(Luận văn) the moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between job satisfaction and affective commitment, a study among employees in vietnam banking industry

Being considered as a representative of organizational commitment, affective commitment has demonstrated its significant role in most of the tot nghiep do wn load thyj uyi pl aluan van f

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

Phạm Ngọc Anh Thơ

THE MODERATING EFFECT OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB SATISFACTION AND AFFECTIVE COMMITMENT: A STUDY AMONG EMPLOYEES IN VIETNAM BANKING

INDUSTRY

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

Supervisor: Trần Phương Thảo

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2017

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

Phạm Ngọc Anh Thơ

THE MODERATING EFFECT OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB SATISFACTION AND AFFECTIVE COMMITMENT: A STUDY AMONG EMPLOYEES IN VIETNAM BANKING

INDUSTRY

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

Supervisor: Trần Phương Thảo

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2017

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Tran Phuong Thao for her precious guidance, valuable suggestions and advice as well as her immense

knowledge to support me throughout the process

In addition, I would like to thank my family, my friends and my colleagues for their constant encouragement and immediate helps without which the study would not

have been possible

The study investigates the influence of job satisfaction facets on affective commitment in the context of Vietnam banking industry It also examines the moderating

role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between job satisfaction facets and

affective commitment The model was tested with a sample of 313 employees working

for banks in Ho Chi Minh city The result reveals a good fit between collected data and

measurement scales which were introduced and developed in the Western contexts The

findings shows that job satisfaction facets have positive impacts on affective

commitment, and that emotional intelligence significantly serves as a moderator for three

out of seven facets of job satisfaction and affective commitment relationship The

discovery highlights the importance of documenting job satisfaction and emotional

intelligence in enhancing the employee commitment towards organization as well as calls

the management attention to their recruiting, training and long term development

policies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the study 1

1.2 Research problem 3

1.3 Research objectives 5

1.4 Scope of the study 5

1.5 Significance of the study 6

2 Literature review 7

2.1 Foundational theories 7

2.2 Affective commitment 8

2.3 Emotional intelligence 9

2.4 Job satisfaction 12

3 Hypothesis development 13

3.1 Job satisfaction and affective commitment 13

3.2 Emotional intelligence and affective commitment 15

3.3 Emotional intelligence as a moderator 16

4 Research methodology 19

4.1 Procedure and sample 19

4.2 Questionnaire design 21

4.3 Measurement scale 21

4.4 Data analysis 22

5 Result 23

5.1 Sample profile 23

5.2 Measurement refinement 24

5.3 Measurement models: 26

5.3.1 Correlations analysis 26

5.3.2 Hierarchical regression analysis 27

5.4 Discussion 31

5.4.1 Theoretical implication 32

5.4.2 Managerial implication 33

5.5 Direction for further studies and limitations 34

5.6 Conclusion 35

References Error! Bookmark not defined.7

Appendix 1: Questionnaire survey – English version 37

Appendix 2: Questionnaire survey – Vietnamese version 39

Appendix 3: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) - Affective commitment scale 44

Appendix 4: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Emotional intelligence scale 44

Appendix 5: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Job satisfaction scale - Pay 45

Appendix 6: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Job satisfaction scale - Promotion 46

Appendix 7: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Job satisfaction scale - Supervisors 46 Appendix 8: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Job satisfaction scale – Fringe benefits 47

Appendix 9: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Job satisfaction scale – Co-workers 47 Appendix 10: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Job satisfaction scale – Nature of work 48

Appendix 11: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=313) – Job satisfaction scale - Communication 49

Appendix 12: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study 49

Appendix 13: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study 50

Appendix 14: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study-Job satisfaction facets - Pay 51

Appendix 15: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study-Job satisfaction facets - Promotion 51

Appendix 16: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study-Job satisfaction facets - Supervisors 52

Appendix 17: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study- Job satisfaction facets - Fringe benefits 52

Appendix 18: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study- Job satisfaction facets – Operating condition 53

Appendix 19: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study- Job satisfaction facets - Co-workers 53

