VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY PHAM TUAN MINH THE ROLE OF MIDDLE MANAGERS’ MOTIVATION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MANAGERIAL SKILLS TRAINING AND THEIR OWN JOB PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN VIETNAM MASTER’S THESIS VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY PHAM TUAN MINH THE ROLE OF MIDDLE MANAGERS’ MOTIVATION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MANAGERIAL SKILLS TRAINING AND THEIR OWN JOB PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN VIETNAM MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION CODE: 8340101.01 RESEARCH SUPERVISORS: Dr. MAI ANH Prof. TANABU MOTONARI Ha Noi, 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Throughout the writing of this Master’s thesis, I have received a great deal of support and assistance. I would like to especially express my sincere thanks and gratitude to Dr.
Mai Anh and Prof. Motonari Tanabu for their continuous, persistent advisory for my research. I also would like to express a similar attitude to Prof. Yoshiki Matsui and Prof.
Hisashi Kurata, who have been the co-hosts of the weekly online joint seminar. Their invaluable and insightful feedback, encouragement, and guidance with details across every section have played a crucial role to help me complete the research. My thankful thoughts also dedicate to all other lecturers and assistants from Vietnam Japan University and Yokohama National University, also to all invited lecturers participating in this MBA program during the fourth intake. Their exemplary knowledge, effort, and devotion bring to students unlimited opportunities to learn and improve themselves, of which the completion of this research can be considered as one of the most fruitful outcomes.
In addition, I would also like to thank nearly 140 middle managers with different titles, from various sectors of the manufacturing industry across Vietnam, who have spent their valuable time to answer the survey seriously, as well as assist to introduce the survey to the right respondents during the difficult situation caused by the Covid-19. Last but not least, my dearest words would like to come to all my family members and classmates, whose encouragement and support have been indispensable for me to be able to complete the extremely challenging journey during the past memorable two years of my life. SUMMARY Not fully basing on any classic theories of work motivation or performance to propose a quite new research model, which put together Managerial Skills Training, Work Motivation, and Job Performance to test their roles and interrelationship, the thesis can touch some facets of these extremely complex, frequently-studied dimensions in the field of human resources management and I/O psychology. The final results once again confirm and strengthen the traditional concept regarding work motivation and its dichotomy between intrinsic – extrinsic types.
These two dimensions, due to their opposite in nature, hardly share the same model of effects on job performance. Besides, intrinsic motivation is considered to be much more beneficial to the organizations than the extrinsic one, in long term, as it can positively support and strengthen the individual job performance of middle managers. Therefore, firms and their management teams should focus on investing intrinsic motivation, especially while designing training programs and strategies for middle managers in the manufacturing industry in Vietnam. However, this small research still contains several drawbacks and shortcomings that possibly affect the accuracy of the final results, more or less.
These weaknesses should be carefully evaluated and fixed in future studies relating to this topic. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES .i LIST OF FIGURES. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Scope of research .7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Managerial skills training. Work motivation and job performance. Work motivation and (managerial) skills training.
Propose the research model & Hypotheses .17 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Sampling and data collection. Plan for data analysis. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) .27 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION.
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Wrap-up of EFA results. Causal relations between dependent variables and predictors. Hypotheses testing results .48 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .52 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Dimensions of job performance and its variables .1: The 5-point Likert scale values of agreement level .2: The question items for Motivation .3: The question items for Managerial skills training .4: The question items for Job performance .1: Respondents’ profile by geography .2: Respondents’ profile by gender.3: Respondents’ profile by age .4: Cross-tabulation of variables EDU and DGR .5: Cross-tabulation of variables EXP and EDU .6: Cross-tabulation of variables EXP and DGR .7: Reliability test of the independent variable .8: Reliability test of Extrinsic motivation .9: Reliability test of Intrinsic motivation .10: Reliability test of the dependent variable .11: Component matrix of independent variable after EFA .12: Rotated component matrix of work motivation .13: Rotated component matrix of the dependent variable.14: Summarized results after EFA .15: Correlation coefficients between variables .16: Regression results of simultaneous effects of predictors .17: Regression results for EM separately .18: Regression results for IM separately .19: Test for mediating role of intrinsic motivation .20: Test for moderating role of intrinsic motivation .21: Summarization of hypotheses testing results .47 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Research model A - Mediating effect .2: Research model B - Moderating effect .1: The mediating effect model of intrinsic motivation .2: The moderating effect of intrinsic motivation .49 ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DGR: Educational degree EDU: Educational background EFA: Exploratory factor analysis EM: Extrinsic motivation EXP: (Years of) experience in middle-level management HRM: Human Resource Management IM: Intrinsic motivation IP: Interpersonal facilitation I/O: Industrial / Organizational (Psychologists) JD: Job dedication JP: Job performance MOIT: Ministry of Industry and Trade MOV: Work motivation MST: Managerial skills training OP: Overall performance PMST: Perceived managerial skills training PTE: Perceived training effectiveness PTO: Perceived training opportunity PJP: Perceived job performance iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.
