In an organization, every business activities always aim to the success purposes. Success is in term of finance, human development, contribution to environment, satisfaction of shareholders…In order to archive these results; the organization has to create the competitive advantages in every operation activities. Above all, human resource is a core competency of organisation to create high value, competitive advantages. Unfortunately, nowadays, there is still the old thinking in managing human management. Managing people is not purely to administer pay program, design training modules, or avoid lawsuits (Mark R., Patrick W., 2006). People need to be treated as part of organisation's capital assets. To have the productive, creative, excellent employees is one of the crucial goals of the firm. As a rule, organizational commitment, motivation and job satisfaction all lead to discretionary behaviour, which in turn generates performance outcomes, which in themselves contribute to commitment, motivation and job satisfaction (Michael Amstrong, 2006, p. 75). Hence, organisation can be able to encourage employees to contribute their best, increase productivity by enhancing their job satisfaction. Employees' job satisfaction is key point in developing human resource strategy as highlighted by Walton (1985), "workers respond best - and most creatively - not when they are tightly controlled by management, placed in narrowly defined jobs and treated like an unwelcome necessity, but, instead, when they are given broader responsibilities, encouraged to contribute and helped to achieve satisfaction in their work".
The employee job satisfaction has been widely studied by many researchers. There are more than 4000 studies on this prominent topic (Gruneberg, 1976) which examined the relationship with many aspects of work, of human behaviours and its affection on the organization' human resource management activities, financial benefit, and society. Although there are some controversies relate to this issue (Cropanzanoand, Wright, 2001), several independent pieces of research have been undertaken (Ng et al. 2009; James B 2005; Schleicher et al. 2004; Judge et al. 2001; Spector 1997...) indicating that job satisfaction is a crucial factor influencing productivity . Since employees satisfy with their job, they tend to accomplish to job well with high productivity. They will stay with the organizations which help the organization to have higher retention rate. Job satisfaction also has great impact on the employees' career development as analysed by Jepsen and Sheu, 2003 that such an attitude, either in the form of liking, or disliking a job, is a universal and an essential aspect of career development. Obviously, most researchers, theorists and practitioners accept the assumption that nearly everybody seeks satisfaction in his or her work (Jepsen & Sheu 2003). Hence it can be the indicator of why an employee applies for a job, how she performs, and why she leaves for another job. Following Rad and Yarmohammadian's work in 2006 show that the organisation need to have personnel's efforts and commitment to be succeeded. Indeed, with greater the level of satisfaction of employees would bring the organisation advantages to retain and attract talents, yield higher financial return. Besides, Spector (1997) suggested the organisation's job satisfaction assessment data on the emotional wellness and mental fitness of employees is helpful. It can be used to improve the policies and practices where there are symptoms of dissatisfaction, stress, and burnout. Human resources department can be alert if these symptoms become worse would affect badly to the employee's performances.
Some further research in this area conducted by many researchers found positive correlated between job satisfaction and other factors. In other words, these factors influence employees' job satisfaction which affect to the organisational success such as leadership style, job design, stressor, working climate, social & organisation' support, firm size, compensation, interaction, recognition, demographic characteristic, culture, personal factors...(Khan, A., Ahmad, I., Aleem, M., & Hamed, W., 2011; Pietersen, 2005; Rue and Byaes, 2003; Dole and Schroeder, 2001; Petty et al. 1984). These aspects are mostly measured the level of job satisfaction of employees rather than determining which factors impact mostly to the business context. The measuring step should be followed after the most important factors are recognised.
By nature, employees are affected by both job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction factors. Herzberg's Two Factor Theory (1974) points out this view very clearly. As the role of human resource management, it has to balance these factors. It does not just focus on the content of the work that creates motivation for employees but the context of the job as well. If there are any condition or factors that are too good also cause the negative affect.
Every services delivery business relies a lot on its workforce especially with banking sector, which not only needs the high skills of interaction with customers but also the knowledge to be able to handle complex tasks. The important of job satisfaction research in banking sector becomes even more apparent when there is lack of research in this area of Vietnam banks. Currently, the status of workforce of commercial banks is not stable. The recruiting sources favourite of bank is other bank personnel (Tuan, T.A. 2012). This is reflected in the banks' websites which have a common in announcing condition for new career opportunities: the recruitment requirements are prioritized those with experience, even, frankly experience in a similar position and it has been updated quite often. This is not too difficult to understand the reasons why. The other banks want to take advantage of the experience employees, shorten the time, cost of training, especially make use of the relationship and customers have formed. This is especially true with all levels of management when the swap occurred for example CEO of Techcombank become CEO of VP Bank, Mr Nguyen Duc Vinh or Mr Nguyen Hung, from CEO of VP Bank become CEO of TienPhong Bank...Thereby, the recruitment source of commercial banks, especially level managers are not abundant. Especially in the near future, as bad debt continues to rise, it would be challenge to make sure the bank will continue to discipline their personnel. However, the most significant jumping employees are in credit positions. These employees contact directly with customers, do initial evaluation profile for borrowers which is most likely to arise moral hazard. In reality, many frauds happened in bank involved ethical issues of the credit officers. Therefore, it is a must for all banks consider carefully their workforce's status. Indeed the job satisfaction of employees is primarily importance to analyse. Only when there is good the coordination, synchronization and cooperation between employees, the banks can archive success with a great full energy workforce.
Research objectives
The overall aim of this research is to investigate and describe the job satisfaction among employees in the context of Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), a local bank with good reputation on customer service. This study will document the current job satisfaction levels of employees and use the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire short form to examine the sources of job satisfaction. Further, this research may provide minus recommendation to improve the employee's performance level as in turn influence the productivity and enhance service quality.
Specifically, within the context of Vietnam banking sector, the objectives of this research are to:
Identify the factors cause employees job satisfaction, its correlates and consequences on organisation management by analysed the secondary resources and literature related.