Appendix 20: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study Job satisfaction facets -Nature of work 54

Appendix 21: Scale reliability assessment with Cronbach’s alpha (N=158) – pilot study - Job satisfaction facets - Communication 54

Appendix 22: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) - Affective commitment 55

Appendix 23: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) - Emotional intelligence 56

Appendix 24: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) – Job satisfaction 57

Appendix 25: Normal distribution of residuals 60

Appendix 26: Homoscedasticity test 61

Appendix 27: Hierarchical regression analysis with emotional intelligence is a moderating value 62

Figure 1 The conceptual model 19

Figure 2 Moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between nature of works and affective commitment……….39

Table 1: Demographic statistics 22

Table 2: Cronbach’s Alpha analysis 26

Table 3: Correlations 27

Table 4: Hierarchical Regression Analysis with Emotional intelligence as a moderating variable 30

Table 5: Result Summary……… … 39

1 Introduction

The first part of the study is devoted to emphasizing the practical and theoretical importance of studying affective commitment, job satisfaction, emotional intelligence

and the relationships among them Besides, the study desires to present the interest in the

topic in the context of Vietnam banking The final section is the summary of objectives

which is followed by the scope of the study

1.1 Background of the study

Human resource has been considered as one of the most valuable asset of any organization According to Ferrary (2015), human capital has a direct relationship to

organizational performance in terms of company’s profit and targets Other studies found

that maintaining a stable labour force is an optimal way to obtain effective cost

management and enhance quality of service in a firm (Jago & Deery, 2002) as well as

achieve sustainable economic development of a nation (Bousrih, 2013)

The concept of organizational commitment has been studied by many researchers over the last three decades Diversity of factors were found to have significant

relationships with organizational commitment namely: Job satisfaction, job performance,

job stress, work attitude, organizational justice, tenure, gender educational level, turnover

intention, etc (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer &Allen, 1999) Affective commitment

-the strongest component among three commitments has received considerable attention

from researchers all over the word Being considered as a representative of organizational

commitment, affective commitment has demonstrated its significant role in most of the

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relationships related to employee’s engagement (Carmeli, 2000) Understanding the

associations of these factors with organizational commitment, especially affective

commitment, is important for improving the employee performance and enhancing

employee productivity as well

In order to expand the knowledge of this issue, numerous of new approaches have been undertaken to contribute to organizational commitment literature Lately, emotional

intelligence has captured the considerable attention from researchers of various fields It

was explored to have a vital role in explaining variety of potential outcomes such as

academic achievement, human physical and mental health, social support, overall

well-being (Meisler, 2013) Additionally, emotional intelligence has played its special function

as a mediator or a moderator which helps a wide array of studies obtain deeper insights

into many relationships Clarke and Mahadi (2011) observed the linkage between

leader-member exchange and a plethora of work-related outcomes, eventually they discovered

that emotional intelligence – as a moderating effect, kept an important role in explaining

the variation of each specific pair of constructs Emotional intelligence was also found to

have significant influence on the stressor-mental health relation (Davis & Humphrey,

2012), the psychological control-behaviour problem relation (Gugliandolo et.al, 2015)or

the stress-burnout relation (Görgens-Ekermans &Brand 2012)

Emotional intelligence was proved to have the moderating effect on relationships between affective reactions and specific behaviours (Jorden et al., 2002) Accordingly,

previous studies on the job satisfaction – organizational commitment relation have

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provided crucial contribution to the theoretical foundation but this is not sufficient to

explain the variation of employee commitment Based on the research of Jorden and

others, the recent study aims to investigate whether the interaction of emotional

intelligence and job satisfaction predicts affective commitment, in other words, whether

the association between job satisfaction and affective commitment is stronger for

individuals who have high score of emotional intelligence and weaker for ones who

possesses a low level of emotional intelligence

1.2 Research problem

Since joining the WTO (World Trade Organization) in 2007, Vietnam has witnessed a significant economic growth in the latest decade due to the improvement of

business environment and the high volume of foreign investments Along with the

achievement in economy, Vietnam banking industry has also seen an outstanding

enlargement and development in terms of scale and service quality (Leung, 2009),

especially in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City

However, the increases in competition and financial innovation led to an extremely rapid expansion which resulted in banking system problems in the past few

years Eventually, the project 254 called “Restructuring credit institutions system

