UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ---------------------------- Nguyen Tran Thuy Trang IMPACT OF CUSTOMER VERBAL AGGRESSION ON EMPLOYEE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND TURNOVER INTENTION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF GROUND SERVICE STAFF IN VIETNAMESE AVIATION INDUSTRY 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 ---------------------------- Nguyen Tran Thuy Trang IMPACT OF CUSTOMER VERBAL AGGRESSION ON EMPLOYEE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND TURNOVER INTENTION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF GROUND SERVICE STAFF IN VIETNAMESE AVIATION INDUSTRY ID: 22130082 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr. NGUYEN THI NGUYET QUE Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Firstly, I would like to express my great gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que for her kindness, professional guidance and encouragement as well as dedicated support, valuable comments, instructions through my thesis. Secondly, I am sincerely thankful to Professor Nguyen Dinh Tho, Dr.
Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, and Dr. Tran Ha Minh Quan as proposal examination committee. Their comments and meaningful suggestions significantly contribute to this research completion. Finally, my special gratitude is extended to all instructors and staffs of International School of Business – University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City for their teaching and guidance during my master course.
i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to investigate the impacts of customer verbal aggression to emotional exhaustion and turnover intention of ground service staff in Vietnam aviation industry. This research framework was tested through a survey on employees from ground customer service in Noi Bai International Airport, Da Nang International Airport, and Tan Son Nhat International Airport. The findings of this research showed significant and positive effects of customer verbal aggression on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Furthermore, the research found that customer verbal aggression positively relates on stress appraisal; negative affectivity positively relates to customer verbal aggression and stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression, as well as stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression positively relates to turnover intention.
Employee emotional exhaustion still has the significance to turnover intention. These findings suggest that the organization should consider and encourage employees’ spirit to be motivated and inspired in their job. Additionally, the organization should have solution to minimize the verbal attack of customers to employees. Key words: customer verbal aggression, negative affectivity, stress appraisal, emotional exhaustion, turnover intention ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS IATA: International Air Transport Association EFA: Exploratory Factor Analysis CFA: Confirmatory Factor Analysis SEM: Structural Equation Modeling CVA: Customer verbal aggression EMO: Emotional exhaustion TOI: Turnover intention NEG: Negative affectivity STRESS: Stress appraisal SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Science AMOS: Analysis of Moment Structure AVE: Average Variances Extracted iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: In-depth interview respondent information .1: Source of data collection .3: Reliability test results after deleting items NEG1 and NEG2 .4: KMO & Barlett’s test .5: KMO & Barlett’s test after deleting EMO2 & EMO3 .6: Rotated component matrix after deleting EMO2 & EMO3 .7: Reliability test results of new variables .8: Standardized regression weights .9: The first AVE .10: The second AVE .12: Standardized regression weights (bootstrap method error).
43 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Vietnam aviation labor structure .2: Vietnam aviation educational labor standard.1: CFA of 05 constructs .2: Second CFA after deleting CVA3 and CVA7 .4: Final model after testing. 52 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. iii LIST OF TABLES.
iv LIST OF FIGURES. v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION.3 Research Objective and Research Questions ······························································ 8 1.4 Research Methodology and Scope ·············································································· 9 1.6 Structure of the research ··························································································· 10 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Review previous study ······························································································ 12 2.1 Hypotheses and Research Model Development ······················································· 18 2.3 Conceptual model ····································································································· 23 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .4 Sample size and Sampling method ················································································ 34 3.5 Data Analysis Method ··································································································· 35 CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSIS .1 Data Collection ·············································································································· 38 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 Exploratory Factor Analysis ·························································································· 40 4.4 Evaluate the measurement by CFA ··············································································· 44 4.5 SEM Testing and Bootstrap Method ············································································· 48 4.6 Results of testing hypotheses ························································································· 51 4.7 Discussion of the hypotheses ························································································· 53 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND LIMITATION .1 Conclusion about hypotheses and research problem ····················································· 56 5.3 Limitation and future research ······················································································· 59 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION This is the opening chapter of the research. In this part, the overview of Vietnam civil aviation and labor structure are described first. The second the author bases on the reality of aviation labor resource to show the research problem, which is the author would like to research in this thesis.
Research objective, research questions, research methodology and scope, research significance, and thesis structure are the next parts in this chapter that the author presents to overview the content and assignment through the thesis.1 About Vietnam Civil Aviation For such countries, civil aviation is always amazed technical and economic characteristics because it is application of scientific achievements in the most advanced techniques. Civil aviation activities are not only economic in nature but also merely closely related to security, national defense, and foreign economic relations. So far, Vietnam civil aviation has made encouraging progress with reforms on the path of modernization. In recent years, although the world economy passes the crisis and recession period, overall still grows.
