Why are Religious Muslim Employees’ Self -esteem and Motivation not Realized during Covid-19 Pandemic? A Case of Hotel Industry in Malaysia

Beginning in December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we do business globally, particularly the hospitality industry. Additionally, preventive strategies as quarantine, , social distancing, hand hygiene, and face covering were imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease. In other words, many countries declared a state of emergency to support the moves. Consequently, hotel employees suffered the negative impact of the lockdown. Despite significant indications that COVID-19 impacted the essential workers, there was a lack of studies conducted. Hence, this research attempts to investigate self-esteem as mediating the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation. A pilot test involving 30 respondents was utilized to test the reliability and validity of the research instruments before implementing the quantitative research design. By utilizing a the web-based cross-sectional survey, a total of 210 employees who work in a few selected big hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, responded to the online survey. Multiple Regression and Hayes’ mediation process analysi s were deployed from the SPSS version 28 to conduct the statistical analysis. The results revealed self-esteem did mediate the relationship between religiosity and motivation. In addition, it was found that the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation was significant. This meant that employees with strong religiosity have high self-esteem. In turn, this will increase their motivation. Finally, this study evidenced faith as facilitating employees to gain strength to move forward. For this reason, organizations should develop training programs for employees to gain faith as this ensures employees to continue remain motivated to face challenges inside and outside the organization


Introduction
The pandemic COVID-19 which started in December, 2019, had been chaotic to businesses worldwide. The hospitality sector, in particular was greatly affected. Most countries implemented partial or total border closures, reinforced by immigration restrictions; hence affecting the vast majority of the world's population. For the hospitality industry, millions were unexpectedly unemployed. Accordingly, speculation about economic growth, and global concerns about the ongoing COVID-19 and its potential waves, the industry would be among the last to recover (Pizam et al., 2020). According to Uğur and Akbıyık (2020), the impact of the global pandemic COVID-19 on the hospitality industry caused a great deal of uncertainty and chaos in the other industries. Failing closely was the tourism industry, which experienced sharply falling revenues. In 2020, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNTWO) announced that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause the international tourism to go down by 22% in quarter 1 and expected to decline further to 60-80% over the whole year. In other words, there would be 67 million fewer international tourists up to March. These statistics when translated revealed US$80 billion in lost exports. According to UNWTO (2020) the possible future scenarios crisis would have shock effects on both the supply and demand-side of the tourism industry (the source was taken from the data of COVID-19 travel restriction of the UNWTO). The first to be identified was the supply aspect. For example, in countries that had announced border closures, the entrance bank and the cancelation of visitors' visas, and so on, had caused the supply of the hotel sector to deteriorate dramatically (Uğur & Akbıyık, 2020). Next to be affected was the demand side. As the prevention of travel and accommodation were related to health and hygiene problems, the number of clients were expected to be reduced tremendously (Uğur & Akbıyık, 2020). With both supply and demand drastically decreased, the tourism industry would suffer substantial losses. For this reason, many hotels had to downsize the number of employees. Consequently, this affected the morale of the employees. Having said, this study sought to identify the current outcome of employees' motivation after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, and whether the religiosity level of employees can help to improve their self-esteem leading to an increase in work motivation. The COVID-19 pathogen was believed to be hazardous and could infect all age groups. According to Hashim et al., (2021), in 2021 Malaysia experienced the third wave and this time around, the infection rate had exceeded the value of 1,000,000. On the whole, the COVID-19 pandemic had produced severe impact on employees, organizations, societies, economy, and stability. As such, it became important to determine factors that had affected employees' motivation during the critical ailment as motivation is an integral part of understanding behaviour (Starecek et.al., 2023). By nature, characteristically individuals will put effort into something they do when they are motivated. What motivates them will be due to many factors (as has been identified by previous scholars on the area of motivation). Nevertheless, religiosity is not a common factor identified to affect motivation. Unlike in Islam, religion is the believers' way of life. This means that their religiosity level would have affected their motivation, decisions, and actions (Alam et al., 2011). In this perspective when they are trapped in a difficult situation like the pandemic, a religious Muslim would not have his or her motivation being affected by bad situations. This is because Islam taught its believers or followers to believe in qada and qadar. Qada and qadar which is a concept of divine destiny in Islam encourages Muslims to accept in calmness that which had had happened. The thing that had happened is for a good reason that only God knows. In other words, anything from God is always good. As such, to believe in qada and qadar is in fact a great source of motivation for Muslims. Muslims who have strong faith in the religion would not be in sadness for a long period.
