Determinants of job stress and intention to leave among foreign workers in oil palm plantations in Sabah, Malaysia

Malaysia is the world's second largest exporter of the palm oil after Indonesia. The oil palm cultivation is spread across peninsular and east Malaysia. While growth is projected to accelerate, the oil palm industry in Malaysia is continuously confronting with issue of acute labor shortage. The labor shortage has forced the plantation management to employ foreign workers from neighboring countries, either legally or illegally. This particular study was undertaken to understand the factors contributing to labor shortage in the oil palm plantations predicted by studying workers intention to leave. It was hypothesized in this study that ethical working climate and psychologicalcontract will influence job stress among plantation workers, which further leads to workers intention to leave oil palm plantations. This study posed 7 hypotheses with the presence of job stress as mediation variable. The study employed cross sectional research design and the data was collected from sample of 497 workers in oil palm plantations from Sandakan,Tawau, Kudat, interior and west coast of Sabah. The study used mixed sampling technique namely cluster and disproportionate stratified random sampling followed by purposive sampling considering the criterion that has been fixed. In order to analyze the data, the study applied smart PLS SEM. The findings indicated significant effect of ethical work climate and psychological contract on job stress and workers intention to leave oil palm plantations. The study also found significant mediating effect of job stress on the relationship between ethical work climate, psychological contract and workers intention to leave. The findings indicate that workers in the oil palm plantations are intended to leave due to the unethical work climate prevalent in the oil palm plantations. The unethical work climate causes low level of psychological contract between the workers and employers, leading to workers intention to leave the oil palm plantations. By extending the factors leading to job stress and worker's intention to leave, the study fills the research gap in the identification of antecedents of labor shortage in oil palm plantations. The study provides valuable insight to the existing theoretical knowledge as well as practical implications to various policy makers such as government agencies, plantation management and nongovernmental organizations for better intervention in solving the issue of labor shortage in Malaysian oil palm sector.