Human resource factors and disaster response management mediated by commitment and motivation

Disaster is a serious disruption that cause a lot of damage, human suffering, poverty as well as community’s psychological and emotional disturbance. In Malaysia, infantry personnel are one of the first mover to provide response and conduct search and rescue during the disaster. The human resource factors together with commitment and
motivation are important to consider in performing their tasks during disaster response. Hence, the objective of this study is to determine the level of infantry personnel’s human resource factors, i.e. knowledge, skills and abilities, training, welfare, morale, commitment and motivation in performing disaster response operations. In addition, this study aims to determine the relationship between infantry personnel’s human resource factors with effective disaster response management, mediated by commitment and motivation. The research design of this study is descriptive and correlational, applying quantitative research method. The respondents of this study is 1999 infantry personnel’s consisting of officers and other ranks in Sarawak. 400 questionnaires were distributed to these infantry personnel in Sarawak in four selected infantry regiments by using stratified random sampling method. The questionnaire survey was analyzed using SPSS version 22.0 and SmartPLS version 3.0 to analyze the descriptive analysis, correlational analysis, algorithms and bootstrapping. The findings show that the respondents have the knowledge, skills and abilities from the training given as well as good morale in performing their task and satisfied with the welfare provided by the military towards themselves and their families. There is also a significant positive relationship between human resource factors with effective disaster response management, commitment and motivation. Moreover, commitment and motivation is a significant complementary partial mediating effect on the relationship between human resource factors with effective disaster response management. However, the result from overall analysis shows that there is no mediation effect of commitment as mediator but there is full mediation effect of motivation between human resource factors with disaster response management. In general, the respondents indicated that the current disaster response management is somewhat effectual. The findings suggest that the infantry personnel do require additional knowledge, skills, abilities and training in conducting disaster response operations through comprehensive disaster operations training and education. This is because the current training programs provided is focuses on combat training, specialized skills and leadership development courses. This study also found that infantry personnel’s welfare, morale, commitment and motivation have to be considered and cared for by the superiors in the military in order for them to perform disaster response operations effectively and the objectives of the operations could be achieved.