP. However, the study did not dwell into factors

that predict stakeholder engagement towards govern-

ment’s program.

Among the developing countries, Malaysia has al-

ways embarked on major reform and modernisation

in most of their development programmes. From the

past government to the current new government un-

der PH, much attention has been given to improve

the quality of life of the citizen. With the change of

government, more programs are initiated with simi-

lar goals and expectations. However, these programs

will not be successful without the full support and

commitment from the people. To ensure that there is

return of investment, the government needs to strate-

gise in its planning and implementation. Therefore,

it is timely that such a study be conducted to inves-

tigate the important correlates and predictors of en-

gagement. The following research questions were for-

mulated to address this problem:

4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• To what extent is the level of engagement among

the people towards Government programs?

• Are there signiﬁcant relationships among selected

factors with stakeholders’ engagement?

• Which of the predictors contributes the most to

stakeholder engagement?

5 LITERATURE REVIEW

In an early deﬁnition, Kahn (1990) described engage-

ment as to be psychologically as well as physically

present when occupying and performing a role in an

organisation or other setting. Truss et al. (2006) de-

ﬁned employee engagement simply as “passion for

work”. Robinson et al. (2004) deﬁned engagement as

‘one step up from commitment’ and has often likened

Correlates of Stakeholders Engagement towards Government Programs (GP) in Malaysia

407

the term to established constructs such as ‘organi-

sational commitment’ and ‘organisational citizenship

behaviour’(Robinson, 2006). Therefore, organisa-

tional commitment differs from engagement in that it

refers to individuals’ attitude and attachment towards

their organisations. Kahn (1990) argued that the em-

ployees or people in the organisation feel obliged to

be more deeply involved in their performance as a

form of repayment in exchange for the resources they

received from their organisation. If organisation fails

to provide these resources, individuals are more likely

to withdraw or disengage themselves from these roles.

There is also a general understanding that there is

a connection between employee engagement and or-

ganisation and that the outcomes of engagement are

positive (Saks, 2006).

Gallup Organisation (2004) cited an international

survey which showed encouraging evidences that or-

ganisation can only reach their full potential by emo-

tionally engaging employees and customers. The

Gallup ﬁndings also showed that higher workplace

engagement predicts higher earnings among their

publicly traded business. However, ﬁndings on en-

gagement at the international level showed some in-

teresting trends. Findings from a global survey by

Towers Perrin (Seijts and Crim, 2006) showed that

Mexico and Brazil had the highest percentages of en-

gaged employees, while highly developed countries

such as Japan and Italy had the largest percentages of

disengaged employees. This research also indicated

that the employees expressed far more empowerment

especially in tasks that affected their work and lives.

It was found that leaders at these highly engaged or-

ganisations, created a trusting and challenging envi-

ronment, in which employees were motivated to in-

novate in order to move the organisations forward.

This indicted that good leadership is an important ele-

ment in enhancing engagement among organisational

members and people as a whole.

According to the Towers Perrin survey, building

engagement is a continuous process and that the vital

factors for engagement include strong leadership, ac-

countability, autonomy, a sense of control over one’s

environment and opportunities for development. The

research also showed evidence that the most impor-

tant driver of engagement is leader’s interest in the

people’s well-being.

In the current globalised world, with the prolif-

eration of new media technology, there is a tremen-

dous improvement in information dissemination. Cre-

ating proximity with the people and providing ade-

quate information are one of the ways to engage with

the people. Hong (2013) found that a vast majority

of US politicians has a Twitter account as an instru-

ment of engagement (Hong, 2013). Ali Salman et al.

(2018) reiterated that people have moved to a new

internet-based medium and digital media for politi-

cal engagement and support in Malaysia. This view

is supported by Samsudin (2018) who contended that

the emergence of internet facilities had inﬂuenced and

changed the ways citizens participate. Bahtiar et al.

(2018) suggested that participation provide citizens of

a country to express their views and aspirations and

be able to participate in decision making that may af-

fect their future. Likewise in Indonesia, Ika (2018)

reported that technologies had transformed govern-

ments to become more transparent and more acces-

sible to citizens.