Evaluate the overall level of job satisfaction off ACB's employees.
Formulate recommendations on improvement of current framework for better result in employees' satisfaction thus create highly energy workforce for ACB.
Research questions
In conjunction with research objectives, following research questions are addressed:
Which factors do cause the job satisfaction?
What are correlates and consequences of employees' job satisfaction?
What is the overall level of job satisfaction of ACB employees?
Which factors do affect mostly to employees' job satisfaction in banking sector context?
What degree of job satisfaction do ACB employees report on each of the dimensions of the job as measured by the modified Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire?
Which practices can be improved based on the survey's result to help ACB bank gain competitive advantages base on the human resource?
Significances of the study
Banks' roles are extremely important to the success or failure of an economy. Banking operation activities are very complicated. They face directly to assets of people every day, therefore employees always need to concentrate on doing job accurately and avoid violating the morality. They always work under pressure day by day. As the role of human resource management, it has to keep up date of how do employees perform? What difficulties do prevent them not to accomplish the tasks? Or what are their motivations, needs? Only when the organisation satisfy its employees, it can make use human resource to create competitive advantages as mentioned by Becker and Huselid in their 1998 work, the role of human capital as a potential source of sustainable competitive and "people" as a source of competitive advantage. Similarly, Pfeffer (1994) highlighted if the organization can effectively manage people, through people, it can gain substantially economic performance. By investigating the root causes employee job satisfaction and problems that stress out the relationship between these factors with performance will enable the bank to develop possible solutions improving the outcome.
Moreover, although the concept of job satisfaction and its relationship with many other factors are targeted by many researchers for hundred years, they are still not prevalent in Vietnam. This study will contribute to the improvement of human resource management of Vietnam banking sector in a number of important ways: first, by providing a critical review of issues pertinent to the level employee's job satisfaction link to the level of performance; second, by critically determining the most important factors which directly affect to the success of organisation; third, by obtaining the views of variety of employees on existing practices of creating satisfaction strategies, allowing meaningful comparison between theory and practice, from which an improved understanding of this issues.
Research limitation
The present study is limited by the following:
Data collected is based on questionnaire.
The research exercise was conducted within a limited duration therefore detail study can not be made.
The number of employees of ACB bank is 9480 but sample size is 100 due to the limitaion of rearching time.
The information collected by conducting interview is limited to the numbers of ACB managers' contacts.
Some respondents hesitate to give the actual information because of they are afraid of dissadvantages would affact to their working positison.
Research structure
The structure will follow the recommendations for master dissertation by University of Gloucestershire (2012), depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Dissertation Structure
Chapter 1 Introduction
This chapter provides the reader with background information on the impact of employee's job satisfaction on the success of organisation, the current problems of human resource of Vietnam banks which lead to the urgent need to do the research. The focus of this research is discussed and justified and the overall research aim and individual research objectives are identified. The significant and limitation of study also are included in this chapter.
Chapter 2 Literature Review
This chapter provides the reader with the definitions of job satisfaction of many researchers in the past. Some theories related such as content theories, process theories, situation theories, work adjustment theories are reviewed so that the reader can be able gain better view about the topic. The variables of causes, correlates and consequences also are elaborated and job satisfaction's measurements are mentioned. The situation of organisations in Vietnam currently affects to the satisfaction of employees leads to the emerging issues and the need for empirical research is clarified as well.
Chapter 3 Research Methodology
Chapter 4 Finding, Analysis and Discussion
Chapter 5 Conclusions and recommendations
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction:
This literature review will examine the key issues surrounding employee job satisfaction in banking sector. The selected theories on definitions, determinants, correlates and consequences will be elaborated and job satisfaction's measurement will be discussed. Hence, the organisation can make use the theory to implement into managing staffs, be able to exploit best its human resource. The study within this review of literature emphases on objective 1 as set out in sub section 1.2 of the introductory chapter (the second objective will be met through the vehicle of empirical data collection and analysis while the final objective is derived as result of the finding from objective 1 and 2):
Identify the factors cause employees job satisfaction, its correlates and consequences on organisation management by analysed the secondary resources and literature related.
Evaluate the overall level of job satisfaction off ACB employees.
Formulate recommendations on improvement of current framework for better result in employees' satisfaction thus create highly energy workforce for ACB.
By exploring the above area of literature, a significant contribution will be made to this research. At the end of this major section, the key issues are hoped to be demonstrated with a critical understanding. The readers will be cognizant of these areas and that there will have arose out the concentration on the empirical research toward employees job satisfaction in banking sector. In the first instance, a sensible starting point is to explore the meaning of job satisfaction.
Definition of job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is one of the vital determinants of organization's human resource effectiveness. Since the first definition derived from Hoppock's theory in 1935, there were many other researchers approached this concept and created their workable definitions. However, some versions diluted the standardized job satisfaction definition by using other terms such as work satisfaction, job morale.
Hoppock (1935) defined job satisfaction as the combination of psychological, physiological and environmental circumstances that cause a person truthfully to say I am satisfied with my job. According to this approach, external factors are important as well as internal factors. These factors affect the feeling of employees and employees are subjective response to working conditions by the level of their satisfaction.
Vroom, V.H. (1964) fortified the definition job satisfaction by looking at the reasons why individual satisfy with their organization. He focused on the interaction between personal and workplace variables. Thus, he defines job satisfaction as the affective orientations on the part of individuals toward work roles, which they are presently occupying.
Tiffin and Mccormic (1965) asserted that satisfaction is 'the motivation of human that is characterized by basic need, it is specially directed toward achieving certain desirable, positive goals or incentive or conversely toward avoiding other undesirable"
As mention by Smith et. al. in their 1969 work, the job satisfaction encompassed the feeling, the positive attitude an individual has or affective responses to facets of the situation. Every facet may cause the positive or negative feeling for employees. It affects directly to individuals mental and it can improve the level of satisfaction.
