Visiting professor conducts nationally recognized research on job connectedness

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Rashimah Rajah, Ph.D., is an international visiting lecturer who joined the Coastal Carolina University family for the 2017 Spring I semester to teach CBAD 301 and MGMT 341.

Rajah was born and raised in Singapore. She earned her Ph.D. in business management at the National University of Singapore. She conducts research on job connectedness, which is the idea that people are always connected to work matters even when away from their office. Her research also explores how mobile apps, emails and technology aggravate people’s work-life balance.

 I love Coastal’s weather, and everyone has been really great. I really have experienced the famous Southern hospitality.

Growing up in Singapore and working in Germany has given Rajah a rich perspective of the type of work-life balance different people choose to have. In Singapore, employees receive cellphones from their employers. Although some might see it as a nice bonus or a perk, a lot of Singaporeans dread it because they are afraid of being stressed and burdened with extra work. Rajah has found that Germany has a better grasp of [CPS1] work-life balance. German employees’ weekends are much more protected; they are seldom contacted about work during the weekend. Both Singapore and Germany have stable economies, so Rajah found it especially interesting to see how these two countries’ job connectedness compared.

Rajah’s dissertation on job connectedness has been presented at various conferences, such as the Academy of Management, the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychologists (SIOP), and was presented in Barcelona. Cambridge Scholars Publishing invited her to write a chapter on job connectedness as well.

Rajah hopes to further her research while in the United States by adding the American perspective. She collected data from CCU students and explained how they make an interesting sample since many of them work part time in addition to being full-time students. Rajah is interested in how they manage their work-life balance as they have to factor in working, homework and other responsibilities on a daily basis.