2011-2015” was implemented by the Prime Minister in 2012 Accordingly, the State Bank

of Vietnam has pushed banks to merge, with the goal of more than halving the number of

lenders (Lane, 2016) In such an unfavourable condition, labour in this sector has

experienced a considerable fluctuation with the highest average voluntary turnover rate

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compared to other service sectors; with the latest figure in 2014 is about 15 % (Thanh,

2015) Restructuring banking sector not only causes the workforce transition among

banks but also between banking and non-banking sectors, accordingly, keeping the

intellectual property for organizations is a crucial strategy for maintaining a sustainable

development

The literature has showed that a large number of empirical findings on employee’s commitment, emotional intelligence and job satisfaction originated from Western

countries, this study attempts to widen the implication to a broader scope outside the

traditional samples by testing the relationships among mentioned constructs in the

context of Vietnam The concept of affective commitment was studied in Vietnam

services industry (Choi, Tran, & Park, 2015), the finding showed a positive relationship

between inclusive leadership and employee work engagement with the mediating roles of

affective commitment and employee creativity Besides, some empirical studies on job

satisfaction were conducted in Vietnam in recent years: Job satisfaction was tested among

marketers in Ho Chi Minh city by Nguyen and Nguyen (2011), along with job

attractiveness, job satisfaction was found to be positively influenced by firm-specific

marketing capital pool Job satisfaction was also examined in the association with

work-family conflict in the context of state-owned and foreign invested enterprises (Nguyen,

Jin, Kiong & Fah, 2016) Whilst organizational commitment and job satisfaction have

been taken into consideration in Vietnam for several recent years, little is known about

Emotional intelligence in this small Southeast Asia country Over all, gaining a deeper

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understanding of factors associated with organizational commitment, specifically

affective commitment, what directly and indirectly facilitate or hamper the degree of the

commitment, will help banks to set appropriate human resources policies to encourage

employee’s motivation as well as enhance bank’s performance

1.3 Research objectives

The study aims to examine the relationship between affective commitment and job satisfaction’s facets with emotional intelligence in the role of a mixed moderator Three

specified objectives are given as follow:

(1) The relationship between job satisfaction’s facets and affective commitment

(2) The relationship between emotional intelligence and affective commitment

(3) The impact of emotional intelligence on the relationships between job satisfaction’s facets and affective commitment as a mixed moderator

1.4 Scope of the study

The study concentrates on the impacts of job satisfaction on affective commitment and the mixed moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationships, the study

excludes all other elements affecting the variables which potentially influence the results

Obviously, all the notions studied in this research relates to a wide range of sectors in the

economy, the scope of the study is limited in banking industry

Moreover, data collection was only conducted in Ho Chi Minh city Located in a convenient position, Ho Chi Minh city is known as the most important economic centre

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which plays a vital driving impetus of financial, commercial and service hub of the

country Particularly, the city is home to a large network of banking and financial

institutions (Tuoi tre news, 2015).For these reasons, Ho Chi Minh city was selected for

the study

1.5 Significance of the study

In the context of a transitional economy in Vietnam, the banking sector has suffered from numerous of unfavourable situations came from stock markets, real estate

markets and money market (Vuong, 2014); the turnover in banking segment caused by

such inconvenient conditions has thus increased Thus, the employment shift prevents

commercial banks from sustainably and stably operating as well as developing in the long

term Hence, the study is expected to offer a significant contribution to both theoretical

and empirical perspective:

From the academic viewpoint, the study provides insights into emotional intelligence in the workplace of Vietnamese employees, unfolds the role of emotional intelligence in moderating job satisfaction-affective commitment relation and discovers which facets of the job satisfaction have considerable influences on staffs’ commitment to the bank

