UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ LUONG THI THANH THAO THE INFLUENCE OF LEADERSHIP POWER BASES ON EMPLOYEE’S JOB STRESS - A STUDY OF VIETNAMESE COMPANIES MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ LUONG THI THANH THAO THE INFLUENCE OF LEADERSHIP POWER BASES ON EMPLOYEE’S JOB STRESS - A STUDY OF VIETNAMESE COMPANIES ID: 21120110 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Pham Ngoc Thuy Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Pham Ngoc Thuy, my Supervisor, for her thoughtful guidance guidance, recommendations from the research proposal to the thesis report. I really appreciate her patience during the whole instruction process for me to the able to complete this study despite some location difficulties.
Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all professors, tutors and officers of MBus Program for valuable lectures, academy knowledge and your experiences transfer throughout the period of courses at International School of Business. I want to express my special thanks to all my colleagues, friends for your advice, cooperation and supports during the pilot and official survey. Finally, special thanks to my family especially my parents for their support, encouragement and inspiration that enabled me to finish the course. Without your support, I can not successfully complete my thesis.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 06th Dec, 2014. Luong Thi Thanh Thao i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2 ABSTRACT The turnover rate in Companies in Vietnam is growing especially in Sales department of FMCGs companies, there are few studies of the influence of leadership behaviors on both organizational and leader effectiveness. That is why FMCG and employees who work in sales sector are mainly focus of this study. The objectives of this research to identify relationships between leadership power bases and employee‟s job stress in Companies in Viet Nam.
A convenience sample is collected from 289 employees from many companies, largely from FMCGs and Sales department. The goal was to obtain the influence of leadership power bases used by his or her leaders and the employees‟ job stress to determine if an association exists between these two variables. The results indicated that perceived leadership power bases correlate with job stress for employees in these companies. The components of the Legitimate power base is positively related to job stress of subordinate, whereas the Expert power, Reward Power and Coercive are related negatively.
According to the research including on legitimate leadership behaviors, these approaches may lead to high job stress. However, using mostly Expert, Reward and Coercive power may result in positive effects such as low stress levels. Leadership is at the heart of effective management. The research, mainly focusing on companies in Ho Chi Minh City with convenient sampling method to collect data analysis.
Demographic factors might have affected the results. Most of the participants were young with job tenure under three years. Moreover, most of the samples chosen came from male gender. Finally, there may have been a self-selection bias among the subordinates who participated in this study since participation was voluntary.
Key words: Leadership, Job stress, power bases. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Table of contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Research questions and research objectives.
Research contribution/significance. Scope of the study and delimitation. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .2 Concept of Leadership and the bases of power.4 Relationships among concepts .1 Legitimate Power and Job Stress .2 Reward Power and Job Stress .3 Coercive Power and Job Stress .4 Expert Power and Job Stress .5 Referent Power and Job Stress. 13 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.
20 iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.7 Main survey and data collection .8 Data analysis methods .1 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). 27 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS.1 Descriptive analysis of the variables studies.2 Measurement scale assessment .1 Reliability Analysis - by Cronbach‟s Alpha .2 Results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis .3 The KMO and Bartlett‟s Test.4 The revised research model.1 Testing relationship of independent factors and dependent factor .2 The results of the regression analysis. 47 CHAPTER 5 – CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .3 Contributions of the study. 57 APPENDIX 1 – QUESTIONNAIRE IN ENGLISH.
57 APPENDIX 2 – QUESTIONNAIRE IN VIETNAMMESE. 60 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com APPENDIX 3 - DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS OF ITEMS. 63 APPENDIX 4 - EFA ANALYSIS RESULTS. 64 APPENDIX 5 - RELIABILITY ANALYSIS RESULTS.
65 APPENDIX 6: FREQUENCY TABLE. 66 v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com List of Table Table 4-1: Descriptive Statistics of Sample. 31 Table 4-2: Reliability analysis results. 35 Table 4-3: EFA analysis results for the variables.
37 Table 4-4: The total explained variance. 37 Table 4-5: KMO and Bartlett's Test. 39 Table 4-6: Describe the correlation among variable. 42 Table 4-7: Hypotheses testing results.
43 Table 4-8: Multiple Regressions results of model. 45 Table 4-9: Summary of hypothesis testing result. 47 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com List of Figures Figure 1: Research model for leader power bases and job stress of employee. 14 Figure 2: Research Process.
16 Figure 3: Revised Research Model. 39 vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABBREVIATIONS ANOVA: Analysis Of Variance EFA: Explored Factor Analysis KMO: Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Science viii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 3 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter introduces the context of the study, including a short introduction of the market of Viet Nam, and information FMCGs industry in Viet Nam, the research problem, and the research objectives as well as the delimitation and contribution of the research. Research background Effective leadership is essential to ensure that change leads to increased efficiency and profitability (Pittaway et al., 1998; Zhao and Merna, 1992; Slattery and Olsen, 1984). The FMCG industry tends to be labor intensive and has increasingly harsh environmental demands imposed upon it.
