In this chapter, the methodology, including the framework, hypotheses, target population, instrumentation, data analysis were introduced. This research adopted the quantitative research process to explore the relationship between boundaryless career attitude and organizational commitment with the organizational career management as moderator.
Research Framework
According to the research purposes and literature review, the researcher constructed the framework of the study, which is presented in the figure below. The research framework has boundaryless career attitude as the independent variable with two dimensions: boundaryless career mindset and organizational mobility preference; organizational commitment as the dependent variable with three dimensions: affective, normative and continuance commitment;
and the organizational career management as moderator.
Figure 3.1. Research framework
Hypotheses
Based on the previous literature review, the research purpose, research questions, and the framework, the following hypotheses are proposed:
H1: There is a negative relationship between boundaryless career mindset and affective commitment
Boundaryless career attitude - Boundaryless career mindset - Organizational preference
mobility
Organizational Commitment - Affective commitment - Normative commitment - Continuance commitment
Organizational Career Management
Control variables - Gender
- Tenure
- English Ability
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H2: There is a negative relationship between organizational mobility preference and affective commitment
H3: there is a negative relationship between boundaryless career mindset and normative commitment
H4: There is a negative relationship between organizational mobility preference and normative commitment
H5: There is a negative relationship between boundaryless career mindset and continuance commitment
H6: There is a negative relationship between organizational mobility preference and continuance commitment
H7: Perceived organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between boundaryless career mindset and affective commitment
H8: Perceived Organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between organizational mobility preference and affective commitment
H9: Perceived organizational career management will negatively moderate between boundaryless career mindset and normative commitment
H10: Perceived Organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between organizational mobility preference and normative commitment
H11: Perceived organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between boundaryless career mindset and continuance commitment
H12: Perceived Organizational career management will negatively moderate the relationship between organizational mobility preference and continuance commitment
Research Procedure
Firstly, the literature review was conducted to see the overview of general topics and explore the researcher’s interest. After finding out the topics of interest, the researcher conducted more thorough literature review in order to determine specific topic and supported for the research questions proposed in this study.
Secondly, after the identification of research topic, more literature review was carried out to determine the study framework and to generate the hypotheses.
The third step was to design the research method and identify research subjects. The research design based on a quantitative, non-probability sampling method and hence, this quantitative approach was chosen to answer the research questions in this study. The justifications for adopting this method were provided in the research method section of this
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study. In line with this, during the course of the development of the topic and purposes of this study, a suitable research sample was identified.
The next step is to select the measurement instruments. The items in the questionnaire were adopted from previous studies. A copy of this questionnaire can be found in the appendix section of this study
The sixth step was to collect data. The questionnaire was distributed online to the white-collar workers in Vietnam. The sample was collected based on convenient sampling. The reason for choosing this sample method was discussed in the data collection section
Next, the data was analyzed. The data was collected and coded using Microsoft Excel. It was later analyzed using SPSS version 22.0 and AMOS version 23.was used to do descriptive statistics of the demographic variables as well as the other statistical methods used in this study. Detailed explanations of these statistical methods were provided in the data analysis section of this research. The last step of this research was to present the findings, conclusions and recommendations.
Figure 3.2. Research procedure
Sample
The research population for this study was the white-collar employees who were working full-time in Vietnam. White-collar workers are as professional and semi-professional employees. This type of workers is differentiated with the blue-collar workers as terms for
Identify the research topic; propose framework and hypotheses
Design the research method
Select the measurement instrument
Conduct data collection
Analyze the data
Propose findings and final report Review relevant literature
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occupational classification (Hammer & Ferrari, 2002). These workers usually execute job duties in an office setting, focus on knowledge work, opportunities for hierarchical advancement, and management of employees. They are highly skilled and formally trained professionals. Many white-collar workers, such as accountants, bankers, attorneys and real estate agents, work and provide services to clients. Other white-collar workers, such as engineers and architects, work with businesses, corporations and government agencies (Gibson & Papa, 2000; Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004).
Meanwhile, blue-collar workers are as those who performs primarily physical work, manual labor and whose career paths are restricted (Gibson & Papa, 2000). The skills necessary for blue-collar work vary by occupation. These workers include aircraft mechanics, plumbers, electricians and structural workers, cleaning, maintenance and assembly line work.
