CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.0 Chapter Overview - DSpace@UM

(2001) at 15.4%, and Koch & McGrath (1996) at 6.5%. The lower response rate wasbasically due to the absence of formal succession planning in many organizations inMalaysia and also resistance from firms to participate in the survey as the informationrequired in the survey was highly confidential in nature. Table 4.1 showed the overallresult of response rate.Table 4.1: Response RateMethod of QuestionnaireDistributionNumber of QuestionnairesSent Returned UsablePost 300 35 35E-mail 100 48 46By hand 100 27 27Total 500 110 108Rate of usable response 21.6%4.2 Characteristics Of The Demographic ProfileThe respondents of the survey were from two main industrial sectors in Malaysia, namelyservices (74.1%) and manufacturing (25.9%). Most of the respondents (73.1%) whoanswered the questionnaires were those who had direct accessibility to management orhuman resource information such as Managing Director or Chief Executive Officer, Headof Human Resource/Human Resource Manager, and Human Resource Consultant. Interms of the age of the firms, 18.5% of the responding firms were established for lessthan 10 years, 23.2% of the firms were established between 10 – 15 years, and 58.3% ofthe firms were established for more than 15 years.50