However, despite the beneﬁts and advantages of

the social media, the government is facing challenges

due to the fact that social media are difﬁcult to con-

trol and monitor as compared to conventional or tra-

ditional media. While the new media have the po-

tential to disseminate information quickly and beneﬁt

the users, the content could create doubt making it

difﬁcult for users to believe. Social media is blamed

for promoting immorality and usage of inappropriate

language (Ali and Sonderling, 2017; Salman, 2009;

Salman et al., 2018). Along similar lines, Ika (2018)

also argued that neither government nor citizens bene-

ﬁtted from feedbacks and collaboration that new tech-

nology could facilitate because the government are

still doing their jobs of spreading the same old propa-

ganda through new forms of technologies. Hence, it

can be seen that the conventional media that are usu-

ally handled by professional and trained journalists

have the upper hand.

6 METHODOLOGY

This study embarked on a quantitative research using

survey method via questionnaire to collect data. A to-

tal of 361 respondents in the Klang Valley, Malaysia,

were surveyed through self-administered question-

naires. The questionnaires were distributed to re-

spondents from a sample chosen based on stratiﬁed

sampling in which four zones in Klang Valley were

selected namely Ampang, Kajang, Shah Alam and

Lembah Pantai. The duration for data collection was

three weeks in the month of April 2019. The question-

naires were constructed based on the research ques-

tions identiﬁed from the problem statement and liter-

ature reviews. The following research questions acted

as the baseline for this study:

• To what extent is the level of participation among

the people towards Government programs?

ICoSEEH 2019 - The Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education, and Humanity

408

• Are there signiﬁcant relationships among selected

factors with stakeholders’ engagement?

• Which of the predictors contributes the most to

stakeholder engagement?

7 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

7.1 Demographic Proﬁle of

Respondents

The focus of this research is on the external stake-

holders namely the citizens. A total of 360 respon-

dents answered a self-administered questionnaire. All

of the respondents were located in the Klang Valley,

Malaysia. The respondents comprised of 45.7% (165)

male and 54.3% (196) female. A majority of them

were Bachelor and Masters degree holders 46% (166),

followed by the rest who were school-leavers. About

70.4% (254) were from urban areas, 19.1% (69) from

sub urban and 10.5% (38) from rural areas.

In terms of age, majority of the respondents were

from the younger adults between the age of 26-25

years (36.8%), 24 years below (34.4%), the adults

from the age range of 36-45 years recorded 13.6% and

above 46 years,15.2%. Majority worked in the private

sectors (64.3%) compared to public sectors (4.7%)

and the rest were students and business people. About

95% received their education locally and only 5% for-

eign educated. Majority received monthly income be-

tween RM2000 to RM4000 (35.1%), followed by be-

low RM2000 (30.2%) above RM4001 (18%) and no

income (16.9%) mainly from the students’ group.

7.2 Reliability Test

To answer the research questions, items for the se-

lected variables (both Dependent and Independent

variables) were analysed. All of the items were

measured using 5-point Likert scales ranging from

strongly disagree to strongly agree. A reliability test

was conducted to check on the appropriateness, ac-

ceptability, reliability and dependability of the instru-

ments. Table 1 showed the reliability for the selected

variables used in this study. The Cronbach’s alpha for

all items recorded a high score within the range of .70

to .80 indicating the appropriateness and the reliabil-

ity of the items used.

7.3 Level of Engagement

The extent in the level of engagement among stake-

holders was analysed using descriptive analysis. Ta-

Table 1: Reliability Test.

Variables Number of

Items

Cronbach’s

alpha

Current

issues

11 .808

Participation/

Engagement

14 .784

Traditional

media

6 .791

New Media 6 .798

Governmental

proximity

14 .752

Leadership 9 .766

Community

Integration

10 .799

ble 2 showed the differences in the average mean il-

lustrated by the selected variables. The results indi-

cated that community integration recorded the high-

est mean 3.49 (SD=0.505), followed by new media

dependence with the mean score of 3.47 (SD=0.609).

The third is current issues which recorded mean 3.39

(SD=0.444). The fourth is leadership which recorded

mean 3.133 (SD=0.723). Leadership came forth place

with mean score of 3.134 (SD=0.723). Traditional

media recorded the lowest mean 2.89 (SD=0.678).