When we connect the above to the real organization, it is with no doubt that the essential assets in organizations are the employees. They contribute to the organization's growth and success (Danish & Usman, 2010). Additionally, according to Osabiya (2015), motivation is an underlying concept; it is the driving force within individuals. They attempt to achieve a specific goal to fulfil some need or expectation. By nature, humans have feelings or emotions. In the context of the organization, employees will feel about what they are doing, so the outcome achieved from work will impact the organization's productivity, positively or negatively. If the internal drive or the driving force of an employee is low due to his or her negative perception about a situation, automatically the effort to improve will also decline (Bandura, 1989). During the Covid-19 pandemic, the decline in the number of tourists might have caused the morale of hotel employees to decline. This is because the declining number of tourists may result in low income. Their low motivation might not make them productive to their organization or to their life. Obviously, nothing could be done to improve the productivity of the employees as the cause of the declining number of tourists was not due to the internal factor(s) of the hotel. On the other hand, employees with good motivation could do something positive to the hotel or to their family to survive during the critical Covid-19 situation. For this reason, it becomes necessary to examine the motivation level of an employee during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the intrinsic motivation rather than external motivation. This is because employees' external rewards have been removed or reduced due to unavoidable circumstances. These had been faced by many organizations. Nonetheless, only self-esteem might keep employees to stay motivated during the COVID-19 pandemic. As mentioned earlier, since Islam teaches its believers to accept anything fated with patience, it is also the present study's aim to investigate if religiosity had affected the self-esteem. Thus, the aim of the present study is twofold. First, the study would examine the relationship between the religiosity of Muslim employees and their motivation. Secondly, to identify if religiosity was able to affect an employee's self-esteem which might result in an increase in their motivation level during the pandemic. For the said purpose, self-esteem was tested as a mediator on the relationship between religiosity and motivation.

Literature Review Employees Motivation
Motivation is a theoretical concept that is used to explain human behaviour (Valarmathie et al., 2017). Management scholars such as (Robbins et al., 2015;Shahzadi et al., 2014;Heithfield, 2014;& Valarmathie et al., 2017) defined employee motivation as processoriented and this process describes a person's direction and commitment towards goal achievement. This reflects the strength of the inner drive. Specifically, Afif et al (2023), associated motivation with power as this power allows a person to take action for the achievement of specific goals. Additionally, Robbins and Judge (2015) defined motivation as a process that directs a person's strength (intensity), direction, and long-term (permanent) commitment towards goal achievement. Goal achievement in the sense refers to the worldly gain whether intrinsic or extrinsic rewards. Thus, the definitions provided by the Western scholars mostly focus on the inner drive for achieving worldly gains. Next, Heathfield (2015) described motivation to be factors, elements, or passion that drive employees to pursue and achieve their jobs and duties. Importantly, intrinsic and extrinsic reward influence the way employees act and behave.
From the religiosity perspective, I according to Al-Ghazali (2007) as reinforced by Zulkifli et al (2016), motivation is actually the feeling of fear and hope which drive individuals to get closer to Allah by choosing His righteous paths. The fear and hopes which are termed as taqwa in Islam, determine Muslims' directions in terms of behaviors. For example, a committed Muslim (who has so much fear and hope for Allah's blessings) will produce behaviors that sync with the Islamic principles or the six Islamic Pillars of Faith. Based on the above connections, several Muslim researchers used them to explain motivation in various fields, particularly management. From the Islamic perspective, motivation and psychological motives must integrate religiosity factors to influence human deeds and behaviour. The integration or inclusion of spiritual and religious motives can help researchers to understand the true meaning of motivation, an area where the conventional research fall short (Osmangani et al., 2012). This is because religious motives have different impacts for different people depending on their level of faith. Specifically, a committed (religious) Muslim will not be demotivated when he or she is inflicted with negative consequences (for instance, being rewarded low). This is because accepting the fate with an open heart is one of the six pillars of faith that a Muslim should hold strongly. And the extent of the efforts that he or she puts must be at improving his and her own weaknesses or fault, rather than blaming others. Accordingly, a Muslim with high level of taqwa (religious by being fear to Allah and hope to be closer to Allah) should be at peace and remain motivated despite facing negative consequences. This is actually the basis of the present study's research framework which suggests that faith (which determines religiosity) is expected to positively influence motivation of a Muslim. Furthermore, as faith is not easily measured, the proxy for faith would be religiosity. With this, the present study would consider religiosity as a major factor influencing Muslims' motivation at work.

