TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ TP. HCM UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY SOLVAY BRUSSELS SCHOOL MBAVB3 TRẦN QUỐC TRÍ FACTORS AFFECTING JOB SATISFACTION OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERS AT HARVEYNASH VIETNAM MASTER PROJECT MASTER IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (PART-TIME) Tutor’s Name: Dr. VŨ VIỆT HẰNG Ho Chi Minh City (2010) Tai Lieu Chat Luong i UNDERTAKINGS I would like to undertake that, to carry out this thesis “Factors affecting job satisfaction of software engineers at Harveynash Vietnam”, I have myself studied and researched the project’s issue, applied the academic knowledge obtained from the MBAVB program, and discussed with my supervisor. I undertake that this is my own research project, all information, data and survey results are true and never announced in any other research projects.
Ho Chi Minh City, 22 February 2011 TRAN QUOC TRI ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express the deepest appreciation to Dr. Vu Viet Hang for her time and her valuable advice to help me to finish this project. I would like to thank all professors from both Open University and SolvayBusinessSchool who had given me the academic knowledge and shared with me their practical experience. I also would like to thank all employees at Harveynash Vietnam who help me to join my survey for this project.
iii TUTOR’S COMMENTS It’s a pleasure to supervise Tran Quoc Tri for this final task forward completing his master in business management. In the course of the project implementation, I’ve formed a good impression of the preparatory work completed by Tri as well as his responsibility and trustworthiness. I’d like to highlight key accomplishment of this research report as follows 1. The author succeeded in maintaining cohesion between different parts of the research, from the literature review, the status quo to solutions recommendation.
The research was developed on the basis of modern and solid theories. The author achieved the primary objective of doing a serious work of collecting data and thoroughly analyzing them to provide meaningful information and recommendations. The results of this research can be applied in real life situations and address them in a practical way. I would encourage the management of the author’s company to adopt the recommendations of the research to help improve the employee satisfaction at Harveynash Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh City, 22 February 2011 Dr. VU VIET HANG iv TABLE OF CONTENT Chapter 1 Introduction .2 Research problem and research objectives.3 Research questions and hypotheses.6 Structure of the study .4 Chapter 2 Literature review .1 Concepts and definitions of job satisfaction .2 Theories relating to job satisfaction .1 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need (1943) .2 Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory (1959) .3 Vroom’s Expectancy Theory (1964) .4 Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model (1974) .3 The measurement of job satisfaction .4 Researches related to job satisfaction.1 Organizational factors and job satisfaction .2 Demographic factors and job satisfaction .5 Developing the research model .21 Chapter 3 Research Methodology .2 Population and sample.5 Data analysis method.28 Chapter 4 Data analysis and findings.1 Profile of samples .2 Means of job satisfaction.5 Comparison of job satisfaction by demographic factors .1 Comparison of job satisfaction by gender and marital status .2 Comparison of job satisfaction by years of experience .3 Comparison of job satisfaction by length of service and position .3 Evaluation of independent variables .7 Summary of research findings.8 Revised research model .48 Chapter 5 Conclusion and implication.1 Means of job satisfaction .2 Personal antecedents of job satisfaction .3 Organizational antecedents of job satisfaction .4 Limitations and recommendations for future researches. 54 APPENDIX 1 THE QUESTIONNAIRE. 57 APPENDIX 2 PROFILE OF SAMPLES.
64 APPENDIX 3 RELIABILITY ANALYSIS. 65 APPENDIX 4 SUITABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR FACTOR ANALYSIS. 69 APPENDIX 5 FACTOR EXTRACTION. 71 APPENDIX 6 FACTOR ROTATION.
77 APPENDIX 7 COMPARISON OF JOB SATISFACTION BY DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS. 79 APPENDIX 8 ASSUMPTIONS CHECKING FOR MULTIPLE REGRESSION. 86 APPENDIX 9 REGRESSION ANALYSIS. 87 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HVN Harveynash Vietnam IT Information Technology SPSS Statistical Package for Social Sciences JDI Job Descriptive Index JSS Job Satisfaction Survey MSQ Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire JIG Job in General SD Standard Deviation EFA Exploratory Factor Analysis KMO Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin VIF Variance Inflation Factor QC Quality Assurance CPI Consumer Price Index viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Outline of the thesis .5 Figure 2: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs .8 Figure 3: Herzberg’s two factor theory .9 Figure 4: Vroom expectancy theory.10 Figure 5: Job Characteristics Model .12 Figure 6: Six facial expressions from the Faces scale .15 Figure 7: Proposed research model .22 Figure 8: The research process .23 Figure 9: Revised research model .48 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Internal consistency reliability for the Job Satisfaction Survey .14 Table 2: Items from the Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire Satisfaction subscale .16 Table 3: Measurement scales of satisfaction level .27 Table 4: Divisions of facets satisfaction into 36 items .27 Table 5: Mappings between satisfaction scores and satisfaction levels .32 Table 6: Means of the items in construct “pay” .32 Table 7: Summary of satisfaction scores .33 Table 8: The results of the One-Sample T-test .33 Table 9: Results of reliability analysis of items .35 Table 10: Factor analysis results .38 Table 11: Multicollinearity check results for independent variables .42 Table 12: Regression model summary and statistical significant of the results .43 Table 13: Multiple regression results .44 Table 14: Summary of hypothesis testing results .1 Overview Job satisfaction is one of the most frequently studied variables in organizational behavior research.
