MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HOCHIMINH CITY WORK AUTONOMY AND JOB INVOLVEMENT The Mediation of Participation in Decision Making and Job Satisfaction: The case of Information Technology industry MASTER THESIS HO CHI MINH CITY – 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HOCHIMINH CITY WORK AUTONOMY AND JOB INVOLVEMENT The Mediation of Participation in Decision Making and Job Satisfaction: The Case of Information Technology Industry Major: Business Management ID: 60.05 MASTER THESIS INSTRUCTOR: DR. PHẠM QUỐC HÙNG HO CHI MINH CITY – 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com i Acknowledgements I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to Dr. Pham Quoc Hung – Faculty of Public Finance, Hochiminh City University of Economics, for his valuable advices and kind supervising on my thesis work. I am also thankful for professors and lecturers from Hochiminh City University of Economics, class eMBA K18, who have given me precious background knowledge and great support during the course.
I am really appreciated the sharing, enthusiastic support and encouragement from my classmates at eMBA K18. I am grateful to my colleagues and my friends who helped me a lot to collect data for the dissertation. Last but not least, I would like to give this study to my family and especially my sisters and boyfriend who have always been encouraging me, supporting me no matter what I do to advance in life. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii Abstract Research in organizational behavior has shown that autonomy and empowerment are often key factors in employee satisfaction.
Job autonomy creates a sense of responsibility among the employees of the organization. This dissertation will examine the relationship between Work Autonomy, Job satisfaction, Participation in Decision Making, and Job Involvement in Information Technology professionals or more specially software engineers in Hochiminh City. It also evaluates effecting effect of Participation in Decision Making and Job Satisfaction on relationship between Work Autonomy and Job Involvement. Three hundred and three effective surveys were received from software engineering personnel.
After data screening, only two hundred and seventy two surveys were kept. Besides, the dissertation identifies level of mediation of Job Satisfaction and Participation in Decision Making in relationship between Work Autonomy and Job Involvement. The data were analyzed by reliability analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis, using the structural equation model to measure the relationship among the constructs. The empirical results found that Work Autonomy has positive association with Job Satisfaction, Participation in Decision Making, and Job Involvement.
Job Satisfaction and Participation in Decision Making partially mediate relationship between Work Autonomy and Job Involvement. Key words: work autonomy, job satisfaction, job involvement, participation in decision making, information technology, software engineer LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION. 4 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .4 PARTICIPATIONG IN DECISION MAKING .1 JOB CHARACTERISTIC MODEL .2 WORK AUTONOMY AND ITS OUTCOMES .3 CORRELATES OF WORK AUTONOMY OUTCOMES. 19 CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLODY.
22 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Structure of the questionnaire: .2 Translation of the questionnaire .4 DATA ANALYSIS METHOD .3 Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). 31 CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS .2 ANALYSIS OF BACKGROUND INFORMATION .3 Number of years of experience .4 Role in the project .3 DEPENDENT AND MODERATOR VARIABLES .1 Level of Job Satisfaction.2 Level of Job Involvement .3 Level of Participation in Decision Making. 38 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.5 SCALE RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT.4 Participation in Decision Making .6 CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS .1 Impact of Work Autonomy on Job Involvement .2 Impact of Work Autonomy on Job Satisfaction .3 Impact of Work Autonomy on Participation in Decision Making.4 Impact of Participation in Decision Making on Job Involvement .5 Impact of Job Satisfaction on Job Involvement .6 Work Autonomy and Job Involvement under mediation of Participation in Decision Making and Job Satisfaction. 50 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS, DISCUSSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
60 APPENDIX B: QUESTIONNAIRE IN VIETNAMESE. 66 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi TABLES Table 1 Statistics for all variables. 34 Table 2 Distribution of sample – Gender. 34 Table 3 Distribution of sample – Age.
35 Table 4 Distribution of sample - Number of years of experience. 36 Table 5 Distribution of sample - role in the project. 36 Table 6 Descriptive Statistics for Job Satisfaction. 37 Table 7 Descriptive Statistics for Job Involvement.
37 Table 8 Descriptive Statistics for Participation in Decision Making. 38 Table 9 Descriptive Statistics for Criteria Autonomy. 39 Table 10 Cronbach's Alpha for Work Autonomy. 40 Table 11Cronbach‟s Alpha for Job Satisfaction.
40 Table 12 Cronbach‟s Alpha for Job Satisfaction after eliminating JS_4. 40 Table 13 Cronbach‟s Alpha for Job Involvement. 41 Table 14 Cronbach's Alpha of Job Involvement after eliminating JI_5, JI_6. 41 Table 15 Cronbach's Alpha for Participation in Decision Making.
41 Table 16 Cronbach's Alpha for Participation in Decision Making after eliminating PDM_1. 42 Table 17 Removed errors from CFA diagram. 43 Table 18 Correlations analysis. 46 Table 19 Model Summary for WA and JI.
46 Table 20 Coefficient between WA and JI. 46 Table 21 Model Summary for WA and JS. 47 Table 22 Coefficients between WA and JS. 47 Table 23 Model Summary for WA and PDM.