One of the major differences between blue-collar and white-collar workers is the education level. White-collar workers usually have background with formal education. And typically have at least a high school diploma, an associate's, bachelor's, master's or professional degree. According to Bodewig, Badiani-Magnusson, Macdonald, Newhouse, and Rutkowski (2014), in Vietnam educational system, higher education (including universities, junior colleges) prepares graduates for white-collar jobs, while vocational training provides students with applied skills required for vocational tasks.
The sample participants were selected using convenience sample of any types of industry in Vietnam. The total of 310 questionnaires was distributed to white-collar workers in Vietnam through online survey.
Data Collection Process
The period of data collection went through around one month and a half from the beginning of March to the middle of April 2017. Convenient sample was used in this study.
Due to the fact that the researcher was based in Taiwan, the online questionnaire was used.
The author distributed through network on Facebook and then asked her networks to distribute to their friends and colleagues. In the questionnaire, one screening question was used to eliminate the non-full-time white-collars workers.
During the data collection period, the researcher contacted the suitable participants through her online networks to ask for their assistance to fill out the online questionnaires, which was translated into Vietnamese for the participants. Finally, 245 samples (79%) were collected and valid. once all the questionnaires were filled out and collected, the researcher
19 conducted necessary analyses.
Research Design
This empirical research applied quantitative methods in the data collection of the white-collar workers in Vietnam. The research used the self-report questionnaire, which was considered as the most appropriate since it aims at the personal level in response to their boundaryless career attitude on organizational commitment with the moderating effect of perceived organizational career management. The questionnaire scale measurements were developed by different well-developed studies with high Cronbach’s alpha. To avoid common method bias (CMV) problem, the Likert scales of the variables were designed with 5-point and 7-point scale (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). The questionnaire was aiming at collecting the demographic data to obtain the characteristics of such employees in Vietnam and also to find out how boundaryless career attitude and perceived organizational commitment were correlated and how this relationship would be changed if the organizations provide their employees with organizational career management.
Research Instrumentation
The research instrument was composed of a self-report questionnaire, which included four sections. The first section was to measure boundaryless career attitude, the second one was to measure organizational commitment and the third one was to measure perceived organizational career management. The last section measured the demographic information such as age, gender, level of education, experience, tenure, type of employment, type of the companies, and type of industry. The questionnaire was expected to take 15 minutes to answer. Please find the appendix for a full and completed copy of this questionnaire. The detailed measures are illustrated as follows:
Boundaryless Career Attitude
Boundaryless career attitude in this study is independent variable. The researcher adopted the instrument developed by Briscoe et al. (2006). The scale was measured using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from (1) “a little or no extent” to (7) “to a great extent” constituted by 13 items, in which boundaryless career mindset scale consisted of eight items and organizational mobility preference comprised of five items. Example item for boundaryless career mindset is “I have sought the opportunities in the past that allow me to work outside of the organization”. This Cronbrach’s alpha for boundaryless career mindset is 0.78. The
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sample item for organizational mobility preference is “if my organization provided me with employment, I would never desire to seek the work in other organizations (reserved scored)”.
This scale’s coefficient alpha reliability was 0.76.
Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment is a dependent variable in this research. The instrument for this variable was adopted from Meyer, Allen and Smith’s model (1993) with three dimensions of organizational commitment including affective, continuance, and normative commitment respectively. Each dimension is constructed with 6 item scale, thus 18 items constitute the total organizational commitment scale that was measured. Sample item for affective commitment was “this organization has a great deal of personal meaning to me”. Continuance commitment included the item such as “I feel that I have few little options to consider leaving this organization”. Meanwhile, the sample items for normative commitment was “I owe a great of deal to my organization”. This instrument was tested in terms of internal consistency, reliability and validity for the three dimensions. In line with this, the reliability estimate for the three scale scores was found to be significant and hence the Cronbach’s alphas for:
affective commitment=0.85, continuance commitment = 0.74 while normative commitment is 0.76. Cronbach’s alpha (.73) for all 18 items deemed acceptable. All items are measured on the 5-point Likert-scale from (1) “strongly disagree” to (5) “strongly agree”
Organizational Career Management
Perceived Organizational Career Management is a moderator variable in this research.