Job satisfaction surveys are commonly used by organizations to help manage and retain valuable employees. Job satisfaction is found to be a predictor of turnover intentions. According to Meyer (1999, cited in Luddy, 2005), employees experience a lack of job satisfaction resulting in a low level of employee commitment that, in turn, impacts on performance and the achievement of organizational goals. The symptoms of these problems result in low productivity, high absenteeism, and high employee turnover.
Researches on turnover intention of IT employees also suggested that “IT employees seem to be quicker to change jobs than other employees when they are dissatisfied with their employer” (Hacker, 2003). The purpose of the study is to understand the satisfaction level of software engineers at HVN and the factors affecting job satisfaction.2 Research problem and research objectives 1.1 Research problem Harveynash Vietnam (HVN) is one of the biggest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam. As HVN is rapidly expanding, the number of employee at software division is increasing year over year. By the end of December 2009, the total software engineers at HVN is 323, 20% increase compared to the year 2008.
However, beside the expansion, the turnover is also increasing. In the year 2009, there were 47 software engineers left HVN. As job satisfaction is strongly correlated with turnover intentions, studying on job satisfaction is considered as the first step to help retain software engineers at HVN. This gives motivation for this 2 research in measuring the level of job satisfaction of software engineers at HVN as well as the impact of demographic and organizational factors on job satisfaction.2 Research objectives In attempting to answer the research problems, this research is directed to the following objectives: 1.
To measure the overall satisfaction of software engineers at HVN as well as the level of satisfaction with facets of their job. To determine the demographic factors affecting overall job satisfaction. To measure the level of impact of organizational factors on overall job satisfaction of software engineers at HVN.3 Research questions and hypotheses Demographic and organizational factors that found to be associated with job satisfaction will be elaborated in Error! Reference source not found. The research questions and hypotheses are developed based on these factors.1 Research questions This research investigates the following research questions: Q1.
What is the overall job satisfaction of software engineers at HVN? Q2. What degree of satisfaction do software engineers express with each of the facets of their job such as pay, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, working environment, coworkers, nature of work and communication? Q3. Are there significant differences in job satisfaction of software engineers at HVN by their personal factors such as gender, marital status, years of experience, present position, and number of years working at HVN? Q4. What is the level of impact of organizational factors such as pay, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, working environment, coworkers, nature of work and communication on the overall job satisfaction of the software engineers at HVN? 3 1.2 Research hypotheses The following hypotheses were proposed for the research.
Hypothesis H1: There are significant differences in job satisfaction of software engineers at HVN by demographic factors such as gender, marital status, years of experience, present position, and length of service. H1a:There is significant difference in job satisfaction between male and female software engineers. H1b: There is significant difference in job satisfaction between single and married software engineers. H1c: There is significant difference in job satisfaction between software engineers having different length of service for the company.
H1d: There is significant difference in job satisfaction between software engineers having different years of experience. H1e: There is significant difference in job satisfaction between software engineers working in different positions. Hypothesis H2: The organizational factors such as pay, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, working environment, coworkers, nature of work and communication are positively related to the overall job satisfaction. H2a: Pay is positively related to the overall job satisfaction.
H2b: Promotion is positively related to the overall job satisfaction. H2c: Supervision is positively related to the overall job satisfaction. H2d: Fringe benefits are positively related to the overall job satisfaction. H2e: Contingent rewards are positively related to the overall job satisfaction.
H2f: Operating procedures are positively related to the overall job satisfaction. H2g: Coworkers are positively related to the overall job satisfaction. 4 H2h: Nature of work is positively related to the overall job satisfaction. H2i: Communication is positively related to the overall job satisfaction.4 Research methodology In this research, quantitative method is applied to examine the research questions and hypotheses.
A structured survey questionnaire was administered to collect primary data from software engineers working at HVN.Data were collected using an online survey designed in Google Docs. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) v.16 was utilized to analyze the data.5 Delimitations This section identifies the limits beyond which this research does not have significance. In this research, demographic factors were limited to just 5 factors, despite that there could be other factors such as age, educational level… need to be inspected. Similarly, organizational factors were limited to the 9 facets of job.
Moreover, the sample size in this research is quite small due to time limitation. A large sample will make the findings more trustworthy. Finally, the study was conducted at HVN so the results and implications of the study are applicable for only HVN. However, the research model and research methods used in this study are not limited to the context of HVN.6 Structure of the study This thesis consists of five chapters.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the research context. The research problem and questions are identified, and the research model and hypotheses are constructed. Brief introduction about the research methodology used for this study as well as delimitations of this study are also discussed. Chapter 2 presents the literature reviews carriedout for this research.
Concepts and definitions of job satisfaction, together with theories relating 5 to job satisfaction, the measurement of job satisfaction and researches related to job satisfaction are discussed.Chapter 3 deals with the methodology of research employed in this thesis. Chapter 4describes the analysis of the data and testing of the hypotheses of the proposed model and the last chapter, Chapter 5, presents conclusions and implications of the research.Figure 1provides a conceptual outline of this thesis.