Skills and competencies, welfare, commitment and motivation among army personnel in disaster preparedness at East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia

This study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between skills and competencies, welfare, commitment and motivation among army personnel in disaster preparedness in East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The scale of the occurrence of flood disaster are often unexpected by their very nature, leaving little time, if any, to prepare. That is why it is important to put time into individual/personal sense of security planning and preparation long before flood strikes. A total of 457 army personnel have significant consisting of six infantry battallions are involved in the study, which is located in Kelantan and Terengganu. This study was carried out using the quantitative research method through the developing the questionnaire survey and distributed to the sample of study. Meanwhile, the statistical analyses used in this study are descriptive and analytical constructs. The findings were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 22.0 and a path model with 9 hypotheses testing was analysed using the SmartPLS software Version 3.0. The coefficient of reliability scales using the Composite Reliability analysis showed that all values are greater than 0.6. The findings denote that the level of skills and competencies, commitment, motivation and leadership behaviour among army personnel is high, whereas the disaster preparedness and welfare are at a moderate level. The data were also analysed using the structural equation modelling advanced statistical technique in order to determine the correlation analysis of direct effect and to observe the role of leadership behaviour as a moderating variable in the relationship between human resources elements (skills and competencies, welfare, commitment and motivation) in the army personnel achievement of disaster preparedness. The study concluded that all the human resources elements studied have significant effects on disaster preparedness; however, the moderation effect of leadership behaviour towards each of direct effect relationships was not significant. Statistically, the leadership behaviour does not give the biggest impact to each infantry personnel and the preparedness level can be improved. Discussion of findings, limitations and recommendations for future study are also discussed in the later part of the study.