Similarly, Locke (1976) highlighted the job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences. This is a very important recognition of an employee's life. It influences employee to be more productive and have positive living attitude.
Schultz (1982) also pointed out job satisfaction as the psychological disposition of people toward their work and this this involves a collection of numerous attitudes or feelings. Certainly, during the working day, the employees involve many activities. Although the activity is extremely simple, it still fosters his or her feeling, attitude to be both positive and negative.
Some further research in this area conducted by Spector (1997), his definition on job satisfaction is comprised of the various aspects in working life that is as the "extent to which people like or dislike their job". While Armstrong (2006) emphasized on the attitude, feelings employees have about their work will cause the job satisfaction. Positive and favourable attitudes towards the job indicate job satisfaction. Negative and unfavourable attitudes towards the job indicate job dissatisfaction.
From the discussion above, the definition of job satisfaction has been widely contended through decades. In general, it conveyed the mutual impact of emotional state and facets of the workplace situation. Theories on job satisfaction are delved by many researchers. They continuously developed the theories, which are able to cover the work's variables. There also the vague to discriminate the work motivation from job satisfaction as McCormick and Tiffin (1954) had pointed out.
However, the later revisions theories avoid this matter by focusing on the two perspectives intrinsic and extrinsic job factors as the reason why and how the employees are satisfy with their jobs. According to Martin and Schinke (1998), O'Driscoll and Randall (1999), these factors has strongly linked and influence on the level of satisfaction. They clarified the intrinsic factors are derived from inner perceptions, attitudes, and feelings such as responsibility, recognition, advancement. While the extrinsic factors include the variables of job related such as salary, policy, working conditions. Furthermore, by some models offer a clear picture of what cause job satisfaction such as model of Iyer and Soberman (2006). The elements of job related factors, role perceptions, job performance and firm performance are direct or indirect affected to the level of job satisfaction. Figure 2 below represents the model:
FIGURE 2 - Christen, Lyer and Soberman model of job satisfaction (2006)
Another model of Locke and Latham (1990) in figure 3 describe the satisfaction is derived from the assumption of high expectations for high objectives lead to achieve high performance to get better rewards. Successful will be factor to create the satisfaction.
FIGURE 3 - Locke and Latham model of job satisfaction (1990)
Theories of job satisfaction 3600
There are also many others researchers, who classified job satisfaction theories into conceptual frameworks. For example, content theory, process theory, situation theory, needs/fulfilment theory. As analysed by Campbell, Dunnet, Lawler and Weich in 1970, the content theory proposes that the needs, values or expectations of individual's job are met will determine the degree of job satisfaction. Process theory, on the contrary, attempts to elucidate how well the job's characteristics interact with individual's needs, expectation, values to produce job satisfaction. Situation theory hypothesizes that job satisfaction is the results from the interaction between individual's characteristics and organization's characteristics. Needs / fulfilment theory refers to the outcome which individual be able to receive will determine the level of job satisfaction. These theories can be regarded to be the most prominent in the literature. Each of them are reviewed, adduced and explored by thousand researchers. This chapter will not provide the review all of job satisfaction theories again but to provide the highlight main theories and clarify the main points from each conceptual framework to synthesize with the direction of this study.
2.3.1 Content theories
Content theories concerned with the specific things as needs, growth and self-actualization to make employee satisfy. Abraham Maslow gave a useful description of "hierarchy of needs" which was used to be the platform for clarifying job satisfaction. Maslow (1954) suggested that people are driven by unsatisfied needs that shape their behaviour. As his theory, the human needs exist in a logical order. The basic needs must be met first before the higher levels. The employees tend to reach the higher level to be more satisfied. They are only motivated by what they are not fulfilled or archive. Since they get what they want, the lower level of needs no longer to be an effective motivator. The more the job offers growth or synthesize with the higher level of need by the time being, the more likely the individual satisfy with his or her job.
Clinging to Maslow need's hierarchy, Herzberg et al. (1959) formulated motivator/hygiene theory which is called under another names as motivation - maintenance theory, motivation-hygiene theory, dual factor theory, and Herzberg's two-factor theory. Herzberg delved the combination of factors-attitudes-effects to emphasize the important of employees' attitude as a starting point to motivation-hygiene theory. As result of his studies, Herzberg et al. (1959) found two distinctive sets of factor. The first set, called motivators, refers to factors, which make employees feel happy, have positive attitude, and on a whole, these intrinsic factors are related to the work itself. The second set, called hygiene factors, refers to extrinsic factors, which may cause the dissatisfaction. It identified the working environment of employees and the employees tend to prevent the dissatisfaction to happen. Therefore, Herzberg suggested the motivation concepts can be used to encourage employees to do their job efficiency. This "Motivation factors" category includes:
• Achievement;
• Recognition for achievement;
• Possibility of growth;
• Advancement;
• Increased task responsibility;
• Work itself.
The "Hygiene factors" includes:
• Salary;
• Interpersonal relations - supervisor;
• Interpersonal relations - subordinates;
• Interpersonal relations - peers;
• Supervision - technical;
• Company policy and administration;
• Working conditions;
• Factors in personal life;
• Status;
• Job's security.
On contrary to motivation factors, the hygiene factors do not motivate. However, if the organization does not have these elements, it would cause dissatisfaction for employees. Although salary is in this group, it is still a motivation factor for employee. It represents the recognition of achievement.
Lately, Locke (1976) dissented to Herzberg's theory. Locke epitomizes the hygiene factors with physical needs and motivators with psychological needs. From that, Locke (1976) criticizes Herzberg's view of the psychological and physical apart. He proposes that the mind and body are very closely related. Besides, the correlation between the motivator - hygiene are unidirectional, so as to physical and psychological needs. Locke notes there is no justiï¬cation for this conclusion. Providing the example of the physical need, hunger, he writes that acts like eating can serve as not only a version of hunger pangs, but also as pleasures for the body (Locke, 1976). He also claims that the two-factor theory is inconsistent in categorizing factors of satisfaction. It may cause the confusion between the event and the agent as in an example if an employee is delegated new task with new responsibility. It is listed in motivator category. However, if the salary does not go parallel with the new responsibility, it will be listed in hygiene category. The confusion will occur.
