Gender influences on emotional self-regulation among Malaysian academicians

Abstract

The Malaysian government aspires to become a leading international education hub, and inline with the aspiration, the Ministry of Higher Education introduced the key performance indicators for the academicians. This resulted in the emergence of a new academic excellence norm which focused on the scholarship. This interpretive study explored the gender influences on emotional self-regulation among the academicians in Malaysia. The study also described the emotional self-regulation strategies taken by the academicians in coping with the challenges of a new academic norm. This study employed a mixed methods approach with grounded theory as the dominant qualitative approach followed by a survey. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and a total of 24 professors were interviewed over the period of nine months. An on-line survey was conducted and 595 academicians responded. Findings discovered that academicians self-regulated their emotions through motivating own self, staying focus to achieve personal target, evaluating own self, distinguishing self needs and accepting others’ differences in coping with the lack of working environment support. Through the survey, gender is correlated with emotional self-regulation with female having a higher emotional self-regulation.