Religiosity
Religious practices should not merely be for display. Instead, it should be shaped by the unification of the soul with the body. It encompasses a human's clear and bright soul with his or her relation to Allah and to human as well as to the environment. These are based on the Islamic teaching (Masri et al., 2017). Further, individuals who practice the Islam religion can be identified via three basic elements. The first is aqidah which is total faith testifying that there is none worthy of worship except Allah. In this regard, the practice of shirk, that is the worship of others along with Allah, is a sin that Allah has promised He will never forgive. Secondly, in terms of the practices whereby obligations are carried out in the full understanding of the information obtained from the sources of Islamic law. (this is a term to express the concept of fiqh which means understanding). Third, on the aspect of behavior comes Ihsan which means clear intention and pure determination of doing goodness for the sake of Allah (Hamzah et al., 2023). However, according to Lubis et al (2022), religiosity (at-tadayyun) is a crucial component of a Muslim's life as it provides the basis for their behaviour . In this regard, the measures of religiosity is important as it analyzes the level of one's religiosity. Unfortunately, the establishment of a religiosity measurement tool in Islam is very limited and dominated by the western researchers (Salasiah et al., 2020). It appears that up to now, there have been a few tools developed to measure a Muslim's level of religiosity. When measuring religiosity according to the Islamic perspective, researchers need to consider seven basic principles Manap et al (2013), as those principles are firstly, judgement and evaluation is limited to outward or external behavioural aspects only. Second, the measurement of religiosity from the Islamic perspective can be done, but the perfect measurement is only from Allah. Third, the basis of measurement is the embodiment of three religious pillars, namely Iman (Islamic belief); Islam (Islamic Syariah); and Ihsan (Islamic ethics of conduct). Next is Iman which is measured by doing deed in Islam. Fifth is perfect internalization of the Islamic Syariah that bears good ethics of conduct. The sixth one comprises symbols that are related to religiosity; they may not reflect the same interpretation for different individuals. Lastly, the seventh one indicates that the standard of Muslim religiosity and personality measurements come from two sources of the Islamic law which are the Quran and the Sunnah (Ab Rahman et al., 2018;& Hamjah et al., 2020). Cetin and Askun (2018) claimed that self-esteem has been discussed widely across numerous areas. The reason being self-esteem is recognized as crucial for the public and private sector organizations (Hur et al., 2020). Additionally, according to Lubis et al (2022), self-esteem is in fact the appraisal of an individual self. In the literature, self-esteem has been associated with features such as security, belongingness, identity, worthiness, respect, and competence. Those features are fundamentals of the concept. The literature also explored the different contexts in which the concept is used. One notable context relates to the work of Maslow (1943) in which he included self-esteem in his needs hierarchy model. In this model, selfesteem is an element that evolves as there might be psycho-dynamic progression in some individuals leading to he or she being disposed to do something to manage with apprehension. In this context, the individual needs to prove he or she is capable and able to fill the apprehension. There might be forces underlying behavior, feelings, and emotions that have accumulated from early experience that influenced him or her to disposethe selfesteem. Numerous generalists Garrety et al (2003) and psychologists (Mead, 1934;& Burkitt, 1991) as well as sociologists have come up numerous views of their self-esteem model (Maslow et al., 2021).

Self-Esteem
Esteem was addressed in Maslow's hierarchy of needs as the fourth layer of his fivetiered model of human motivation. The levels of needs are interrelated (i.e., selfactualization, love/belonging, safety, and physiological needs). For example the need for internal acceptance is necessary for any external validation to have a significant and longlasting effect. In this situation, someone behaves in a certain way that is against his or her true personality in order to fit in within a particular social group. There is also a feeling that he or she is not really being accepted, and the approval to belong to the group only lasts for as long as he or she sustains the act.

Relationship Between Religiosity and Employee Motivation and Self-Esteem as Mediator
The Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h and since then it is the primary source for all of the Islamic sciences and the Islamic concept of growth and development (An-Nasa'i, 2020). The hadith is next as the secondary source which contains true collections from Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h. in terms of his idioms, acts, and implied recommendations (Faris & Abdalla, 2018). Religiosity is a concept which in this context is about gaining motivation from a religious sense. Moreover, the research results of Achour et al (2016), have shown that personal religiosity plays an important role in improving the mental well-being and helps us manage difficult times such as stress. This helps employees to have self-respect for themselves to be able to have high self-esteem. Other than that, religiosity helps Muslims to manage their inner drive to have a better life and to accept oneself more than others.