Concurrent with the previous criticism, Locke (1976) pointed out the theory job satisfaction is closely related to the value of employees. Locke defers to Rand's (1964) definition of value as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep". From this definition, the distinction between a need and value must be discerned. A comparison (Locke, 1976) of the two is found in below table:
Needs
Values
Needs are innate, a priori
Needs are the same for all humans (Locke 1976; Maslow, 1962)
Needs are objective: they exist apart from knowledge of them
Needs confront man and require action
Values are acquired, a posteriori
Values are unique to the individual
(Locke, 1976)
Values are subjective: they are acquired through conscious and sub-conscious means
Values ultimately determine choice and
emotional reaction
Lock (1976) also highlighted another perspective differ from Herzberg's theory. If the organization recognizes the value of employees, they will be satisfied. Locke (1976) defined an event, or condition, is that which causes an employee to feel satisfaction and an agent refers to that which causes an event to occur. The events / agents factors are demonstrated in below table (Locke, 1976)
Events
Agents
Task activity - employee can enjoy or not enjoy work
Amount of work - amount of work is just right, or the amount is too much or too little
Smoothness - work went smoothly, or work was characterized by interruption and distraction
Success/failure - employee finished task completed problem, or he/she failed to finish or reach a goal
Promotion/demotion or lack of promotion - worker was promoted, or not promoted, though he/she expected promotion
Responsibility - responsibility was increased, a special assignment was given, or responsibility was not increased as desired, did not receive special assignment
Verbal recognition of work/negative verbal recognition of work - worker was praised, thanked, complimented, or worker was criticized, blamed, or not thanked
Money - worker received monetary raise or bonus, or did not receive desired raise or bonus
Interpersonal atmosphere - there was a pleasant atmosphere where people got along well, or the atmosphere was unpleasant where people got along poorly
Physical working conditions pleasant/unpleasant - temperature, machinery, hours of work were pleasant and manageable, or they were unpleasant
Other - there was a good outcome of a union election, or there was an accident, or poor outcome to a union election
Self - the respondent
Supervisor - superior of respondent
Co-worker - colleague or peer at same level
Subordinate - person at lower level
Organization, management, or policies - no particular person(s)
Customer - includes students, patients, buyers
Nonhuman Agent - nature, machinery, weather, "God"
No Agent - luck, Murphy's law; or unclassified
In short, both theories of Lock and Herzberg point out the factors that are useful for the organization to acknowledge the potential factors causing satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Making use of the motivators need as the powerful sources of job satisfaction and improving the hygiene factors to eliminate dissatisfaction combining with the depth understanding the value of each employee would bring the organization most effective employees.
2.3.2 Process Theories
Process theories attempt the job satisfaction by explaining the job satisfaction to be determined not only by the nature of the job and its context within the organization, but also by the needs, values and expectations that the individuals have in relation to their job (Gruneberg, 1979). For example, some individual does not have any desire for advancement or salary increasing. This person will not be disappointed or frustrated as much as the one who really desire for achievement, salary in a situation of having no opportunity for increase compensation and achievement.
Adhere with process theory; Adam (1963) suggested that people perceive their job as a series of inputs and outcomes. Inputs are factors such as experience, ability, and effort, while outcomes include things like salary, recognition, and opportunity. The employees feel satisfy when the input and outcome are compatible and commensurate with their co-workers. Furthermore, Vroom (1982) also pointed out that employees would choose to do or not do job tasks based on their perceived ability to carry out the task and earn fair compensation. Vroom (1982) generated a three-variable equation for scientifically determining job satisfaction. The first variable is expectancy. It shows the individual's expectation with the perception toward the work he or she can carry out the given task. The second variable is instrumentality, which refers employees' confidence in being able to be compensated fairly for doing the job. The third one is valence, which considers the value of the expected reward to the employee. Vroom believed that if all three variables were high, employee would have higher level of satisfaction and more motivation in doing the job. If one in three variables is low, it will affect the performance of employees which results in low productivity.
2.3.3 Situation Theories
Following Quarstein, McAfee, and Glassman's work in 1992 stated that job satisfaction is determined by two factors: situational characteristics and situational occurrences. Employees mostly consider carefully about pay, supervision, working conditions, promotional opportunities, and company policies before accepting the job. These factors are belonged to situation characteristics. While situation occurrences are things that happen after taking a job. It can be tangible or intangible, positive or negative. Hence, all these occurrences affect the level of employees' satisfaction.
2.3.4 Work Adjustment Theory
As analysed by Dawis & Lofquist (1984), work adjustment theory is based on the concept of correspondence between the individual and environment. Individual has to interact with the environment every day. Work is one of the environment in which employees have strong relate. Hence, this theory includes a basic assumption that the employees seek to achieve and to maintain correspondence with the environment. Satisfaction then indicates the correspondence between the individual and the work environment (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984). Theory of work adjustment is summarized in the following statements Dawis et al. (1964):
Work is conceptualized as an interaction between an individual and a work environment.
The work environment requires that certain tasks be performed, and the individual brings skills to perform the tasks.
In exchange, the individual requires compensation for work performance and certain preferred conditions, such as a safe and comfortable place to work.
The environment and the individual must continue to meet each other's requirements for the interaction to be maintained. The degree to which the requirements of both are met may be called correspondence.
Work adjustment is the process of achieving and maintaining correspondence. Work adjustment is indicated by the satisfaction of the individual with the work environment and by the satisfaction of the work environment with the individual, by the individual's satisfaction.
Satisfaction and satisfactoriness result in tenure, the principal indicator of work adjustment.