These ﬁndings indicated that the respondents’ com-

munity integration, new media exposure, current is-

sues, leadership, governmental proximity received

encouraging mean scores with a small dispersion in-

dicated by the standard deviation.

For the community integration domain, stakehold-

ers across all levels agree that they belong to the com-

munity; know the rules, feel accepted by the commu-

nity; can be independent, feel close to others, know

the people well and like where they lived. For the

governmental proximity, the stakeholders agreed that

the government’s work positively impacted their lives,

satisfaction with the beneﬁts package, mutual trust

and respect, and the government-people work rela-

tionship. In terms of leadership, the agreement level

is for teamwork, concern for the people’s wellbeing,

commitment to work, bridging the people with gov-

ernment and practicing of uniform rules.

For the media dependence domain, the computed

mean for the traditional media and new media do not

show a big difference. The stakeholders used both

media to get information regarding government pro-

grams and also to update their knowledge and get-

ting in-depth and instantaneous information. They

also seek the media for clariﬁcation on information

pertaining to the government programs. For the cur-

rent issues domain, much have been highlighted on

the stakeholders’ agreement on several political, eco-

Correlates of Stakeholders Engagement towards Government Programs (GP) in Malaysia

409

nomic and social factors such as rate of employment,

corruption, crime, rise in petrol prices, Sales and Ser-

vices Tax - SST 2.0, and media freedom.

Table 2: Mean and Standard Deviation of Selected Vari-

ables in Relation to Stakeholder Engagement.

Computed

Mean

Computed

Std. Devia-

tion

Current is-

sues

3.380 0.444

Traditional

Media

2.892 0.678

New Media 3.465 0.609

Govt. Prox-

imity

3.036 0.589

Leadership 3.134 0.723

Community

Integration

3.488 0.505

7.4 Correlates of Stakeholders’

Engagement

Correlation analysis using Pearson one-tailed was

used to determine if there is any signiﬁcant relation-

ship between engagement (dependent variable) and

the independent variables namely current issues, de-

pendence on traditional media and new media, gov-

ernment proximity, leadership and community inte-

gration. Table 3 showed the correlation between

the identiﬁed variables with stakeholder engagement.

The study found that four factors were signiﬁcantly

correlated to engagement in the implementation of

government programs. Based on Guildford (1956)

rule of thumb, the relationships between the gov-

ernment proximity (r=0.670, p<0.05) and leadership

(r=0.570, p<0.05) with stakeholder engagement are

moderately related. Three variables of the selected

variables (traditional media: r=0.361; current issues:

r=0.147; community integration r=0.158) are weakly

related to stakeholder engagement. It is interesting

to note that dependency on new media showed no re-

lationship with stakeholder engagement (r = 0.089).

The study supports earlier ﬁndings by Kahn (1990)

and Seijts & Crim (2006) that emphasized on the

importance of leaders’ encouragement and proxim-

ity between leaders and people in enhancing engage-

ment among organisational members and people as

a whole. Traditional media had a weak relationship

with stakeholder engagement whilst new media had

no relationship prove to show that the stakeholders

depend more on the traditional media to obtain in-

formation on government programs compared to the

new media. This could be due to the level of trust

they have on the new media which are said to be quite

loose in terms of control and too often were equated

with the usage of misappropriate words. The results

supported earlier observations by Ika (2018) and Ali

Salman et al. (2018).

Table 3: Correlations Between Selected Variables and

Stakeholder Engagement (N=361).

Variables r Signiﬁcance

Current is-

sues

0.147 .005*

Traditional

media

0.361 .000*

New Media 0.089 .090

Government

proximity

0.670 .000*

Leadership 0.570 .000*

Community

Integration

0.158 .003*

7.5 Predictors of Stakeholder’s

Engagement

The results of the regression analysis (stepwise) for

the predictors of stakeholder were presented in table

4 (Appendix).

Prior to the test, several tests were undertaken to

check on normality and multicollinearity. The results

showed all items of the date were normally distributed

and there was no issue of Multicolinearity.