Individual traits (including demographic factors such as gender, age, work experience, education level, and employment level) are believed to influence the self-esteem (Cheng & Hampson, 2008;Ozturan & Kutlu, 2010). Apart from those, religion and religiosity are among components of the individual traits that were also claimed to affect self-esteem. For example, Lubis et al (2022), found that religion has been recognized by previous research scholars as a key component of demography that brings significant implications on an individual. Additionally, prior studies (e.g., Tiliouine & Belgoumidi, 2009) indicated that employees who adhere to the religion's empirical and theoretical foundations (religiosity) are more satisfied with their life, job, and family. In the workplace, employees can also reduce unpleasant sensations such as worry and tension (Abdel-Khalek, 2010). Overall, previous studies have demonstrated that religiosity can have a significant impact on personal feelings and emotions. According to Kirkpatrick (1998) measuring sentiments is the same as measuring self-esteem as both concern emotion. Hence, the present study expected that religiosity would positively influence self-esteem to fuel motivation. Empirical researches by (Warr et al., 1999;Liebermann & Hoffmann, 2008;& Seyler et al., 1998) that used samples from many industries, have revealed a significant association between self-esteem and employee motivation. This common finding implies that employees who have high self-esteem are more likely to be motivated. While this finding appears to be logical, unfortunately there are two limitations of the present studies. The first restriction is that past research on the relationship between self-esteem and employee motivation has primarily focused on private sector businesses in the Western countries. Examples include the Vehicle dealerships in the United Kingdom (Warr et al., 1999), the banking sector in Germany (Liebermann & Hoffmann, 2008), the petrochemical industry in the United States (Seyler et al., 1998), and private universities in the United States (Burke, 1997). This limitation necessitates future research in a different country and organizational setting, such as Malaysia and its public sector. By doing so, we are expecting the fresh finding to validate the association between self-esteem and employee motivation. The rationale for concentrating on the public sector this time around is that public and private sector companies differ greatly in terms of organizational goals and structures, work values, and work motivation (Buelens & Broeck, 2007). Secondly, it might be of the country's position or the pandemic that have brought considerable impact on a country's position or any pandemic have considerable impact on an employee's intention to be more motivated or not (Pattni & Soutar, 2009;Rogers & Spitzmueller, 2009). A constraint of past researches regarding the relationship between self-esteem and employee motivation is that the results have been mixed or inconclusive. In other words, while several researchers have yielded substantial relationship between self-esteem and employee motivation (Warr et al., 1999;Liebermann & Hoffmann, 2008;Seyler et al., 1998;& Burke, 1997), a recent study revealed the relationship has been insignificant or not worth elaborating (Massenberg et al., 2017). Those contradictory findings necessitate a future research to confirm on the relationship again. Especially for an under-researched environment such as the public sector of Malaysia and the hospitality industry of Malaysia. Furthermore, as previously stated, this research suggests a meaningful association between religiosity and motivation. The study hypothesizes that self-esteem has a good relationship with religiosity and due to that can drive motivation. Those views are essential and sufficient to establish a mediator in the model. Such a viewpoint has already been used in earlier investigations that also evidenced a mediation hypothesis (Zumrah, 2015;Zumrah & Boyle, 2015). As for the present study, it is proposed that self-esteem acts as a mediator for the relationship between religiosity and drive to motivation. In other words, this study hypothesizes that employees' commitment towards their religion can influence their level of motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic period. This means self-esteem determines their desire to remain motivated even during tough times like the Covid-19 pandemic. This idea is consistent with Atmoko et al (2023), explanation that when individual traits influence employees' motivation, it is often generated by or derived from employees' self-esteem. Although prior researches have accumulated abundance of knowledge, several areas remain unexplored. For example, even though some previous research have uncovered that religiosity is able to predict employee motivation, few studies have explored the underlying process linking them. According to a previous study, self-esteem prompts the association between religiosity and employee motivation (Homaei et al., 2016). High self-esteem is widely recognized as a personal thing which is self-respect and so have generated many positive behavior and outcomes. For example, according to Atmoko et al (2023), self-esteem has a substantial impact on every aspect of our lives. This means that the need for high self-esteem has shifted from an individual concern to a societal concern over the last few decades. For example, high self-esteem bearing psychological resources (e.g., optimism and personal resilience) would benefit both individuals and societies. Meanwhile, low self-esteem is the source of both individual and societal problems (Mäkikangas et al., 2004;Symister & Friend, 2003). Indeed, the majority of social problems or crises can be traced back to a lack of selflove and self-respect, which is closely related to self-esteem (Baumeister et al., 2003). To address the study gap of the present study, the researcher employs self-esteem as a mediating variable to investigate the relationship between religion and employee motivation. This model hypothesizes based on the finding of a previous study that self-esteem mediate the effect of religiosity on employee motivation (Joshanloo & Daemi, 2015). Self-esteem represents one's subjective sense of overall personal worth or value. As it is process-based, the process influences persistence, competence, and passion for long-term goals (Atmoko et al., 2023;Leary & MacDonald, 2003). For example, as one already determines his or her value, the self-esteem will proceed to achieve whatever it takes to derive a quality of life. Following is a conceptual framework that explains how religiosity can influence employee motivation.