Research background In a developing economy like Vietnam, the matter of “job performance” seems to be emphasized more and more frequently, attracts big interest from every stakeholder, who want to take advantage of the strong momentum of a dynamic economy. The collective performance of a firm or company has continuously been taken care of by all the investors, shareholders, and policymakers since the starting days of every business. Meanwhile, individual performance, which is obviously among the most crucial contributors to the collective performance, in many cases, usually catches the remarkable attention of the board of management only when the collective performance cannot reach its target, or when there is some arisen issue of human resources. When such a situation happens, the reality shows that the middle manager position frequently has to bear the highest pressure, not the top management nor the entry-level employees.
Because middle managers are considered as the backbone of each enterprise when they are the links from the top managers to the lowest level staff. Therefore, middle managers’ job performance in Vietnam deserves to be paid much higher attention to, as well as to be researched for continuous maintenance and improvement. If so, there is a reasonable question coming up: how to assess their job performance suitably? Experts have developed some specific models for a set of specific occupations, as well as for applicability across occupations (Viswesvaran & Ones, 2000). There are some commercial instruments designed specifically for managers.
However, in the context of this dissertation, the student would like to approach academic options. Some broad performance dimensions have been suggested and widely accepted. For instance, the research of (Borman & Brush, 1993) has proposed a taxonomy including leadership; interpersonal relations; technical behaviors and mechanics of management; other useful behaviors and skills. Meanwhile, (van Scotter & Motowidlo, 1996) have pointed out that (1) interpersonal facilitation and (2) job dedication should be reliable, too.
Additionally, a study by (Kuvaas, 2006) reminds us that “overall work performance” assessed by superiors is indispensable to measure. 1 Collaborating with mid-level managers in their works and mainly affecting their job performance as determinants, there are superiors, subordinates, peers, and customers, who possess naturally and logically different sets of characteristics in terms of interest, demand, and capability(Harding et al. Besides, this managerial level has to directly supervise daily operational tasks, plan then achieve both short-term and mid-term goals, while at the same time must have a sense of strategic vision. As proposed by (Katz, 1955, 1974) in the classic paper “Skills of an Effective Administrator”, middle managers are mostly required with a complex set of human skills (or interpersonal skills) and conceptual skills more than technical skills.
Saying the other way, the managerial level is required with general management skills at the same time with necessary business and professional knowledge (Yau & Sculli, 1990). This complexity of job specification requires a complex set of traits and skills, which sometimes variously differ from industry to industry, yet may be quite similar between types of business entity, such as manufacturing or trading & service. Following a revelation by (Mintzberg, 1973a) in his classical book named “The Nature of Managerial Work”, there are eight basic managerial skills, including peer skills, leadership skills, conflict resolution, information processing, decision making under ambiguity, resource allocation, entrepreneurship, and introspection. However, nearly three decades later, after adapting and expanding from Yukl (1994), research of (Shipper & Davy, 2002) has generated another taxonomy, which consists of six managerial skills, grouped into the interactive pattern (participation, facilitation, recognition) and initiating pattern (planning, time emphasis, control of details).
The above examples represent the fact that many studies have been dedicated to pointing out specific managerial skills with large diversification. All those various skills can not be inborn, they need to be trained for middle managers. Because of their plenty in numbers, types, categories, it would be much more practical at first to focus on how to train those sets of skills for middle managers, especially while considering Vietnam’s young demography and the growth rate of the overall economy, also the proliferation of manufacturing industry projected to upcoming decades. Managers may be trained with inappropriate, unnecessary skills; or lack of time attending necessary training; or on the contrary spend too much time on training without having sufficient chance to apply in reality.
That is to say, the perceived training opportunities and perceived training effectiveness should be seriously studied 2 for middle managers working in the manufacturing industry as the first step. These two above dimensions can be found in several previous studies, such as in the published research of (Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2008) and (Chiaburu & Tekleab, 2005) (Shahzadi et al. Not only skills training, but work motivation is also another variable that has been frequently researched for many decades for its influence on individual performance. As practitioners, middle managers’ work motivation need to be fostered continuously and wisely suitable with the organization's structure and resources, in tight interaction with skills training, to ensure their job performance.
Unfortunately, in reality, there are many challenges in achieving those goals. For instance, some managers feel that they are not provided enough skills training sessions to perform well their assigned tasks. Some others receive numerous training sessions that don’t match their needs and waste their working time. Some unconfident managers realize deep down inside that they lack both technical and non-technical skills to complete some tasks as required, or to earn trust from colleagues.
Besides, it is not rare to meet drawn managers due to deficiencies of communication skills, or because of selfishness and jealousy. Last but not least, there are plenty of complaints about remuneration package, unfair promotion opportunities, dissatisfaction or disappointment at works. As consequence, the individual job performance will be decreased, gradually or drastically. Of course, if things happen contrarily when those obstacles are contained and vanished, we can easily guess that they will perform much better at works.
To address that problem, two types of motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) have been widely studied by psychologists, hence chosen to be analyzed in this thesis.