The criterion variable, engagement was tested us-

ing six predictors which were, current issues, depen-

dence on traditional media and new media, govern-

mental proximity, leadership and community integra-

tion. The regressional analysis showed four mod-

els which were statistically signiﬁcant. As shown in

Model 1, the best predictor was governmental prox-

imity which showed β=0.670,p<0.05. This means

that governmental proximity accounted for 67% of

explained variance. Model 2 identiﬁed two variables

mainly governmental proximity (β=0.526, p<0.05)

and leadership (β=0.219, p<0.05). The two vari-

ables accounted for 74.5% of explained variance,

showing an increase of 6.20%. Model 3 identiﬁed

three variables which includes governmental proxim-

ity (β=0.498, p<0.05), leadership (β=0.202, p<0.05)

and traditional media (β=0.115, p<0.05). The three

variables accounted for 81.2% of explained.

Model 4 identiﬁed four variables namely gov-

ernmental proximity ((β=0.515, p<0.05), leadership

(β=0.215, p<0.05), dependence on traditional me-

dia (β=0.112, p<0.05) and community integration

(β=0.079, p<0.05). The four variables accounted for

92.1% of explained variance, showing an increase of

25.1%. The stepwise regressional models showed that

with the inclusion of three variables in model 4, the

ICoSEEH 2019 - The Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education, and Humanity

410

Table 4: Regressional Analysis (Stepwise) between Engagement and Selected Variables (N=361).

Model Unstandardized Coefﬁ-

cients

Standardized

Coefﬁcients

t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

1 (Constant) 6.035 1.975 3.055 .002

Govt. proximity .780 .046 .670 17.091 .000

2 (Constant) 4.072 1.982 2.055 .041

Govt. proximity .612 .059 .526 10.344 .000

Leadership .322 .075 .219 4.299 .000

3 (Constant) 1.494 2.164 .690 .490

Govt. proximity .579 .060 .498 9.679 .000

Leadership .297 .075 .202 3.974 .000

Traditional Media .271 .096 .115 2.829 .005

4 (Constant) 5.467 2.954 1.851 .065

Govt. proximity .599 .060 .515 9.910 .000

Leadership .317 .075 .215 4.219 .000

Traditional media .263 .096 .112 2.750 .006

Community Inte-

gration

-.150 .076 -.079 -1.967 .050

a. Dependent Variable: Participation 3

variance explained is only 25.1% compared to model

1 that showed governmental proximity alone con-

tributed 67.0% of the variance. This proved that gov-

ernmental proximity is the best predictor for stake-

holder engagement. This is followed by leadership.

The two predictors, governmental proximity and lead-

ership came out as the strongest predictor variables

for stakeholder engagement.

These ﬁndings have supported various main-

stream ﬁndings from scholars in stakeholder engage-

ment (Kahn, 1990; Bahtiar et al., 2018). Kahn (1990)

argued that the employees or people in the organisa-

tion feel obliged to be more deeply involved in their

performance as a form of repayment in exchange for

the resources they received from their organisation.

Hong (2013) found that a vast majority of US

politicians has a Twitter account as an instrument of

engagement. Creating proximity with the people and

providing adequate information are one of the ways

to engage with the people. These ﬁndings also sup-

ported other Stakeholder Engagement theorists (Free-

man, ; Freeman, 1984; Freeman, 1984; Freeman and

McVea, 2001; Greenwpod, 2007; Saks, 2006; Ali and

Sonderling, 2017) who argued that the key drivers of

engagement are communication, bottom-up informa-

tion ﬂow, and proximity or close relationship between

stakeholders and committed organisational leaders.

The basic tenet of stakeholder engagement such

as participation, proximity, leadership, media depen-

dence, community integration, state of current issues

is selected as the baseline to analyse the data in this

study. The ﬁndings of the study revealed that gov-

ernmental proximity which is an indication of close

government-citizen relationship had formed a catalyst

that make stakeholders want to be engaged with the

government in the implementation of various govern-

mental programs. The good and positive relationship

were basically due to trust, respect, inclusivity of the

government, satisfaction with work culture and the

beneﬁts package provided. Another important factor

is that the stakeholders believed that the government’s

work had positively impacted their lives. Accord-

ing to Nalick (2016) Stakeholder Engagement theory

stressed that there is a point of intersection between

the government and the stakeholders on certain pro-

grams and activities. Such a situation had encour-

aged acceptability and triggered engagement among

the stakeholders which in turn will sustain collabora-

tive governmental-citizen relationships (Nalick et al.,

2016).