The research framework in Figure 1.0 was based on that proposed by (Zumrah et al., 2017). However, for the present study, self-esteem was tested as a mediating variable in the framework. The researcher followed this direction as theorized by (Maslow et al., 2021).  (Zumrah et al., 2017) MV Religiosity

Methodology
A cross-sectional causal research was applied to investigate the extent of self-esteem mediating the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation in selected hotels in Kuala Lumpur. The hotels were selected as the target population as Kuala Lumpur is a popular destination of choice of the tourists. Moreover, there are three big hotels in Kuala Lumpur that are known to have a large number of Muslim employees, big enough for the quota convenience sampling to be applied. The information was extracted from the website of the hotels and from interviews with the HR of the hotels. The quota convenience sampling technique was used because the number of employees could be selected conveniently from each hotel. The number of employee population of each hotel was identified first. The size of the sample of each hotel was then determined by using Krejcie and Morgan's (1970)  As the response rate among hotel employees in general was high, the researcher must estimate the average percentage of the response rate in order to acquire 201 samples needed for this study. The estimated average percentage was 95% which means 95% of hotel employees would complete the questionnaire with 5% error tolerance. Therefore, the total number of questionnaires needed to be distributed should be at least 212 ((201/95) *100).
The unit of analysis of this study was individual employees in selected hotels in Kuala Lumpur. After 213 data was collected, three of the questionnaires were invalid and only 210 questionnaires were validated for used in the analysis. The linear regression and a Process Macro regression analysis were conducted to answer two research objectives of the study; 1.
To identify the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation; 2. To determine the mediating role of self-esteem on the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation.

Instrumentation
The instrument that was used in this study was the survey questionnaire. There were two parts in the survey questionnaire. Section A must be answered based on the respondent's background, and Section B must be answered based on their personal views and experience. Section A contains five questions. The questions concern the respondents' demographic profile. Gender, race, age, education level, and years of hotel business experience are among the demographic components of the survey. Next, section B is divided into four sections, each containing questions about the dependent variable (motivation), the independent variable (religiosity) and the mediating variable (self-esteem). In addition, there are 39 questions in section B. Part 1 of the questionnaire focused on the dependent variable, that is, employee motivation. In part 1, the questions were adopted and adapted from Richmond (1990). Part 2 focused on the independent variable, that is, religiosity, and the questions were adopted and adapted from Masood and Haball (2018). Lastly, part 3 is on self-esteem (the mediating variable), and adopted and adapted from (Rosenberg, 2015). The interval scale used was the Five Point Likert scale, a rating to analyze all the parameters. The scales were numbered one through five. Number "1" represented "Strongly Disagree," number "2" "Disagree," number "3" represented "Neutral", followed by number "4" which represented "Agree," and number "5" "Strongly Agree". A pilot study was conducted first. From the reading of Cronbach Alpha, religiosity and self-esteem indicated as good reliability and acceptable at 0.701 and 0.706. Lastly, employee motivation had an excellent reliability score of 0.925. If the alpha value was higher than 0.6, the research instrument would be deemed as reliable for the study (George & Mallery, 2003).

Results and Discussion
In conformity with the survey requirement, 220 questionnaires were distributed to employees of the three selected hotels in Kuala Lumpur. The google questionnaire were circulated via email and web-based platforms to reach 420 employees of the hotels. A total of 213 responses were received equivalent to a response rate of 96.8% based on the 220 questionnaires that were initially distributed. After checking all the returned questionnaires, the total usable responses for further analysis were 210. A total of 3 questionnaires were found to be incomplete; hence invalid (1.4%). Therefore, the final response rate of this study was 98.6%.

