The purpose of this chapter is to present the findings based on the proposed hypotheses.
The first part presented the descriptive analysis, followed by the second part with the result of the correlation analysis among boundaryless career attitude, organizational commitment and perceived organizational career management. and then the fourth one focused on the findings of hypotheses tested by using hierarchical regression analysis.
Descriptive Statistics
Some demographic information was included such as gender, age, tenure, English ability, company location and company type. Out of 310 questionnaires distributed, 65 were invalid and as a result, 245 were used to run the analysis. The Table 4.1 above showed that the data collected has 64.1% (157) participants as female and 35.9% (88) participants as male. Most of the participants were still very young with 25.7% at the age of 21 – 25 years old, 57.3% at the age of 26 – 30 years old. Most of them worked at the current organizations for around 1 – 3 years (63.3%), followed by 21.2% of under-one-year tenure. Only 9.8% have worked for 3 to 5 years and only 5.7% has above 5-year tenure. For the education level, 79.2% of the participants were at university level, 11.4% had master or even higher than master degree, only 9.4% was at college level. Regarding the English ability, around half of the participants (53.9%) rated their English as average level, 30.2% believed they had good English, only 1.2% was excellent and around 14.7% thought that they had bad English. A great number of participants (794.4%) were working in southern region (Ho Chi Minh City or Binh Duong:
5.7%, BRVT: 2.9%, Dong Nai: 2.4%). The rest were working in some small provinces all over the countries. Regarding the company type, most of them were working for either Joint Stock Company (35.9%); Limited Company (25.3%) or 100% Foreign Investment Company (24.5%).
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Limited Liability Company. 62 25.3%
State-owned Company 19 7.8%
100% Foreign Invest
Company 60 24.5%
Joint venture 13 5.3%
Others 3 1.2%
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Correlation Analysis
In order to understand the relationship among variables, the Pearson correlation analysis was performed. The table 4.2 below presented the means, standard deviations, reliabilities and correlations of all variables.
Table 4.2
Inter-correlations of Study Variables
Mean S.D 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1-Gender .36 .48
2-Tenure 25.18 22.66 -.04
3-Eng. ability 3.39 .60 .03 -.02
4-BCM 5.01 1.28 -.07 .08 .22** (.92)
5-OMP 4.94 1.23 .05 -.08 -.07 -.23*** (.79)
6-AC 3.19 .68 .04 .09 .15* .10 -.24*** (.68)
7-CC 2.69 .77 -.01 .07 -.05 .14* -.37*** .04 (.74)
8-NC 2.75 .74 .00 -.06 .16* .09 -.36*** .53*** .32*** (.74) 9-OCM 2.96 .97 .12 -.09 .15* .16* -.32*** .51*** .20** .49*** (.95)
Note. The reliability coefficients for each factor appear in parentheses;
BCM: Boundaryless Career Mindset; OMP: Organzational Mobility Preference;
AC: Affective Commitment; CC: Continuance Commitment; NC: Normative Commitment; OCM: Organizational Career Management
n=245, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001;
The correlations revealed that boundaryless career mindset only performs the significant positive relationship with continuance commitment (r=.14, p<.05), while it showed non-significant relationship with affective commitment (r=.10, p>.05) as well as normative commitment (r=.09, p>.05). However, the organizational mobility preference showed significantly negative relationships with all three dimensions of organizational commitment (affective commitment; r=-.24, p<.001; continuance commitment: r=-.37, p<.001; normative commitment: r=-.36, p<.001).
Hierarchical Regression Analysis
The Pearson Correlation was used to confirm the direct association between variables.
While in this part, the hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to provide further
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analysis of the casual relationship between boundaryless career mindset and organizational commitment and to test the moderating effect of perceived organizational career management.
The three steps recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986) were adopted in the study.
Gender, tenure and English Ability was entered as the control variables in the first step. The main effects of boundaryless career attitude and organizational career management were entered as the second step and the interaction was entered as the third one. In line with Aiken et al. (1991), the independent and moderator variables were centered before creating the interaction.
Table 4.3 and 4.4 below presented the multiple regression analyses on the moderating effect for the relationship between boundaryless career mindset with affective commitment and the relationship between boundaryless career mindset with normative commitment.