Work personalities and work environments can be described in terms of structure and style variables that are measured on the same dimensions (pp. 9-10).
2.3.5 Variables of Job satisfaction
Reviewing literature has indicated that there are many factors influence on job satisfaction. Bowling, N. A., & Hammond, G. D. (2008) presented network that identifies the hypothesized causes, correlates, and consequences of job satisfaction. Although it may not cover all numbers existed, it is still the most obviously picture to describe the job satisfaction. Which factors do cause job satisfaction? What are the consequences? In addition, which one does have mutual affection? The illustration below represents this network:
FIGURE 4: Nomo logical network of hypothesized antecedents, correlates, and consequences of job satisfaction. (Bowling, Hammond, 2008)
Determinants of job satisfaction - Antecedents
Job Complexity: these elements are mostly related to job characteristics. The way the job is designed would potentially affect the satisfaction of employees due to its reasonable complexity. Hackman & Oldham (1975) develop the job characteristic model with the core dimension of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. Based on Hackman and Oldham (1975, quoted in Casey & Robbins, 2010, pg.77), the following definitions are presented:
Skill variety - Skill variety is the degree of the job assigned which require employees to have variety of different activities that utilize the use of different skills and talents.
Task identity - Task identity is the extent to which a job involves doing a complete from beginning to end and identifiable piece of work with a visible outcome.
Task significance - Task significance is the extent to which the job affects to employees within or outside the organization.
Autonomy - Autonomy is the degree to which the job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out (Hackman & Oldham, 1975).
Feedback - Feedback is the information gave out to individual or group about the outcome of the work so that they can adjust the outcome or future behaviour to achieve the desired results.
Job Stressors: Job stress refers to a worker feeling job-related hardness, tension, anxiety, frustration, worry, emotional exhaustion, and/or distress (Cartwright & Cooper, 1997). Consequences of having high job stress in long time are turnover, absenteeism, burnout, emotional problems, physical ailments, and even death (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1987; Maslach & Leiter, 1997). Hence, the organization cannot ignore this issue which may come from work environment, ambiguity, role conflict in job assignment (Fisher & Gitelson, 1983; Jackson & Schuler, 1985), role overload (Spector & Jex, 1998), interpersonal conflict (Bowling & Beehr, 2006).
Social and organizational support: The employees will be more satisfied with fully support of the organization to achieve the desired outcome. This is widely agreed to be a potential cause of job satisfaction. Many researchers have found the close relationship between social support, organisational support and satisfaction (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002; Viswesvaran, Sanchez, & Fisher, 1999)
Person-environment ï¬t: every individual seeks for the appropriate working environment. If he or she can fit well, he or she tends to stay long to contribute for the good of the organisation and for him. It is also the important factor to affect the level of employees' satisfaction as in researches of Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, (2005) and Verquer, Beehr, & Wagner, (2003) has established strong positive relationship between person-environment ï¬t and job satisfaction.
Determinants of job satisfaction - Correlated
Job attitude: Some research in job attitude conducted by Brown and Peterson (1993); Harrison, Newman, and Roth (2006) showed that job attitude are positively related to job performance and negatively related to turnover intentions. It is an advantage for organization to have employees who have positive job attitude can result in having high level of job satisfaction which make employees have greater efforts in accomplish the tasks thus achieve better performance. Besides, there are also some other researchers proposed that job satisfaction yields positive relationships with other job attitude such as organizational commitment (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002), job involvement (Brown, 1996), and career satisfaction (Bowling, Beehr, & Lepisto, 2006).
Organizational justice: the term organizational justice describes the role of fairness as it directly relates to the workplace (Hassan, A., & Hashim, J., 2011). Among the researchers, there is a clear consensus about the organisational justice consists of distributive, procedural and interactional justice (Adams, 1965; Bies and Moag, 1986; Folger and Cropanzano, 1998). These dimensions have been postulated to influence employees' job satisfaction and determine their attitude, performance, commitment and turnover intension (Hassan and Chandaran, 2005; Williams et al., 2002)
Psychological and physical strain: job tension, anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion, frustration are the factors that have negative affects to the employees' satisfaction. The psychological and physical constrainers yield negative relationship with job satisfaction (Sanchez & Viswesvaran, 2002; Spector & Jex, 1991). They need to be eliminated to create the comfortable working environment for employees hence these employees can be able to performance well.
Life satisfaction: Theoretical explanations for the correlation between work and family life are depended on both conflict and enrichment. Time is a constraint factors, hence many researchers found both the positive and negative affection to work-life. In the study of White, Hill, McGovern, Mills, & Smeaton (2003), work-life conflict has been associated with lower job satisfaction, higher rates of absenteeism, and lower productivity. While work - life enrichment can lead to improvements in areas such as leadership abilities, psychological functioning, and multi-tasking, which in turn lead to increased job satisfaction (Carlson, Kacmer, Wayne, & Grzywacz, 2006; Hunter, Perry, Carlson, & Smith, 2010; Masuda, McNall, Allen, & Nicklin, 2011).
Determinants of job satisfaction - Consequences:
Job performance: several studies have postulated the linkage between employee job satisfaction and job performance. Since the most influential narrative review of the job satisfaction-job performance relationship is published by Brayfield and Crockett (1955), there are different models, which describe this relationship has been specified (Judge, Bono, Thoresen, & Patton, 2001). The models will be anatomized as below:
Model 1: Figure 5 (Judge, Bono, Thoresen, & Patton, 2001)
This model represents the relationship of cause and effect between job satisfaction and job performance. As mention by Arnolds and Boshoff (2001), since they employees' needs are fulfilled, they will satisfy with the job. Not only is the performance of employees affected but also the performance of the organisation. In the work published in the 1960s, Argyris (1964), Likert (1961) found out that through the level of employees' satisfaction, the organisation performance can be predicted. In reality, if the employees dissatisfy with their job, they tend to do the job without care and attention. They don't work with passion to gain success, not only for the organisation success but for themselves or even, they tend to seek for another chance to change the working environment where they are currently belonging to. Every employee is an asset of organisation. Hence, the organisation cannot stand aside when there is hindrance way to the satisfaction of their employees.