The measurement was adopted from the 10-item scale developed by Sturges et al. (2002) including two dimensions: formal and informal career management. The measure was using 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Six of nine items were used to measure formal organizational career management. The sample item for this was “I have been giving training to help develop my career”. The other four items were used to measure informal organizational career management. The sample item was “I have been given a mentor to help my career development”. The Cronbach’s alpha for formal and informal organizational career management were 0.77 and 0.80 respectively.
Control Variables
The previous literature review suggested that some demographic variables could make
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an impact on the organizational commitment. Therefore, the researcher added the demographic variables to the personal information part of the questionnaire and will clarify the relationship between dependent variable and independent variables through controlling the impact of demographic variables.
Gender
Some previous studies showed that there is a significant difference on organizational commitment between men and women (Mowday et al., 1982; Rowden, 2000). It seems that women have to overcome many barriers and therefore they recognize the membership as an important aspect to them (Grusky, 1966) also found out that women are more committed to their organizations than men. Therefore, in this study, gender was the control variable and was coded as 1 for male and 2 for female.
Organizational Tenure
Some researchers indicated that organizational tenure has a significant difference on organizational commitment (Mathieu & Hamel, 1989; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer &
Allen, 1997). The explanation is that for the employees with long tenure in an organization, he/she may develop affective attachment with the organizations (Meyer & Allen, 1997).
Therefore, in this study, we also treated organizational tenure as control variable.
English Ability
The increased internationalization, reduced job security, and a shift in career ownership to the individual have led language skills as a key career competence today (Itani, Jarlstrom,
& Piekkari, 2015). It can influence on the commitment of employees to the organizations because language somehow represents an individual’s confidence in achieving their goals (Bandura, 1982). A diverse-culture working environment requires individuals with a higher level of English and those who have better English level may have greater confidence in deal with the situations that take place within their firm. Therefore, even English may not be a directly-used skill in the workplace, it is somehow is associated with their commitment to their firms. In addition, the employees with better language skills also demonstrated the higher levels of both psychological and physical career mobility. Because this skill also contributes to the accumulation of the social capital and personal networks (Nahapiet &
Ghoshal, 1998) that enhance mobility in boundaryless careers. Therefore, in this study, the English ability was included as a control variable
Questionnaire Design
The scales adopted in this questionnaire were all developed maturely in order to ensure
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the content validity. The original scales were in English and was translated into Vietnamese for their accurate understanding. All variables’ scales were put in one questionnaire, so the dependent and independent variables as well as the moderator variable were answered by the same person and at the same period of time. However, this may cause the problem of common method variance (CMV) during the data collection process. To avoid this problem, the research purpose and variables were not revealed in the questionnaire. Additionally, to avoid the random answers from the participants, the reverse questions were also applied.
Back Translation
Due to the fact that the participants were Vietnamese, the original scales, which were in English was translated into Vietnamese. To confirm the Vietnamese translation whether it fitted with the original meaning of English, the researcher conducted the back translation. The researcher asked a native Vietnamese speaker who had high-level English proficiency and background in social science to translate the Vietnamese version back to English. He is currently doing English-taught Master Program at Human Resource Department in Sun-Yat-Sen University, Kaoshiung, Taiwan. After that, an English native speaker from the U.S was asked to help to check the translation. The purpose of this process was to make sure that Vietnamese and English version had the same meanings.
Pilot Test
In order to confirm the reliability of the measurement, the pilot test was conducted with the participation of 40 white-collar workers. The researcher distributed the questionnaires to these workers within one week in February and then once the data collection was completed, the reliability was conducted using SPSS version 22.0 to confirm the reliability of the instruments mentioned above. According to George and Mallery (2003), the internal consistency with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.6 to 0.7 is considered to be acceptable, 0.7 to 0.8 is good and above 0.9 is excellent. As shown in the table 3.1, Cronbach’s alpha of all the dimensions and variables are more than 0.6, indicating a consistency of the items’ sets in measuring the variables and its dimensions. Cronbach’s alpha of Boundaryless carreer attitude was .79 with .93 and .77 for boundaryless career mindset and organizational career mobility respectively. The reliability or organizational commitment was .76 with .70 for affective commitment, .62 for continuance commitment and .79 for normative commitment.
The Cronbach’s alpha for moderator is .91. Because the analysis showed that all variables had good cronbach’s alpha, the same questionnaire was used for the data collection for the study.