The stakeholders were positive and accepting to-

wards the efforts made by the government to enhance

their wellbeing. This is in line with various studies in

this area which have found that stakeholder engage-

ment can positively beneﬁt both the organisation and

society (Freeman & McVea 2001; Greenwood, 2007;

Ihugba & Osuji 2011). Similarly, the ﬁndings of this

study supported the views expressed by these schol-

ars that proximity and closeness of the governmental-

citizen relationship had positively led to engagement.

This study also found participation which stressed

the stakeholder’s involvement in decision making, the

freedom to voice out complaints about pressing is-

sues as well as giving feedbacks and suggestions is

an important element in engagement. Ali and Son-

derling (2017) had identiﬁed in their study that gen-

uine participation is the missing link in the develop-

ment process that had caused failure of development

Correlates of Stakeholders Engagement towards Government Programs (GP) in Malaysia

411

projects in achieving their goals. Bahtiar et al. (2018)

also suggested that participation provide citizens of a

country to express their views and aspirations and be

able to participate in decision making that may affect

their future.

This study also identiﬁed the prevalent role of

leadership as an enhancement factor in stakeholder’s

engagement in the implementation of GP. The ﬁnd-

ings showed strong leadership that emphasised mu-

tual trust and respect, commitment to a good work

culture, teamwork and a sense of social responsibil-

ity, and the use of uniform policies are essential el-

ements that had charted a positive path towards en-

gagement. This is similar with the views by Robin-

son et al. (2004) who identiﬁed key factors associated

with stakeholder engagement included behaviors such

as effective leadership, two-way communication, high

levels of collaboration and teamwork, a commitment

to stakeholder wellbeing and clear, accessible policies

and practices (?; Simmons, 2003).

On the other hand, the ﬁndings of this study

showed interesting revelations. Despite the bene-

ﬁts and advantages of the new media which con-

tributed tremendously to the current global societies,

this study found that the traditional media have a com-

petitive edge over the new media. Traditional me-

dia which include newspapers, television and radio

showed a weak relationship with stakeholder engage-

ment in the implementation of GP while new media

have no relationship with stakeholder engagement.

Traditional media were sought by stakeholders in this

study to obtain information especially in-depth and

instantaneous information on government programs,

update knowledge also seek clariﬁcation. This ﬁnd-

ing echoed earlier contention by Ali Salman (2009)

who argued while the new media have the potential

to disseminate information quickly and beneﬁt the

users, the content could create doubt making it dif-

ﬁcult for users to believe. Some of the reasons identi-

ﬁed were immorality and usage of inappropriate lan-

guage. Hence, it can be seen that the traditional or

conventional media that are usually handled by pro-

fessional and trained journalists are more acceptable

when it comes to the transmission of governmental

programs.

8 CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study via survey clearly indicate the

positive responses of the respondents towards stake-

holder’s engagement in the implementation of gov-

ernment program. Much of the responses were sub-

jected to how they perceived their proximity with the

government and the effective leadership exhibited by

the government via the appointed leaders and repre-

sentatives as front-liners. The stakeholder’s engage-

ment in this study is also triggered by their exposure

and media dependency especially the conventional

media. Also play an important role in engagement

is their level of community integration that dwell into

their sense of belonging and comfort living in the en-

vironment. Apart from that, how they perceive the

current situation in the country politically, economi-

cally and socially, also spelled out their engagement.

Negative perception will lead to disengagement, un-

productive venture and even hostility. In conclusion,

this study is able to address the level of engagement

among the stakeholders and what are the factors that

correlate and predict engagement in the implemen-

tation of government programs. This study has suc-

cessfully showed that engagement of stakeholders is

predominant in the successful implementation of pro-

grams by the government. It is hoped that future im-

plementation of government programs will take into

account the necessity to engage with people for a

healthier return of investment and the betterment of

the nation’s people in the future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was conducted as part of a larger

research under the title : Reconstructing Stake-

holders Engagement Theory through the im-

plementation of Government Programs (GP).

funded by Fundamental Research Grant Scheme

(FRGS/1/2017/SS09/IUKL/01/1), Ministry of Higher

Education, Malaysia.

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