Goodness Fit of Data
According to D'Agostino (2017), Goodness of Fit (GOF) represents how well some computed table or matrix of values match some population or predetermined table or matrix, of the same size. The analysis includes normality test, multicollinearity test, heteroscedasticity test, and autocorrelation test.

Normality Test
Prior to doing the correlation analysis for this study, normality must be established first. The aim of running the normality test is to ascertain the shape of the distribution. According to Tabachnik and Fidell (2013), the assumption of normality implies that prediction errors should typically be distributed around the predicted dependent variable score. A normal distribution indicates that the data plots are scattered along a diagonal line (Amar & Coakes, 2013). The assumptions are tested by using descriptive statistics, and the Skewness and Kurtosis values are presented. According to Coakes (2013), normality tests show that the data is normally distributed when the value of skewness and kurtosis is below ±3 for each variable.  Multicollinearity indicates the extent the independent variables are correlated with each other in a multiple regression analysis. High multicollinearity can make interpreting the parameter estimates to be difficult or impossible (Zikmund, 2010). In order to detect whether multicollinearity is a problem to the model, the variance-inflation factor (VIF) and tolerance of each variable are calculated. VIF values are considered a problem when the values go beyond 10, and tolerance values below 0.10 is a cause for concern. Fortunately, Table 3.0 indicated no major issues concerning multicollinearity.  In terms of the length of service or employment for both male and female respondents, the range of 1 to 5 years accounted for 71 respondents (60.2% of male respondents) and 39 respondents (42.4% of female respondents). Lastly, in terms of the salary income, both male and female respondents were in the range of RM3000 and below. This was equivalent to 96 respondents (81.4% of male respondents) and 83 respondents (90.2% of female respondents) respectively. For any two observations, the residual terms should be uncorrelated, that is, they should be independent. This is described as lack of autocorrelation (Field, 2013). This assumption can be tested with the Durbin-Watson test, which tests for serial correlations between errors. Specifically, it tests whether adjacent residuals are correlated (Field, 2013). The test statistic can vary between 0 and 4, with a value of 2 indicating that the residuals are uncorrelated. A value that is greater than 2 indicates a negative correlation between adjacent residuals. A value below 2 indicates a positive correlation. The size of the Durbin-Watson statistics depends on the number of predictors in the model and the number of observations. Looking for the exact acceptable values in the original paper of (Watson & Durbin, 1951) constitutes a very conservative rule of thumb where values less than 1 or greater than 3 are a cause for concern. For the present study, the value of Durbin Watson was 2.001. This indicated that there was no serious problem of autocorrelation. This can be seen in Table 5.0 Descriptive statistics summarize data in an organized manner. This makes the descriptive statistics easy to understand as it describes the relationship between variables in a sample or population. The aspects of a specific set of data are described by providing brief observations and summaries about the sample. Those summaries can help identify patterns (Kaur et al., 2018). Descriptive statistics are broken down into measures of central tendency ( mean, median, and mode) that are used in most research, evidence-based practice, and quality improvement; and measures of variability which include the standard deviation. The central tendency and variability measures provide a range of scores that show the pattern of data distribution. These measures describe the central portion of frequency distribution for a data set (McCarthy et al., 2021). The levels of mean score ranges are divided into three ranges: low, medium and high. Table 6.0 shows these scores and levels pertaining to the present study.  Table 7.0 shows the mean and standard deviations of employee motivation, religiosity and self-esteem. The mean score for employee motivation was 4.0720 (SD=0.67301). This indicated that the employee motivation level of respondents was in the high range. Next, the mean score for religiosity was 4.8151 (SD=0.32982), which showed the religiosity level among respondents was also at a high level. Lastly, the mean score for self-esteem was 3.8817 (SD=0.66998), indicating that the self-esteem level among respondents was also at a high range.

Hypotheses Results
The first hypothesis, that is, H1, was tested by using a linear regression analysis to fulfil or answer the first research objective. The details of H1 are as follows: "There is a significant relationship between religiosity and employee motivation in selected hotels in Kuala Lumpur".  The results indicated that there is a significant, weak, positive relationship between religiosity and employee motivation (β=.323, p<.001). The R 2 of .104 means that religiosity contributes 10.4% of the variation in employee motivation. This also means that 89.6% of the variation in employee motivation cannot be explained by religiosity alone. Therefore, there must be other variables that influence the dependent variable. According to Frost (2019), models with low R-squared values can be perfectly good models for several reasons. as In some fields of study, there is an inherently greater amount of unexplainable variation which means R 2 values are expected to be low. For example, studies that try to explain human behaviour generally have R 2 value that is less than 50%. It might be that relatively people are harder to predict than physical things or physical processes (Hair et al., 2019). Next, the results also showed an F-ratio of 24.147, which is significant at p < .001. In order to assess this, reference was made to Field (2013) who explained that a good model should have a large F-ratio greater than 1, the least. Overall, the regression model has predicted employee motivation significantly well.