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Cronbach’s Alpha of Measurement in the Pilot Test
Variables and Dimensions Cronbach’s alpha
1. Boundaryless Career Attitude .79
Boundaryless Career Mindset .93
Organizational Career Mobility .77
2. Organizational Commitment .76
Affective Commitment .70
Continuance Commitment .62
Normative Commitment .79
3. Perceived Organizational Career Management .91
Data Analysis
To analyze the data, the statistic instruments of IBM SPSS version 22.0 and AMOS version 23.0 were used in this research. The analysis methods were as follows:
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
The validity of the questionnaire was tested by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to confirm whether the data fit a hypothesized measurement model that based on previous researches. The indexes were presented as the table below.
Table 3.2
Summary of Fit Indexes
Fit indexes Threshold References
χ2/df <3 Joreskog and Sorborm, 1993
RMSEA <.08 Brown and Cudeck, 1993; MacCallum, Browne and Sugawara, 1996
GFI >.8 Carmines and McIver , 1981 NFI >.9 Bentler and Bonett, 1980 CFI >.9 Bentler and Bonett, 1980 NNFI >.9 Tucke and Lewis, 1973
The confirmatory factory analysis was examined with the sample of 245 participants.
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The number of observed variables of boundaryless career attitude was 13, this number for organizational commitment was 18 and the number for organizational career management was 10. The detailed results of CFA are presented as the table 4.2 below. The three-factor model showed that it did not perfectly reach the model fit. The χ2/df reached a good index of 2.99. RMSEA (Root mean square error of approximation) also almost reached the acceptable index (RMSEA = .09). Other indices include CFI of .74, IFI of .75, TLI of .73. However, the GFI and NFI are needed to be improved more (GFI = .67, NFI =.66).
Table 3.3.
Result of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (n=245)
χ2 df χ2/df RMSEA CFI NFI IFI TLI GFI
BCA 348.8 64 5.45 .13 .85 .83 .85 .82 .82
OC 718.29 133 5.40 .13 .61 .57 .62 .52 .73
OCM 213.74 35 6.11 .15 .91 .90 .91 .89 .83
1-factor Model 4312.32 779 5.54 .14 .41 .37 .42 .38 .43 2-factor Model 3843.96 775 4.96 .13 .49 .44 .49 .46 .47
3-factor Model 2309.02 773 2.99 .09 .74 .66 .75 .73 .67 Note. BCM: Boundaryless career mindset; OC: Organizational commitment; OCM:
Organizational career management;
1-factor Model combines all items of boundaryless career mindset, organizational commitment and organizational career management
2-factor Model combines items of boundaryless career mindset and organizational career management
3-factor Model represents the measurement model of this study
25 Figure 3.3. Three-factor CFA measurement model
Descriptive Statistics
The descriptive statistics was run to determine the means, standard deviations, variance and the inter-correlation among the variables. These statistics reported the frequency
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distribution and the differences in demographic information of the participants. Also, the descriptive statistic was also to check the missing data existed.
Pearson Correlation Analysis
In order to determine the linear correlation between variables, the Pearson’s correlation was performed and analyzed. The higher the correlation is, the stronger the relationship between variables is. The value of Pearson correlation will range from -1 to +1. The variables are perfectly positive correlated if p=1, meanwhile, there is a perfect negative linear relationship between variables if p=-1. A correlation of 0 indicate no linear correlation between variables. The modulus value of correlation below 0.4 is called low correlation, and between 0.4 and 0.7 is called medium correlation; the value is over 0.7 is called high correlation
Hierarchical Regression Analysis
In order to test the moderating effects on the relationships between variables, the hierarchical regression analysis was used in this study followed the commendations from Baron and Kenny (1986). This study conducted three steps to test moderating effects of perceived organizational career management on the relationship between boundaryless career attitude and organizational commitment. The first step was to enter the control variable; then, the second step was to enter boundaryless career attitude and perceived organizational career management to test the two variables’ impact on the dependent variable. Finally, before calculating the interaction variables, boundaryless career attitude and perceived organizational career management were entered by subtracting the mean from the original ones in order to reduce the multicollinearity problem (Aiken, West, & Reno, 1991). The last step was to enter interaction item of boundaryless career attitude and organizational career management to test their interaction on the dependent variable
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