From the practical viewpoint, the findings attract an interest of makers in emotional intelligence relating to recruiting, training and retaining activities For employees, once emotional intelligence is well understood and concerned, the ability of managing and controlling

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emotions, moods, reactions is thus enhanced This advantage is expected to help bank staffs create stronger and more fulfilling relationships in workplace

2 Literature review

2.1 Foundational theories

Based on the idea of social exchange theory (Emerson, 1976) which was conceptualized as a joint activity gained by exchanging the benefits, commitment was

stated to be directly tied to psychological contract in which the employees-organization

relation is driven by a reciprocal obligation between two parties (Sarantinos, 2007)

According to Daan and Sleebos(2006), job satisfaction and organizational commitment

are social exchange outcomes because the two constructs reflect a perception of the

exchange quality of which the employee and the organization are required to fulfill their

obligations to each other and establish ongoing reciprocity

The Emotional Intelligence theory of Bar-On was first introduced in 1985 and followed by a series of other subsequent developed versions by Bar-On (2006), Mayer

and Salovey (1990) and Goleman(1998) Even though there are a lot of such different

perspectives in doing research on emotional intelligence, since this construct was

conceptualized, IQ alone has no more dominated as a measure of success

Emotional intelligence was found to play roles in both building and maintaining successful social relationships, predicting specific aspects of situations involving social

exchange (Reis et al., 2007) When an organization makes its employees satisfied with

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their job, it will in turn obtain the commitment from employees In this situation,

emotional intelligence will either foster or hamper this exchange process

2.2 Affective commitment

Organizational commitment is defined the degree of attachment or loyalty employees feel towards the organisation (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer et al., 2006;

Mowday et al., 1979) It has received considerable attention as a result of its ability to

produce desirable outcomes for organizations Previous studies suggested that

organizational commitment has the potential link to many outcomes such as job

performance (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990), job satisfaction (Bailey, Albassami & Al-Meshal,

2016; Vandenberg & Lance, 1992), sales (Boles et al 2007), turnover, absenteeism,

tenure and organizational goals (Baek-Kyoo & Park, 2010; Meyer & Allen, 1999) In

contrast, there was another school of thoughts advocating that the variation of

organizational commitment can be explained by a plethora of antecedents such as job

satisfaction, emotional intelligence, organizational justice, organizational culture,

sociodemographic characteristics etc (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Jiang, 2015;

Shalini, 2013; Sikorska-Simmons, 2005)

The study employs the three-component modelof Allen and Meyer (1990) to examine the bank staffs’ commitment to the banks they are working for The three-

component model which was re-conceptualized from numerous definitions has been

broadly used in academic community thanks to its widespread application in various

domains, accordingly, commitment was classified by three distinguishable mindsets

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(Allen& Meyer, 1990): Affective commitment refers to the emotional attachment an

employee has towards the organization Employees with strong affective commitment

stay with the organization because they want to.Continuance commitment reflects an

awareness of the costs of leaving the organization Finally, normative commitment

reflects a perceived obligation to stay with the organization

Among three components of commitment, affective commitment was found to be most important factor compared to continuance and normative commitment (Meyer et al.,

2002) This can be explained by the argument that workers tend to make their own

decision on whether they want to remain with an organization (affective commitment)

rather than they do so for obligation (normative commitment) or financial issues

(continuance commitment) Once employee’s emotional bond to their workplace no

longer exists, they tend to leave for another job instead of staying for any other purposes

(Rhoades et al., 2001) For this reason, the study concentrates on affective assessment to

interpret the job satisfaction-organizational commitment connection Moreover, since

affective commitment is considered as an emotional attachment between an individual

and an organization (Meyer&Allen, 1999), it is expected to be directly or indirectly

explained by another psychological construct: emotional intelligence in some certain

guide other individual’s thinking and actions’ (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) Emotional

intelligence has been researched in a number of different ways to examine the

relationships with other work-related factors including transformational leadership,

conflict resolution, political skill, success in job interviews, and job performance (Day &

