UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Vo Hoang Bac SELF-MANAGEMENT, PSYCHOLOGICAL EMPOWERMENT, SELF-EFFICACY AND JOB PERFORMANCE. A STUDY ON EMPLOYEES IN THE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY ORGANIZATIONS IN VIETNAM. MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City-Year 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Vo Hoang Bac SELF-MANAGEMENT, PSYCHOLOGICAL EMPOWERMENT, SELF-EFFICACY AND JOB PERFORMANCE. A STUDY ON EMPLOYEES IN THE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY ORGANIZATIONS IN VIETNAM.
ID: 22130008 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang Ho Chi Minh City-Year 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Firstly, I would like to express my gratefulness to my supervisor Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang for her professional guidance, intensive support, valuable suggestions, instructions and encouragement during the time of doing my research. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr.
Tran Ha Minh Quan, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Tho, Dr. Nguyen TN Que, Dr. Nguyen Dang Lam, and Dr.
Pham Phu Quoc for their valuable time as the members of the thesis examination committee. Their comments and meaningful suggestions were contributed significantly for my completion of this research. My sincere thanks are given to all of my teachers at International Business School – University of Economics of Ho Chi Minh City for their teaching and guidance during my master course. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT In the context of managerial effectiveness, self-management is an important variable which helps employee fully accountable and responsible for making and keeping commitments to improve individual performance, increased results and enhance levels of self confidence.
Both public and private organizations need to more concern to the development of high effort performers within a strong performance culture in the value of high power distance culture such as Vietnam. This opens many opportunities and challenges for tourism and hospitality organizations to take advantages of well-performed employee to be competitive in the market. In an effort to help local tourism & hospitality companies to have an overview about employees’ behavior in working performance, this study examined the relationships of these factors: self- management, psychological empowerment, self-efficacy, and job performance of 336 employees from 62 travel agencies and hotels in HCM city with an expectation of strengthening evidence in Vietnam. Employing the CFA & SEM analyses, the research findings indicated that there were the positive relationships among self-management, psychological empowerment, self-efficacy; and these antecedents had a significant impact on job performance of Vietnamese employees.
The study also points out useful practical and managerial implications, which support Vietnamese organization managers not only to concentrate their positioning strategies on managers but also on subordinates; and encourage the organizations to use suitable human resource management (HRM) strategies to enhance both employee self-management & job performance in tourism and hospitality industry. Key words: Employee self-management, self-efficacy, psychological empowerment, job performance, Vietnam tourism & hospitality organizations, HCM city. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT ABBREVIATION Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION .1 Background to the research and research problem .3 Research methodology and research scope. 6 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .5 Self-management, psychological empowerment, self-efficacy, and job performance .2 Data analysis procedures.
26 Chapter 4: DATA ANALYSIS .1 CFA for the first-order constructs .2 CFA for second-order constructs .3 CFA for the final measurement model.3 Structural equation modeling (SEM). 47 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. 47 Chapter 5: CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND LIMITATION .2 Limitations and future research. 62 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 CFA model of Self-Efficacy .2 CFA model of Job Performance .3 CFA model of Self-Management .4 CFA model of Psychological Empowerment .5 Final measurement model.
46 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Source of data collection .2 The first run of CFA (of Self-efficacy and Job performance) .3 Summarized of CR, AVE and Cronbach’α (first order constructs) .4 Summarized of CR, AVE and Cronbach’α (self-management) .6 Summarized of CR, AVE and Cronbach’α (Psychological Empowerment) .8 Summarized of CR, AVE and Cronbach’α (final model).9 CFA Summary of eliminated item .11 Unstandardized structural paths. 47 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix A List of in-depth interviews’ participants. 62 Appendix B Qualitative in-depth interview. 62 Appendix C Qualitative in-depth interview findings.
76 Appendix F Correlations among components of Self-management, Psychological…………….80 Appendix G Final measurement scales. 82 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATION CFA Confirmatory Factor Analysis EFA Exploratory Factor Analysis EFL English as Foreign Language JobP Job Performance GDP Gross Domestic Product HR Human Resource HRM Human Resource Management ILO International Labor Organization PE Psychological Empowerment CR Composite reliability AVE Averaged variance extracted SEM Structural equation modeling SE Self-Efficacy SM Self-Management SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the research and research problem In the trend of transitioning and developing Vietnam’s economy, the service sector, consisting of tourism and hospitality industry, has always played an important role. According to The World Travel & Tourism Council (2014), the direct contribution of Travel & Tourism to GDP is “calculated to be consistent with the output, as expressed in National Accounting, of tourism-characteristic sectors such as hotels, airlines, airports, travel agents and leisure and recreation services that deal directly with tourists” (p. The total contribution of Travel & Tourism to GDP of Vietnam was VND311,117.6% of GDP) in 2013 and directly supported 1,899,000 jobs (3.7% of total employment).