Among them, the aviation traffic operation always gets high speed. Especially, strong resurgence of the emerging economies in the Asia- Pacific, including Vietnam as a basis for favorable forecast output growth of the aviation sector. The wings of Vietnam aviation today not only fly within domestic airport, but also to many continents in the world with the new modern aircrafts. The airports have more facilities for passengers, many terminals, runways, and aprons are extended.
Vietnam aviation market has achieved remarkable progress in the last five years the average annual growth of 15%. According to figures reported by the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam in 2010 - 2014, Vietnam Aviation Service continues to maintain high growth rates. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in the period from 2013 to 2017, Vietnam aviation market is growing fast and dynamic, ranked number seven among the fastest growing market world. In 2014, total 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com passenger transport market was estimated at 32 million passengers (up to 10.6%, compared with 2013) and commodity markets estimated at 706 thousand tons (up to 12.
In the period 2010 - 2014, the average growth rate of passenger transport and freight transport respectively reached 12. Located in the region of Southeast Asia, Vietnam market witnessed strong demand growth in operating passenger transport and freight, to promote the development of aviation. According to the project "Master plan for Vietnam tourism development to 2020 and vision to 2030", by 2020, Vietnam will attract 10,5 million international passengers, attend to 47.5 million domestic arrivals; by 2030, Vietnam will attract 18 million international tourists and 71 million domestic visitors. In 2020, the total revenue from tourism reached 18,5 billion US dollars, accounting for 7% of GDP; 2030 reached 35,2 billion US dollars, accounting for 7.
Under the scheme, predicted the tourism industry will achieve an average growth rate of over 30% in revenue and 20% of passenger traffic.2 Aviation Labor Structure Along with the renewal of equipment is the progress on the management capacity, professional skills, quality of service, and service style of management staff, technicians, air traffic control, flight attendances, ground service staff, etc. They are basic training or advanced training in domestic and foreign operations. The process of integration and the development requires the mobilization and use of force is the total resources, including in particular internal factors. In the internal factors, the human factor is the decisive factor in the development of strong and sustainable, ensuring competitiveness in the future.
Therefore, Vietnam aviation industry has focused the work of planning, training, and retraining of staff and workers under the program to reach international standards. In addition to the academic programs in the country, groups of airports was contracted trained, sent staff officers to study abroad, have access to and learn technology, advanced science, apparel services unit. As of December 2012, the aviation labor is 32,695 people with the following structure: 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Vietnam aviation labor structure (Source: Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, 2012) 2% 19% Administrative and Enterprise Aviation business 79% Others The average age of employees is from 31 to 33, which under 30 is 37.9%, and over 50 is 9. Educational level of staffs is listed below: - Postgraduate: 1020 people (3.1%) - Primary and technical workers: 9737 people (29.8%) - Unskilled workers: 1726 people (5.3%) 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Vietnam aviation educational labor standards (Source: Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, 2012) Unskilled workers Postgraduate 5% 3% Primary and technical workers University 30% 42% Intermediate 20% It was found that the most education level of aviation employees is university with high qualification.
With the new fresh blood of the staff and high qualification, the future of the aviation industry will increasingly develop and go further in the world. Although the quality employees is increasing, aviation labor shortage still occurs and it is considered a difficult problem for the managers. As of now, the units, organizations, or companies operating in the sector of civil aviation recruit thousands of employees each year to ensure the stability of its operating units. The percentage of turnover, “switch job” of aviation labors have tended to rise faster and higher at an alarming rate.
According to Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam in the last few years, the turnover rate ranged from the average 20% to 40% per year. Particularly, this ratio is as high as in the stitching units of air traffic or airport corporation operation that directly relevant parts and play a key role in the activities of civil aviation sector. According to the report from Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (2012), ground service staff is a part of air traffic and one of the sectors has high turnover rate. The airlines recruit ground service staff twice each year because of the shortage of employees compared to the operation 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com scale of the civil aviation sector is growing.
This is really a concern of managers for the stable operation of civil aviation sector.2 Research Problem The employees’ turnover rate or the employees who change jobs are increase; the morale and productivity of other employees are affected. At the same time, the units of field take many times and money for recruiting and training the new employees. There are many reasons why the employees leave: low salaries, overworked, lack of motivation, lack of training, or lack of reward and recognition, etc. One of the reasons that more and more appear recently, impact to the psychological of customer service employees is the customer verbal aggression.
It not only makes the employees feel tension, but also they are not motivated to continue their job. Aquino – Nemecek, a director of the United Airlines Red Carpet Club in Los Angeles, said, “Working in the customer services department for an airline is “the worst place to work” as there is not a day that goes by without a passenger complaining. Customers want the airline employees to listen to whatever is irritating them. Sometimes, passenger rude behavior is just too much.
They push; even hit the airline staff when they feel angry”.