Model 2: Figure 6 (Judge, Bono, Thoresen, & Patton, 2001)
Every individual seeks for the success not only for himself or herself but also for the organisation they are work in. Certainly, this success plays an important role for the job satisfaction which every employee would like to have. This model represents the linkage of job satisfaction and job performance differently. Contradictory to the model 1, Lawler and Porter (1967) asserted that "good performance may lead to rewards, which in turn lead to satisfaction" (pg. 23). Rewards are the signal of achieving success. The level of satisfaction increases when they employees continuously get what they aim for. If the organisation make they recognise only with good performance, they will be noticed or promoted or get better compensation. They will work with high efforts which they know what they are paid back, will satisfy them well.
Model 3: Figure 7 (Judge, Bono, Thoresen, & Patton, 2001)
Beyond the basic mutual affection relationship of job satisfaction and job performance, model 3 add on factor C which is myriad other moderators directly causes changing the level of both employees' job satisfaction and job performance. Some most important moderators such as:
Compensation: is a crucial means by which companies can retain talent and build enthusiasm in employees (Shieh, 2008). It affects directly to the relationship of job satisfaction and job performance as in the study of Frye (2004). Further more, Lawler (1985) fostered the model that mentioned salary satisfaction and pay pleasure co-vary in a positive course and help people to move their thinking towards positivity or positive thinking. He also originated that individuals who expect higher monetary rewards in the upcoming times are less satisfied with their current pay. Hence, the appropriate strategy in designing the compensation is extremely important for motivating employees. If the pay plan is too promised or too easy for employee to achieve, they will be less motivated since they are easily to reach the targets.
Promotion: Teseema and Soeters (2006) concluded that there is positive relationship between promotion practices and perceived performance of employee. If the employees can recognise their organisation offer a promised career path with clear chance to be promoted, they will be able to work harder for achieving the objectives which are compromised from beginning.
Good training and development: as mention in the study of Blum & Kaplan, (2000, quoted in Schmidt, 2007) gave a large test on the important of training and development affections to the job satisfaction. "The results of a 2000 survey of 271 network professionals showed that the most important factor in job satisfaction was the opportunity to learn new skills". Another researcher found that training and development is the major source and factor for productive and satisfied workers (Violono, 2001). The more they are updated new knowledge of doing the job, the better results they are able to deliver. By having good knowledge on the job, the employees tend to consider, think carefully before act based on what they are taught. The organisation gains a great benefit in having skill full and knowledgeable employees which will enable organisation to compete well with rivals.
Withdrawal behaviour: another consequence of job satisfaction is withdrawal behaviour. These behaviours include absenteeism (Farrell &Stamm, 1988) as well as turnover intention and actual turnover (Tett&Meyer, 1993). If the employees receive proper attentions, the organisation can significantly reduce the turnover rate whereas the productivity is also improved by preventing or avoiding unpleasant or dissatisfying work (Hanisch & Hulin, 1991)
2.3.6 Measurement of job satisfaction:
There are many types of instruments to measure the job satisfaction which are developed decades ago. Unfortunately, the employees' psychometric characteristics are hardly to be evaluated. Thus, to measure the job satisfaction, the indirect affected factors must be fully understood to give reliability and validity results. It requires much careful thought regarding the nature of job satisfaction and substantive continued effort directed toward demonstrating the empirical existence (O'Connor, Peters, Gordon, 1978). In addition, many researchers debate inconsistency theories on job satisfaction which lead to lack of standardized measurement to measure job satisfaction. Some most widely cited survey instruments found in the literature include The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), the Job Descriptive Index (JDI), Job in General (JIG) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ).
Job satisfaction survey (JSS): JSS invented by Paul E. Spector (1985) to assess employee attitudes about the job and aspects of the job. The JSS includes nine sub-scales: salary, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, operating procedures, co-workers, work and communication. Each scale is assessed with four items, and a total score is computed from all items. A summated rating scale format is used, with six choices per item ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree". Items are written in both directions, so about half must be reverse scored.
Job descriptive index (JDI): JDI was first examined in Smith, Kendall, and Hulin's publication of the Measurement of Satisfaction in Work and Retirement (1969). It measures the five facets of job satisfaction. However, these five facets do not cover the total job satisfaction; it only measures the satisfaction of individual facets (Scarpello & Campbell, 1983). Moreover, Smith et al. (1974) report seven rather than five dimensions because a screen test (Cattell, 1966) indicated that there were seven non-trivial factors in their data. This is confirmed in the analysis of Yeager, (1981) that JDI contains more than five dimensions. The ability/performance and interpersonal relations are added on besides the basic five dimensions, which are job, pay, opportunities for promotion, supervision, and coworkers. On the other hand, there are some disagreements in choosing the factor to measure, JDI is still widely used and Jung, Dalessio, Johnson, (1986) believe that practitioners and researchers currently using the JDI in its present form can be confident that the instrument behaves consistently over a wide variety of situations.
Job in general (JIG): JIG is a complement measurement to JDI. It assesses the overall job satisfaction while JDI just focuses on five dimensions. JDI was developed in 1990's by Balzer & Smith. According to a study by van Saane, Sluiter, Verbeek, and Frings-Dresen (2003, cited in Pyne, J. R. 2011), the JIG scale was rated at 0.91 for internal consistency reliability and at 0.76 for convergent validity with the Interpersonal Adjectives Scales. It has high validity and can be combined with JDI to produce more efficient result in measuring job satisfaction.
Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaires (MSQ): MSQ is developed in 1967 by Weiss, Dawis, England, and Lofquist. It has three forms, two 100-item long forms (1977 version and 1967 version) and a 20-item short form. Different with JID and JIG measurement, MSQ advantages the organization to be able to measure both intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction (Spector, 1997). Furthermore, this instrument measures the level of satisfaction of different aspects of work and environment and it has been widely used in studies exploring client vocational needs, in counselling follow-up studies, and in generating information about the reinforces in jobs (Vocational Psychology Research, 2002).
Each item in the questionnaire refers to an aspect of the job. The respondents will answer how they are satisfied with each aspect. Each item has four alternatives "very dissatisfied; dissatisfied; neutral; satisfied; very satisfied". Each respondent will spend 15 to 20 minutes to complete 100 questions for the long form and 5 minutes for short form. Each answer will be scored and if the percentage scores of 75 or higher represent a high degree if satisfaction. In contrast, if the percentage score of 25 or lower represent a low level of satisfaction. The score in the middle rage indicate the average satisfaction level.
The scales include 20 items which are the reinforcement of job satisfaction (cited from the Manual for the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire):
Ability utilization. The chance to do something that makes use of my abilities
Achievement. The feeling of accomplishment I get from the job
Activity. Being able to keep busy all the time
Advancement. The chances for advancement on this job
Authority. The chance to tell other people what to do
Company policies and practices. The way company policies are put into practice
Compensation. My pay and the amount of work I do
Co-workers. The way my co-workers get along with each other
Creativity. The chance to try my own methods of doing the job
Independence. The chance to work alone on the job
Moral values. Being able to do things that don't go against my conscience
Recognition. The praise I get for doing a good job
Responsibility. The freedom to use my own judgment
Security. The way my job provides for steady employment
Social service. The chance to do things for other people
Social status. The chance to be "somebody" in the community
Supervision - human relations. The way my boss handles his men
Supervision - technical. The competence of my supervisor in making decisions
Variety. The chance to do different things from time to time
Working conditions. The working conditions.
The questions are developed base on these 20 items. In the long form, each item has five questions and in short form, only one question for one item. Unfortunately, there are many limitations about the time consuming. Therefore the short form will be used in this study. The short form still covers all dimension of the job and it provides enough information for evaluating the real circumstance that employees are currently working in.
Job satisfaction in Vietnam banking sector
Vietnam banking sector are currently facing the most complicated situation toward the human resources matters. There are big changes which are taking place in both big banks and small banks and both with high and low level banking employees. From the beginning of the year, a lot of the banks have announced to change chief executive officer (CEO) and other senior leaders. Many reasons causes these changing, but mostly these banks have changed their chairmen such as VietABank has new CEO Pham Duy Hieu, born in 1978, replace of Mr. Pham Duy Hung. These banks also replaced new Chairman, Mr. Pham Huu Viet. Sacombank also appointed new general manager, Mr. Phan Huy Khong (Lan, T.T., 2012)...All most all banks have new decisions on appointment. They want to "exchange transfusion", to restructure the entire organisation for the purpose of having more efficiency operation systems.
Besides, many banks are on the way of preparing for merge & acquisition, many employees has "jump" to other banks to avoid dismissed. These volatilities of the personnel will make the performance of many banks affected. Employees are facing a big pressure of losing jobs. The salary is cut down make the employees feel that the compensation they get is not worthy with their efforts (Han Phi, Tuong Vi, 2012). The salary budgets are lower in comparison with the budget in last year. Figure 8 is the comparison on the salary of three commercial Vietnam bank (Han Phi, Tuong Vi, 2012).
30/9/2012
(Billion Vnd)
Employees
30/9/2012
(people)
Average
(Million Vnd)
30/9/2011
(Billion Vnd)
Employees
30/9/2011
(people)
Average
(Million Vnd)
VCB
1.985
13.170
151
1.943
11.180
174
CTG
2.701
18.991
142
5.084
17.871
284
ACB
1.316
9.744
135
845.7
7.845
108
Based on the financial report, Vietinbank (symbol CTG) cut 47% from 5084 billion vnd in last year to 2071 billion vnd in this year. With this cutting down, the average salary of employees is cut nearly 162 million vnd. Similarly, Vietcombank (VCB), the average salary employees degrees nearly 23 million vnd. However, this degree is caused by the total employees is increased. Different with other banks, the ACB's average salary is increased up to 27 million vnd due to the differentiation in human resource management strategy.
Furthermore, add on to the difficulties that banks cause affections to employees are the sales targets are increased without fully support from organizations. The human resources for bank will have bigger pressure in 2013 with many reasons as ACB, STB have just been through the big scandal; Seabank is sued of forcing series of employee to withdraw and thousands of banking students graduated cannot find a job. Combination of all difficulties makes the human resources of banking sectors are hardly solved properly especially, it strongly affects to the satisfaction of current employees. They are working under big pressure from all internal and external factors of the economic and the bank itself.
Emerging Issues and the Need for Empirical Research
The study of relevant employees' job satisfaction literature revealed that job satisfaction is a complex and vague aspects of human management. To begin with, there are many different dentitions of job satisfaction. One was to focus on the psychology, internal feelings that lead to satisfaction; one was the stress on external environment that affects job satisfaction. Similarly, although there were many theorists related to it as content theories, process theories, situation theories, work adjustment theories and potential benefit for the organisation to have high employees' level of satisfaction such as enhance performance, positive working attitude, lower turnover intension, absenteeism, there were also many barriers that could impact on the employees' job satisfaction achievement such as the conflict between management team and employees, organisation constraint, job complexity, work - family conflict, person and environment fit ability.
