Awareneness, Acceptance And Perception Of Malaysia's Vision 2020 Challenges Among University Staff Member

Two-hundred and twenty-two questionnaires were distributed to all university staff members (those in the professional and managerial groups) of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Utara Malaysia to examine: (i) their level of awareness and acceptance of Malaysia’s Vision 2020 Challenges and how they perceived the difficulties in overcoming the Challenges; (ii) the relationship between their awareness and acceptance of, and their perception of difficulties in meeting the Challenges; and (iii) the influence of socio-demographic features of gender, age, work site and work setting assignment on their acceptance of and their perception of difficulties in overcoming the Challenges. Staff member’s responses were measured using a fivepoint Likert-type scale. The returned questionnaires, 145 of them, were analyzed using the Pearson Correlation, t-Test and ANOVA to determine any significant relationship
and differences among the 10 hypotheses at the .05 level of significance. The findings revealed that: (i) there was a positive significant relationship between staff awareness and staff acceptance of the nine Challenges of Malaysia’s Vision 2020. This indicated the staffs’ awareness of the Challenges had some degree of influence in their acceptance of the Challenges; (ii) there was a relationship between staff awareness of the Challenges and their perception of the difficulties in overcoming the Challenges, at a slight correlation or negligible relationship; and (iii) there was a significant mean
difference in the staffs’ perception of the difficulties in overcoming the Challenges according to the work sites. The results indicated that there were no significant mean
differences in the staffs’ acceptance of the Challenges according to their demographic features of gender, age, work site, and work setting assignment; and there were no
significant mean differences in the staffs’ perception of the difficulties in overcoming the Challenges according to gender, age and work assignment. Staff are aware of the nine central strategic Challenges they must face in realizing the Vision. Among these nine, staff were most aware of Challenge 2--Creating a developed Malaysian society, while Challenge 5--Establishing a mature, liberal and tolerant society , appeared to be the most accepted Challenge. Challenge 8--Ensuring an economically just society, was perceived as the most difficult Challenge to
overcome. In addition, the staff were 68 percent confident that the nine Challenges could be overcome. The findings indicated the Vision is accepted and has been well communicated. Programs and actions related to the role of the universities in assisting the nation to realise the Vision were discussed.