It is forecasted to grow by 6.3% per annum to VND299,846.7% of GDP) by 2024 and visitor exports are a key component of the direct contribution of Travel & Tourism (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2014). However, a survey recently launched by one EU-funded tourism development program revealed that a mere 6% of the questioned international tourists choose to return to Vietnam due to poor tourism services, inconvenient transport and inadequate investment ( Management Board of the EU- funded Environmentally and Socially Responsible Tourism Capacity Development Program, as cited in Tuoi Tre News, 2014). In the term of service evaluating criteria, this organization mentioned that the unprofessional workforce was one of the main reason causing services to be poor. This survey fiercely challenges Vietnam’s tourism status quo and suffer its future objectives.
Therefore, the tourism and hospitality industry are strongly required to improve its operational efficiency of the workforce in providing services. Zeithaml et al. (as cited in Tsaur et al., 2003) stated that delivering good quality of service is considered an essential strategy for success and survival in contemporary’s competitive 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Additionally, the special feature of a service industry is “the contact and interaction between service providers (employees) and service acceptors (customers)” (Tsaur et al.
The main products provided by tourism and hospitality organizations are services and the employees who play role as service providers will provide those services to customers. Thus, employee in tourism and hospitality industry becomes a part of service products and their excellent performance help to form image of organizations (Bitner et al., as cited in Kusluvan, 2003). But then again International Labor Organization (2015) mentioned that Viet Nam’s labor productivity level is still near the bottom among ASEAN countries due to low-skill labor forces. This organization also assumes that recent productivity growth rates are maintained, “Viet Nam will reach the Philippines only by 2038, Thailand by 2069 and take far more time to catch up with many other countries” (ILO, 2015, p.
It is also said that Viet Nam's tourism workforce lacks experience, skills and professionalism for providing good quality services (Tran, as cited in Xuan Huong, 2013). That’s a big challenge in human resource management that Vietnamese tourism and hospitality organizations need to solve in the near future in order to have the high competitive position with others. Furthermore, significant changes in the workplace are the result of new advanced technology at the first quarter of new century. It is changing the nature of work so that tourism and hospitality workers can possibly work virtual offices and communicate with businesses across the globe.
Consequently, there are more expressions for individualism, freedom, responsibility, and autonomy which are emerging to be considered to take advantages from subordinates (Mahoney, as cited in Karoly, 1993; Bergen et al. The organization’s needs of competitive efficiency are expressed by means of cost reduction; employee self-management, and continuous improvement of work efficiency (Thoresen & Mahoney, as cited in Manz & 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Sims, 1980; Chaijukul, 2010). The issue, then, is how service employees manage themselves effectively. Most successful tourism and hospitality organizations understand that their people want to work with companies not necessarily for companies.
Thus, the traditional control and management provided by hierarchical structure should come from within the individual. It is critical for an organization’s subordinates, managers, and teams to build a working environment of trust and become self-managing (Manz & Sims, 1980; Cohen et al. Human resource development is the key determinant to create a competitive edge in the new economy (Silva, 1997). He also states that many of the rich economies in Asia already made the changes needed to produce creative and self-management individuals who will increasingly add value to the organization’s competitiveness.
However, conventional wisdom wonders whether organizations in transitioning countries like in Vietnam are able to gain numerous advantages from employee’s self-management to be more competitive. These challenges cause local organizations to be “inclined to capacity of employees at all levels to lead themselves – through self-management” (Chaijukul, 2010, p. The concept of self-management was further developed in various articles and literature on managerial disciplines; thus, prompting more executives/managers to apply this concept to practice and develop their subordinates (Manz & Sims, 1980; Cohen et al., 1997; Castaneda et al. Allred et al.
(as cited in Castaneda et al., 1999) identifies self-management as key skills required for successful careers at all level in businesses for the 21st century. If the tourism and hospitality industry management styles are variously claimed as directive, arbitrary, no freedom, impulsive, unpredictable, amateur, and despotic, will worsen organization performance and vice versa (Kusluvan, as cited in Kusluvan et al. Thus, he suggested that “service oriented people” who are self-managed, independent, well-adjusted, and likeable, and have considerable social 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com skills and an individual willingness to follow rules will have great contribution to employee performance and efficiency of HR function (p. Additionally, Karoly also mentions (1993) a high level of self-management, interpersonal awareness, and the ability to work with and through others is essential.
However, Vietnam is considered a fairly high power distance culture (Hofstede, as cited in Swierczek & Thai, 2003). Its tourism and hospitality industry are characterized by hierarchical and autocratic styles of management with very clear relationship between subordinate and manager; and job performance evaluation criteria have to follow the strict bureaucratic and hierarchical management styles. Under such working conditions, workers have to follow their managers’ demands and have very little room to exercise their own leadership and self-management competencies (Quang & Vuong, 2002). Therefore, tourism and hospitality organizations – both Asian and in Vietnam, have to face to the challenge of how to encourage employees’ autonomy (self-management) to maximize their potential, and therefore their contribution to the organization (performance outcomes).
Up to present time, the numerous studies have been undertaken about the perceptions of subordinates in terms of the self-management, psychological empowerment, self-efficacy, job performance, and their relationships (Kusluvan, 2003; Seibert et al., 2004; Neck & Houghton, 2006; Chaijukul, 2010). However, these studies restricted themselves to identify these concepts separately. In addition, very few scholars do the research about this issue in Vietnam - a high power distance culture in management.