The review of literature stressed the need to have in place the strategy for human resource management of banking sector to understand their employees and enhance the level of satisfaction. With the emphasis on the important of satisfaction and the responsibility of organisation to create appropriate working environment, to accommodate this new paradigm shift in human resource management approach in Vietnam banking sector, staffs as well as management team, require supporting each other, to achieve the organisation's goals. The main support mechanism highlighted by research was the provision of both psychological affection of employee and management ability of the firms to prepare staff to meet the needs growth and development of organisation. There was concern that many organisations in Vietnam do not fully care for their human resource. Especially, in such economic difficult situation like now, organisation keep running toward targets but forget the important of employees' roles to archive the targets. The employees get more stressful and nervous for worrying losing the job instead of spending their effort to think how to do the job better. Guidelines and analysis models on variable related to job satisfaction were reviewed. Meaningful theories were identified as a necessary prerequisite to preparing organisation support its employees, create a win - win situation for both organisation and for employees.
A crucial issue for the enhancement level of employees' job satisfaction in organisation is that recommendations on future directions ought to be based on research. There exist various means by which organisation keen on supporting the employees can obtain guidance and advice based on theories: review all related factors and variables, from that, the organisation can develop the strategy, plan to apply in human resource management. However, for meaningful debate, recommendation for improving level of employees' job satisfaction ought to be based on research finding, using valid and reliable methods of data collection. Unfortunately, empirical data on employee satisfaction in Vietnam banking sector approaches are few and employees' satisfaction are not regarded important in the period of difficulties (Le Chi, Thanh Lan, 2012). In other words, there is a continuing need for empirical data on how to improve current framework of human resource management for better result in employees' satisfaction thus create highly energy workforce for organisation and the aforementioned review of literature supports this objective.
To arrive at a deeper understanding of how organisation, especially ACB bank, is treating the employees that affect to their level of job satisfaction in what way, empirical research will be implemented. Specifically, such research will attempt to find out the overall level of job satisfaction of ACB employees, which factors affect mostly to them, how dimension of the job are currently judged by employees and, from a wider perspective, the drivers and barriers acting on the bank to develop a better working condition for employees. The next stage of this research will detail the Research Methods to be used to capture the empirical data, including details on the research strategy to be adopted, data collection techniques, sample selection and management of the researcher's role.
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This research study has a number of inter-related objectives set within the context of banking sector.
Identify the factors cause employees job satisfaction, its correlates and consequences on organisation management by analysed the secondary resources and literature related.
Evaluate the overall level of job satisfaction off ACB's employees.
Formulate recommendations on improvement of current framework for better result in employees' satisfaction thus create highly energy workforce for ACB.
A valuable aspect to this research work relates to objective 2: the opportunity to study employees' job satisfaction in ACB and implementation in practice in a subject that, although generating much discussion and demand, is in terms of literature and research within the ACB's environment, in its embryonic stages in Vietnam banking sector context.
Chapter 2 ('Review of Related Literature') identified a gap in existing research in that there was ample evidence on the need for organisations to support their employees to enhance the level of job satisfaction. All variable related will regarded as the check points to gain employees' satisfaction and they ought to be based on research. An important contribution of this research work will be the study and analysis of empirical data on how employees feel about their work, a chance for them to evaluate the working conditions and environment that their organisation is offering. Objectives 1 was initially addressed in the previous section, in the form of a review of literature in the field of employees' job satisfaction; Objective 2 takes this research one step further through the collection and analysis of empirical data obtained from a commercial bank in Vietnam, ACB. Importantly, although a focus of the empirical work will be to gather data on ACB's employees to cope with the level of job satisfaction, data will also be collected on the HR manager view on perceived drivers and barriers to satisfy employees needs within the bank setting, thus providing the opportunity to explore the difficulties the bank has in assisting its staffs and what aspects the bank considers to be impediments to enhance the level of job satisfaction. By comparing theory with practice - i.e. comparing the Literature Review findings with the 'real world' - the researcher will gain a fuller understanding of the issues surrounding the implementation of employees' job satisfaction methodologies and so be better placed to contribute useful knowledge in relation human resource management in organisations especially in Vietnam's banks.
This section - Research Methodology - will provides the details of the research strategy adopted to address the research issues identified above, together with the means of collecting data for analysis, including site and sample selection, and the analysis approach to be adopted. In addition, the reader will be directed towards the thorny issue of potential limitations and problems with the chosen research strategy and its implementation.
Research strategy
According to Saunders, et. al, (2009), the research strategies emphasize on the answering the particular research questions and meet research's objectives. Likewise, he highlighted there is no research strategy is inherently superior or inferior to any other. Objective 2 of this research sets out to 'explore the overall level of job satisfaction of ACB's employees, including drivers and barriers to job satisfaction', and this will be implemented by through the collection and analysis of empirical data. But what research strategy should be adopted to meet Objective 2?
The empirical research in this study is interested in an in-depth study within a real organisation environment, ACB bank, of a number of inter-related objectives: how do the employees think about their work? Which factors do affect them the most in making them satisfy? Which strategies should the bank apply for enhancing the level of job satisfaction? The primary focus will be the point of views of ACB's employees. Other is from management point of views will also be collected and analysed. Which type of research strategy is best suited to facilitate an in-depth study of a sensitive issue in a complex setting - banking environment?
Experimental research, as a strategy, is not appropriate to this research work as it is normally associated with looking at the natural sciences, particularly psychology in social context (this empirical research centres on the employees' job satisfaction within the context of ACB bank). Action research is also inappropriate, as it concentrates on the research in action rather than research about action (Coghlan and Brannick 2005). The more data is collected, the more the problem is revisited. However, this research is not concerned with one practical problem that can be tackled in this way: the researcher is interest in delve a number of issues related to employees' job satisfaction not in solving an explicit problem or testing a theory to uncover the answer for the problem.
In essence, this empirical research will apply research strategy mix of case study and survey, which is sufficient to carry out and yields the neutral results. What are case study and survey approach and why are they suitable for this study?
Case study: Ordinarily, the case study are defined by Robson (2002:178) defines case study as 'a strategy for doing research which involves an empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon within its real life context using multiple sources of evidence'. He highlighted the importance of the real life context. This study is undertaken within a highly controlled context - ACB bank. This strategy concerns to generate answers to the questions "what" and "how". From that, the deeper understanding about ACB'