48 Table 24 Coefficients between WA and PDM. 48 Table 25 Model summary for PDM and JI. 49 Table 34 Coefficients between PDM and JI. 49 Table 27 Model Summary for JS and JI.
49 Table 28 Coefficient between JS and JI. 50 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii Table 29 Model Summary with PDM, JS as mediators. 50 Table 30 Coefficients between WA and JI, mediated by PDM and JS. 51 Table 31 Item Statistics for Work Autonomy.
67 Table 32 Item Total Statistics for Job Satisfaction. 67 Table 33 Item Total Statistics for Job Involvement. 68 Table 34 Item-Total Statistics for Participation in Decision Making. 68 Table 35 ANOVA for WA and JI.
68 Table 36 ANOVA for WA and JS. 69 Table 37 ANOVA for WA and PDM. 69 Table 38 ANOVA for PDM and JI. 69 Table 39 ANOVA for JS and JI.
69 Table 40 ANOVA with PDM, JS as mediators. 70 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND To be successful in today‟s global business environment, companies need the knowledge, ideas, energy and creativity of every employee, from front line workers to the top level managers in the executive suite. Research in organizational behavior has shown that autonomy and empowerment are often key factors in employee satisfaction. Job autonomy creates a sense of responsibility among the employees of the organization.
O‟Toole and Lawler (as cited in Gretchen, 2007)1 mention that the best organizations accomplish this by empowering their employees to take initiative without prodding, to serve the collective interests of the company without being micro-managed, and to act like owners of the business. Autonomy is one of several core job design characteristics (the others are skill variety, task identity, task significance and feedback from the job) that theorists and researchers have used in order to predict and test the relationships between job design and desired work outcomes (Hackman & Oldham, 1976, p. As has been stated by Cummings and Blumberg (as cited in Parker and Wall, 2001)3, work autonomy (WA) works best in a work environment where technical uncertainty and environmental uncertainty exist, or together referred to as 1 Gretchen Spreitzer. Taking Stock: A review of more than twenty years of research on empowerment at work.
The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Behavior: Volume One: Micro Approaches, p. Richard Hackman And Grec R. Motivation through the Design of Work: Test of a Theory. Organizational Behavior And Human Performance 16, 250-279.
Work design: Learning from the past and mapping a new terrain.), Handbook of Industrial, Work, and Organizational Psychology (pp. London, United Kingdom: Sage Publications. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 operational uncertainty. In some industries that require more standardized work processes, there are often rigid controls on an employee‟s autonomy.
One of them is software industry, where project management method has been emphasized as strong factor for success of projects. Traditional project managers manage their projects against the budget, schedule, and scope. They try to reduce risks as much as possible to avoid uncertainty. The traditional management methods, e.g: PRINCE2, offer great control on project level and do not emphasize autonomy.
In the other hand, Agile project management approaches put the emphases on people and the desire to remain flexible and adaptable in the face of uncertainty and complexity. Agile Project Management has proven to be a useful tool for today's knowledge worker and the project managers in the new economy which is characterized by more complex and uncertain project situation. The need to distribute responsibility and initiative in support of adaption to change is familiar territory to "agile" approaches to projects. Autonomy is expected to be associated with greater job satisfaction because workers have more freedom to determine their own effort and work schedule.
This study attempts to understand the outcome of work autonomy considering the nature of software industry context. Work autonomy outcome in this study includes job satisfaction, job involvement, and participation in decision making. The study also attempts to evaluate the relationship amongst the outcomes using software industry staff as participants. Moreover, Cohen (1995) supported the importance of job involvement as an antecedent to organizational commitment in particular having a key influence on job performance.
This study is to evaluate relationship between work autonomy and job involvement under mediation of job satisfaction and participation in decision making. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The research is conducted to provide insights into the concrete actions that can be taken by organizations in job redesign attempts for a maximized outcome, in particular with the provision of work autonomy to engineer. The objectives can be listed, as follows: - To evaluate level of work autonomy in IT professionals - To evaluate relationships between work autonomy and its outcomes, namely: job satisfaction, participation in decision making, and job involvement. - To evaluate relationship between job satisfaction and job involvement - To evaluate relationship between participation and job involvement - To evaluate the mediating effect of job satisfaction and participation in decision making on relationship between work autonomy and job involvement 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS There are key questions that researcher is trying to find in this research.
Does work autonomy at software industry have positive effect on job involvement? 2. Does work autonomy at software industry have positive effect on participation in decision making? 3. Does work autonomy at software industry increase job satisfaction? 4. Are there any relationship between job involvement, job satisfaction, and participation in decision making? 5.
Do job satisfaction and participation in decision making mediate the relationship between work autonomy and job involvement? LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.4 OUTLINE STRUCTURE Research will be divided into six chapters Chapter 1. Literature review Chapter 3. Research methodology Chapter 4. Data analysis and findings Chapter 5.
Conclusion, discussion, and recommendations LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW Nowadays, technology as well as business has rapidly developed, the IT work methodology has been adapted to be more flexible to adopt uncertainty. It therefore requires more excellence from engineers to be agile. To keep skilled people becomes more critical to IT companies, considering that skilled people have capability of working independently. However, it is a question that if discretion in their job can make them happy and involve more in their jobs.