Hypotheses 1, 3 predicted that boundaryless career mindset has a significant and negative relationship with affective commitment and normative commitment; however, as shown in table 4.3 and 4.4, the results indicated that boundaryless career mindset does not have significant relationships with affective commitment and normative commitment (β=.066, p>.05; β=.062, p>.05 respectively). Therefore, H1 and H3 were rejected. Due to the non-significant relationships between boundaryless career mindset and affective commitment as well as non-significant relationship between boundaryless career mindset and normative commitment, the moderator also makes no significant impact on the relationship as expected (β=.119, p>.05; β=-.110, p>.05).
Therefore, H7 and H9 were also rejected.
31 Table 4.3.
Result of Hierarchical Regression Analyses on the Moderating Effect for the Relationship between Affective Commitment and Boundaryless Career Mindset (n=245)
Affective Commitment
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Controls
Gender .035 .040 -.022 -.029
Tenure .089 .084 .135* .151**
English ability .149* .134* .074 .069
Main Effects
Boundaryless Career Mindset (BCM) .066 -.011 .008
Org. Career Management (OCM) .518*** .511***
Interaction (BCM X OCM)
.119
R2 .031 .035 .286 .300
Adjusted R2 .019 .019 .272 .282
F 2.574 2.184 19.188*** 16.984***
ΔR2 .031 .004 .251 .013
Δ F 2.574 1.013 84.178*** 4.541
Note. Independent Variables: Boundaryless career mindset; *p<.05; **p<.01, ***p<.001.
32 Table 4.4.
Result of Hierarchical Regression Analyses on the Moderating Effect for the Relationship between Normative Commitment and Boundaryless Career Mindset (n=245)
Normative Commitment
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Controls
Gender -.066 -.011 -.059 -.052
Tenure -.055 -.060 -.012 -.027
English ability .156* .142* .086 .090
Main Effects
Boundaryless career mindset (BCM) .062 -.010 -.027
Org. Career Management (OCM) .486*** .492***
Interaction (BCM X OCM) -.110
R2 .027 .031 .252 .263
Adjusted R2 .015 .015 .236 .245
F 2.268 1.921 16.083*** 14.173***
ΔR2 .027 .004 .221 .011
Δ F 2.268 .882 70.508*** 3.709
Note. Independent Variables: Boundaryless career mindset; *p<.05; **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Table 4.5 below presented the multiple regression of moderating effect on the relationship of boundaryless career mindset toward continuance commitment. Hypotheses 5 predicted that boundaryless career mindset has a significant negative relationship with continuance commitment. However, surprisingly, as shown in the table 4.5 below, boundaryless career mindset displayed the positive correlation with continuance commitment (β=.150, p<.05). Therefore, H5 was not supported.
Hypothesis 11 proposed that the OCM will negatively moderate the relationship between BCM and continuance commitment. In model 4 in table 4.5, the interaction between BCM
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and OCM was centered and entered in the model to test the moderating effect of OCM on the relationship between BCM and CC. The result showed that the interaction was significant negative correlated to the continuance commitment (β=-128, p<.05). To interpret the moderating effect, OCM was divided into low and high level group based on the mean.
Figure 4.1 depicted the interactional graph between BCM and OCM. Specifically, the group with higher OCM showed a negative relationship between boundaryless career mindset and continuance commitment while the group with low OCM indicated a positive relationship between BCM and continuance commitment. It means that OCM plays a role of moderator.
Therefore, H11 was supported Table 4.5.
Result of Hierarchical Regression Analyses on the Moderating Effect for the Relationship between Continuance Commitment and Boundaryless Ccareer Mindset (n=245)
Continuance Commitment
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Controls
Gender -.007 .005 -.020 -.012
Tenure .064 .052 .072 .055
English ability -.050 -.083 -.107 -.102
Main Effects
Boundaryless career mindset .150* .120 .100
Org. Career Management .206** .214**
Interaction (BCM X OCM) -.128*
R2 .007 .028 .068 .083
Adjusted R2 -.006 .012 .048 .060
F .552 1.729 3.473** 3.606***
ΔR2 .007 .021 .040 .016
Δ F .552 5.231* 10.184** 4.050*
Note. Independent Variables: Boundaryless career mindset; *p<.05; **p<.01, ***p<.001.
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Figure 4.1. Interaction plot for the moderating effect of perceived organizational career management on the relationship between BCM and CC
Hypotheses 2, 4, 6 predicted that organizational mobility preference has a significant and negative relationships with all three dimensions of organizational commitment. As shown in the table 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, The result in model 2 revealed that organizational mobility preference is negatively related to all three dimensions of organizational commitment (β=-.227, p<.001 for affective commitment; β=-.369, p<.001 for normative commitment; β=-.353, p<.001). Therefore, hypotheses 2, 4, 6 were all supported.