Next, hypothesis 2 was tested by using the hierarchical regression analysis. H2 would answer the second research objective. The details of H2 are as follows: "Self-esteem mediates the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation in selected hotels in Kuala Lumpur". The results of the tested H2 are displayed in Table 8.1. Self-esteem has mediated the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation. This result was significant at p<0.001. Based on Table 8.2, R-squared indicated that self-esteem contributed 40.0% of the variation in employee motivation. This also means that the remaining 60.0% was explained by other factors that were not investigated in the present study. Therefore, based on the above analysis, it was evident that self-esteem has some mediating effect on the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation. Additionally, the Process Macro Analysis was conducted to validate the results obtained from the hierarchical regression analysis. Table 3 illustrates the results. According to Baron and Kenny (1986), a variable to be used as a mediator can be verified if it meets the following conditions: (a) variations in the level of the independent variable significantly account for the variations in the presumed mediator (Path a), (b) variations of the mediator significantly account for variations in the dependent variable (Path b), and (c) a previously significant relationship between the independent and dependent variables is no longer significant after Paths a and b are controlled (when Path c is zero, complete mediation will exist). If the PROCESS Macro analysis is used to verify the variable as a mediator, the indirect effect does not fall between zero (Hayes, 2012).
This study used the PROCESS Macro Analysis because of the conditional and unconditional indirect effects in the mediation models. Additionally, PROCESS can contrast bias-corrected and percentile based bootstrap confidence intervals (Hayes, 2012). According to Table 7.2, the results indicated that religiosity was a significant predictor of self-esteem (B= .6056, s.e.= .1344, p= .0000). In turn, self-esteem showed a significant predictor of employee motivation (B=.3113, s.e.= .1151, p=.0074). Religiosity was still a significant predictor of employee motivation after being controlled by the mediator, which was self-esteem (B= .5726, s.e.= .0567, p=.0000). These results fulfilled the mediation conditions. The results also showed non-significant for the indirect effect, which did not fall between zero in the relationship (LLCI= .1873, ULCI= .4865). If the zero fell outside of the interval, then this study would reject the null. However, here we rejected the null.

Discussion and Implication
The results confirmed that there was a significant relationship between religiosity and employee motivation. The first research objective which is to identify if there is a relationship between religiosity and employee motivation with regards to Muslim employees in the hotel industry was thus answered. The results of the linear regression upon religiosity and employee motivation revealed a weak, positive linear relationship between the two variables. The findings supported the claims made by Beekun & Badawi (1999);McDaniel & Burnett (1990) that a person with a strong faith regards oneself and all of his or her possessions as belonging to God.. Past researchers also asserted that a person with a strong faith does not avoid being responsible for their actions and will constantly emphasize good deeds. Apart from the above mentioned, the findings verified analysts' claims about religious beliefs capable of shaping individuals' character, conduct, ethical standards, moral character, and value systems to various extents (Fernando & Jackson, 2006;Pekerti & Sendjaya, 2010). The works of past researches posited that so many things in life conformed to the religious beliefs of the believers. These range from behavior and conduct in everyday life to that in the workplace too (Gardner & Avolio, 1998). Informed to their religious beliefs (Gardner & Avolio, 1998). Furthermore, people who adhere to the Islamic principles (in Islamic teachings) make better servants because they only characterized themselves with trust-based attributes making them exemplary examples of values and behaviors. The results of the present study showed the hoteliers' high mean score which was 4.8151 of religiosity. This indicated that their religiosity of Islam was high so that they could build trust with customers and demonstrate to them and their colleagues exemplary behavior. Moreover, according to many researchers Carver & Scheier (2012); Bratton et al (2011) a faithful individual servant should have high ethical standards, such as being open, honest, and fair to their fellow colleagues and customers. Meanwhile, the findings from the hierarchical regression confirmed that self-esteem had mediated the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation. With this result, the second research objective which is to examine the mediating role of self-esteem on the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation is thus answered. Those findings have added useful information to the field of hotel management regarding significant interrelationships between religiosity, self-esteem and employee motivation. The findings supported Joshanloo & Daemi's (2015); Zumrah (2015); Zumrah & Boyle (2015) who believed and established a mediation theory for self-esteem as it has integrated successfully in the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation. That is, the work of the religiosity element to drive motivation has been made easier with self-esteem. Hence, the idea was consistent with Leung's (2006) contention that when individual traits influence employee motivation, it is frequently facilitated through the mechanism of self-esteem.