Leadership skills may help organizations to utilize the available human resources more effectively and to deal successfully with environmental pressures. Leadership as a subject has been somewhat neglected within FMCG industry research in Viet Nam. From human relations perspectives, employee‟s stress is related to the personality traits of the superior which as his/her temperament, openness, industriousness, pleasantness or not. The positive side of all of these traits can reduce stress and enhance satisfaction of employee.
If organizations understand the influence of leadership skills or leadership styles may help organizations to utilize the available human resources more effectively and to deal successfully with environmental pressures. A brief introduction about turnover rate in Viet Nam. According to Vietnam news online paper, (2013), the turnover rate among workers is likely to grow this year as many hope to change their jobs, an online survey has found. Fast- moving consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, oil, and gas are predicted to be the top sectors of turnover rate.
The high turnover rate of employees comes from many reasons. One of the most important reasons that lead to resignation of employee is not appropriate leadership. Employees feel unsatisfied with their boss. They decide to quit job in short time of working.
The workplace stress is recognized, but little attention is given to the incidence of this 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com problem in the this industry in Viet Nam, despite the growth of this sector, and the obvious relevance of stress to fluid situations where much depends on inter-personal relations. The subject of leadership is interesting for many people. The continued search for good leaders has resulted in the development of many leadership theories. Leadership can be defined as a social influence process.
It involves determining the group or organization‟s objectives, encouraging behavior in pursuit of these objectives, and influencing group maintenance and culture (Yukl, 1994). Constructs like job stress, burnout, organizational commitment, and job performance have been developed and empirically tested in developed industrialized countries (Baba, Jamal & Tourigny, 1998; Maslach, 2003). Job stress can be defined as an individual‟s reactions to characteristics of the work environment that seem emotionally and physically threatening (Jamal, 2005). Stress can influence a variety of variables including job performance, organizational effectiveness (Borucki, 1987), personal relationships, and health (Bosma, et al.
Research questions and research objectives The turnover rate in Companies in Vietnam is growing especially in Sales department of FMCGs companies, there are few studies of the influence of leadership behaviors on both organizational and leader effectiveness. That is why FMCG companies and employees who work in sales sector are mainly focus of this study. The proposed research question is as follows: How do the leader power styles affect on job stress of employee? The objectives of this research is identifying the relationships between leadership power bases and employees' job stress in Companies in Viet Nam. Research contribution/significance 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com The study findings add to the field of leadership with information on the relationship of leaders and followers in terms of the degree to which leadership styles might relate to employee‟s stress in the workplace.
There are relations between leader power bases and subordinates‟ job stress. The findings support that Legitimate power base stimulate job stress, Reward power, Expert power and Coercive Power do not stimulate to job stress. That helps the board director associates with HR department of organizations train managers/leaders of companies to use effectively kind of leadership styles to reduce job stress of subordinate and increase the effectiveness of both the leader and the organization. If an organization wants to succeed in a rapidly changing business environment, it is better for managers to use, Reward power, Expert power and Coercive Power than Legitimate power.
Managers use various leadership styles to influence subordinates, decrease their job stress and to get things done in organizations. Job performance will increase so that, it will increase the success of their organization. Scope of the study and delimitation The framework of this study is to analyze the interaction among major variables of power bases depicted. The primary data used in this study is secured through survey questionnaire.
The respondents of this study are from many companies in Viet Nam but are largely from Sales department and marketing department, which have high turnover rate according to Market Remuneration Report from Hay Group (2013). This study has limitations that could be future research topics, such as other sectors, demographic characteristics of the participants, etc. The study focuses on employees and managers who work in popular companies in Ho Chi Minh City of Viet Nam (Unilever, P&G, Colgate, Pepsi, Coca – Cola, Vinamilk, Bank, IBM, KPMG, Etc. This study focuses much on leadership power bases, how it affects on job stress.
3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Research structure The research is structured into five main chapters. Chapter 1 is the research background, research problem, research questions and objectives, research delimitation, research contribution/significance, scope of research and thesis structure. Chapter 2 presents the literature review, which provides key concepts related to the researched topic, leadership power bases and job stress.
After that, conceptual research model and its hypotheses are provided. Chapter 3 introduces the methodology used to test the research model. Chapter 4 presents research results of data analysis, hypothesis testing and discussion from the research findings. Lastly, chapter 5 summarizes the research results; provide the findings, limitations and recommendations.
4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter introduces key concepts related to the researcher topic and literature relating to leadership power bases and job stress of employee which includes in previous research result, discussions and arguments. Through out this chapter, variables will be established and grouped into relevant factors. This chapter also mentions some previous studies and experiences related to the research topic.