For the moderating effect, the model 4 in table 4.6, 4.7 showed that the interaction between AC and OCM as well as NC and OCM does not make any significant impact on the relationship between organizational mobility preference and affective commitment (β=-.050, p>.05) as well as the relationship between organizational mobility preference and continuance commitment (β=-.039, p>.05). Therefore, perceived organizational career management is expected to make no impact on these two relationships. As a result, H8 and 12 were not supported. However, the result in table 4.8 (model 4) and the figure 4.2 revealed a significant impact of perceived organizational career management on the relationship between organizational mobility preference and normative commitment (β=.118, p<.05).
Therefore, H10 was supported.
35 Table 4.6.
Result of Hierarchical Regression Analyses on the Moderating Effect for the Relationship between Affective Commitment and Organizational Mobility Preference (n=245).
Affective Commitment
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Controls
Gender .035 .047 -.015 -.019
Tenure .089 .070 .126 .127*
English ability .149* .132* .070 .069
Main Effects
Org. Mobility Preference (OMP) -.227*** -.066 -.063
Org. Career Management (OCM) .495*** .504***
Interaction
(OMP X OCM)
-.050
R2 .031 .082 .290 .293
Adjusted R2 .019 .066 .275 .274
F 2.574 5.330*** 19.535*** 16.404***
ΔR2 .031 .051 .209 .002
Δ F 2.574 13.207*** 70.205*** .823
Note. Independent Variable: Organizational Mobility Preference; *p<.05; **p<.01,
***p<.001
36 Table 4.7.
Result of Hierarchical Regression Analyses on the Moderating Effect for the Relationship between Continuance Commitment and Organizational Mobility Preference (n=245)
Continuance Commitment
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Controls
Gender -.007 .012 -.002 -.005
Tenure .064 .034 .046 .046
English ability -.050 -.078 -.092 -.093
Main Effects
Org. Mobility Preference (OMP) -.369*** -.332*** -.330***
Org. Career Management (OCM) .112 .119
Interaction
(OMP X OCM) -.039
R2 .007 .141 .152 .153
Adjusted R2 -.006 .127 .134 .132
F .552 9.836*** 8.538*** 7.165***
ΔR2 .007 .134 .011 .001
Δ F .522 37.438*** 3.013 .410
Note. Independent Variable: Organizational Mobility Preference; *p<.05; **p<.01,
***p<.001
37 Table 4. 8.
Result of Hierarchical Regression Analyses on the Moderating Effect for the Relationship between Normative Commitment and Organizational Mobility Preference (n=245)
Normative Commitment
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Controls
Gender -.006 .012 -.039 -.031
Tenure -.055 -.084 -.038 -.038
English ability .156* .129* .078 .081
Main Effects
Org. Mobility Preference (OMP) -.353*** -.219*** -.225***
Org. Career Management (OCM) .411*** .389***
Interaction
(OMP X OCM) .118*
R2 .027 .150 .294 .307
Adjusted R2 .015 .136 .279 .290
F 2.268 10.590*** 19.887*** 17.588***
ΔR2 .027 .123 .144 .013
Δ F 2.268 34.608*** 48.662*** 4.596*
Note. Independent Variable: Organizational Mobility Preference; *p<.05; **p<.01,
***p<.001.
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Figure 4.2. Interaction plot for the moderating effect of perceived organizational career management on the relationship between OMP and NC
Hypotheses Testing Results Summary
Table 4.9.