However, what made the findings of the present study fruitful was that the study was conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic in which the situation then was critical and difficult. During this time, there was no other way and no reason at all to motivate employees except to lay off some employees. Hence, the implication will not only be bad to the employees who have been laid-off but also to those who remain working with the hotels. This was because those who stay might not have a bright future if the situation does not improve. This would result in low morale and in turn low productivity. Fortunately, the present study has provided a gainful solution. Religiosity was found to be one of the important factors to reinforce an employee's self-esteem, that in turn could drive or increase employee motivation. The findings showed that Muslims remain motivated during the pandemic due to gaining taqwa (by fearing God) which enhances their self-esteem (abilities and worth) that encourage them to keep going and survive. A country where a majority of the population are Muslims, the situation may not be severe because the people have emotional intelligence to think creatively and to work productively to survive. Therefore, it is recommended that companies or more appropriate Islamic businesses integrate religiosity into the organizational culture, workplace culture, leadership, training modules, and etc. to shape character, behavior and conduct in the employees with morality and values. These are critically needed to strengthen their internal motivation for continued productivity in the workplace. Additional, from time to time, employees should be reminded to increase their knowledge of Islam. This requires allocating time and equipping the workplace with paid religious teachers for that purpose.
It is important to highlight that the findings have proven the important role of self-esteem to motivate employees in the hotel sector. This strength is reinforced with the similarity of the results of the present study with past researches conducted for other industries like vehicle dealerships in the United Kingdom Warr et al (1999), the banking sector in Germany Liebermann & Hoffmann (2008), the petrochemical industry in the United States (Seyler et al., 1998), and private universities in the USA (Burke, 1997). Thus, the present study has extended the relevant literature with findings from an emerging country Malaysia and the hotel sector. Overall, the findings have provided useful insights as to the role of religiosity, being a factor that influences motivation and the role of self-esteem as a mechanism to succeed in motivating employees. As there appears limited research works that investigate the impact of religiosity from the Islamic perspective on employee motivation during 'trying times', it will become a challenge for future researchers to embark on the same nature of research but by employing the religiosity variable from a different religion perspective. In conclusion, this study was designed to identify the determinants of employee motivation in the hotel sector in Malaysia along with self-esteem that takes the role of an important mediating variable. The study was conducted to provide guidelines and useful information for the top management in the board of directors of a firm. The outcome of the research is important for the CEO and his team to develop strategies to retain talent employees. The findings of the present study have fulfilled two research objectives with significant results. First, the results confirmed that there is a positive relationship between religiosity and motivation. Second, self-esteem was found to mediate the relationship between religiosity and employee motivation. Specifically, self-esteem was found to be a suitable mediator for the selected variables, and more importantly, the outcomes of the research have conformed to the findings of past studies relating self-esteem and employee motivation. The research outcomes are insightful as they have proven the importance of religiosity and self-esteem in affecting employee motivation at the workplace. The results also imply that people who are religious will see themselves as worthy in any situation especially in 'trying times' as they are intrinsically motivated helping out to achieve goals. The findings of the present study have implications for the practitioners, be it public or private sector companies. For example, the management of the hotel should take extra effort to find alternatives that give opportunity to know more about their employees. This is to ensure that the employees feel that the management is taking care of them. The management should exercise religiosity in the workplace by encouraging employees to care and concern for each other. Besides that, the management should encourage everyone to put their love for Allah and work for the sake of Allah, and then care and concern for other humans. They should integrate religiosity into their programs and activities, and allocate some time probably once a week to enhance their Muslim employees with religious knowledge and most importantly to gain taqwa. This ensures the employees think, behave and act in a religious sense consistently. taqwa (fearing God) would make employees do things for the sake of Allah and sincere in whatever they do. This will indirectly encourage employees to realize their self-esteem and become an achievement-oriented individual. At this stage they already acquired the intrinsic or internal motivation and become self-motivated easily.