Hypotheses Testing Results Summary
Hypotheses Results
H1 There is a negative relationship between boundaryless career mindset and affective commitment
Rejected
H2 There is a negative relationship between organizational mobility preference and affective commitment
Supported
H3 there is a negative relationship between boundaryless career mindset and normative commitment
Rejected
H4 There is a negative relationship between organizational mobility preference and normative commitment
Supported
H5 There is a negative relationship between boundaryless career mindset and continuance commitment
Rejected
(continued)
39 Table 4.9. (continued)
Hypotheses Results
H6 There is a negative relationship between organizational mobility preference and continuance commitment
Supported
H7 Perceived organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between boundaryless career mindset and affective commitment
Rejected
H8 Perceived Organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between organizational mobility preference and affective commitment
Rejected
H9 Perceived Organizational career management will negatively moderate between boundaryless career mindset and normative commitment
Rejected
H10 Perceived Organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between organizational mobility preference and normative commitment
Supported
H11 Perceived organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between boundaryless career mindset and continuance commitment
Supported
H12 Perceived Organizational career management negatively moderate the relationship between organizational mobility preference and continuance commitment
With this finding, it can be said that the boundaryless career attitude can co-exist with affectivie and normative commitment and does not necessarily mean mobility. The results are in congruence with previous studies conducted by Cakmak Otluoglu (2012) and Briscoe and Finkelstein (2009). This helps to confirm again that having boundaryless career mindset does not necessarily mean low emotional or low obligatory commitment to the organization. It can
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be explained that in the Vietnam’s cultural context, the individual’s emotional attachment and obligation to the organizations to remain with the organization are developed based on many factors such as supervisor-staff communication and relationship, teamwork spirits (Nguyen, Mai, & Nguyen, 2014). While Boundaryless career mindset just means employees are more enthusiastic and comfortable to work with different people beyond their departments.
Therefore, regardless of having or not having organizational boundaryless midset, they still work with supervisors and their colleagues and still develop the emotional attachment and obligation to remain through those relationships. Having boundaryless career mindset will neither increase nor decrease their affective and normative commitment.
2. Boundaryless Career Mindset Shows a Positive Correlation with Continuance Commitment
Although the result is contradicted with the study conducted by Cakmak-Otluoglu (2012) and Briscoe and Finkelstein (2009), it is aligned with the research done by Enache et al.
(2013). Boundaryless career mindset refers to the openness to the external environment beyond the organizational boundaries, therefore, an individual with high boundaryless career mindset will feel enthusiastic and active in promoting the relationships with different people in different organizations (Enache et al., 2013) based on their current position. Therefore, they may be afraid of losing these networks who could help them to enhance their ability and learning opportunities if they leave the organizations. Therefore, those higher with boundaryless career mindset will stay more committed due to their consideration on the cost of leaving the organization.
3. Organizational Mobility Preference Is Negatively Related to All Three Dimensions of Organizational Commitment
The research revealed that organizational mobility preference does negatively relate to three components of organizational commitment. This result is consistent with the findings from Briscoe and Finkelstein (2009) and Cakmak-Otluoglu (2012). It seems reasonable that the employees with high organizational mobility preference will show less affective commitment, continuance commitment or normative commitment to the organization. Those who are inclined toward physical mobility around different organizations will not tend to develop emotional attachment or the obligation to the specific organization. In addition, the employees are less likely to consider the cost of leaving if they have a high organizational mobility preference regardless the career management provided by organization (Briscoe &
Finkelstein, 2009). It may be explained that an individual with high mobility preference think that there are many available better job opportunities offering them equal or better rewards or
41 benefits than the current ones.
4. Perceived Organizational Career Management Turns the Positive Relationship between Boundaryless Career Mindset and Continuance Commitment into Negative One
The research revealed that the relationship between boundaryless career mindset and continuance commitment could be moderated by the extent which employees are provided with career management by the company. Specifically, this relationship would be changed from positive into negative in case the employees are provided with OCM. This is similar with the findings of the research conducted by Enache et al. (2013) when they concluded that
“the relationship between BCM and continuance commitment could be moderated by the extent to which individuals succeed in enhancing their social capital, which would in turn provide them access to the resources and the information other people possess and therefore help them discover different opportunities beyond organizational boundaries” (p.892). It means that if an employee is provided with OCM, he or she has chance to creating and sustaining active relationships beyond the boundaries, therefore if they are holding BCM, they will not take the leaving cost into consideration.
5. Perceived Organizational Career Management Weakens the Relationship Between Organizational Mobility Preference and Normative Commitment.
Although the result is not consistent with the study conducted by Cakmak-Otluoglu (2012), it seems to be reasonable in Vietnam’s culture. Vietnam is an Asian country and is considered as collective culture, in which everyone in the group is expected to be responsible for others. Furthermore, in the collective culture, individuals have stronger feeling of the obligation than those in individualist culture (Hofstede, 1980). Therefore, once the company provides them with organizational career management, the employees will feel more like they owe the company something and they should stay to return the favor. And this is true even for those with high OMP. Moreover, they could also feel their demand for development opportunity somehow are satisfied. And that is why the group with high OCM will show more normative commitment than the group with low OCM in case of organizational mobility preference.
.
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