Carroll, 2004; Joseph & Newman, 2010; Harms &Crede´, 2010; Mayer et al., 2008;

Meisler, 2013) or explain work attitudes and behaviours (Carmeli, 2003; Wong & Law,

2002) Cooper (1997) also pointed out that people having high emotional intelligence can

cope with the organizational problems more effectively than those having low emotional

intelligence There has been numerous of debates around this topic in the academic

community, research on emotional intelligence thus keep increasing over twenty-five

years with different point of views although they overlap in some facets

Ability model was initially introduced by Salovey and Mayer in early 1990’s which measures a set of cognitive abilities: The ability to perceive emotions; the ability to

integrate emotion; the ability to facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotions; and

the ability to manage emotions using Emotional-Intelligence Test (MSCEIT:

Mayer-Salovey-Caruso-Emotional-Intelligence Test) The model continued to be developed by

Wong and Law in 2002 with the scale named Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence

Scale (WLEIS) The model supposes that emotional intelligence originates in childhood

and continue to develop subsequently The mixed model (Bar-On, 1997) regards

emotional intelligence as a combination of cognitive abilities and personality traits The

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competency model (Goleman, 1998) considers emotional intelligence as being capable of

development in operating within working environment

The current study opted the ability model to examine the influence of emotional intelligence on the relationship between affective commitment and job satisfaction Based

on the theory of Salovey and Mayer (1990), Wong and Law (2002) conceptualized

emotional intelligence as composed of four distinct dimensions called WLEIS (Wong and

Law Emotional Intelligence Scale):Self emotional appraisal (SEA) refers to the

individual’s ability to understand their emotions, other’s emotional appraisal (OEA)

refers to the individual’s ability to recognize and understand other people’s emotion,

regulation of emotion (ROE) refers to ability of people who regulate their emotions

which will enable a more rapid recovery from distresses and use of emotion (UOE) refers

to the ability of individuals to make use of their emotions by directing them towards

constructive activities and enhancing performance

According to Meisler and Vigoda-Gadot (2014), compared to other tools, WLEIS has some predominant features: Firstly, it has been tested in different cultures, ethnic and

gender groups by recent studies Additionally, measure of emotional intelligence

employing WLEIS does not overlap with measure of personality traits Last but not least,

WLEIS was designed to be used in organizations and it especially plays a vital role in

predicting job satisfaction For all these reasons, this approach of emotional intelligence

is the best choice to assess this construct in the context of the study

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2.4 Job satisfaction

Job satisfaction can be defined as the degree to which people like their jobs (Spector, 1997).Job satisfaction is associated with important work-related and general

outcomes such as higher levels of job performance, organizational commitment;

discretionary activities such as organizational citizenship behavior, and life satisfaction as

well as with lower levels of absenteeism, lateness, and turnover (Bailey, Albassami &

Al-Meshal, 2016; Judge, Heller & Mount, 2002; Gyekye, & Haybatollahi, 2015;

Wickramasinghe, 2010 ) Lack of job satisfaction results in a poorer performance, more

frequent absenteeism from work, lower work productivity, more serious depression

(Meyer & Allen, 1999)

Job satisfaction is one of the most broadly investigated concept in academic community in general and in organizational behaviour in particular Spector (1997)

pointed out that job satisfaction consists pay, promotion, supervisor, marginal benefits,

contingent rewards, areas of activity, colleagues, nature of work, communication

Examining job satisfaction with different facets, Tett and Mayer (1993) argued that this

construct should be assessed by three components: Satisfaction with career advancement,

satisfaction with supervisors, and satisfaction with co-workers Likewise, Goetz et al

(2012) classified job satisfaction into two dimensions: Internal job satisfaction which

refers to an individual’s motivation to willingly perform an assigned task for itself and for

the pleasure it brings, and, external job satisfaction which refers to external benefits

provided by the organization

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Even though global assessment of job satisfaction with first-order construct or one-item scale usage have been employed in many studies, it is not encouraged to be used

for measuring the concept due to its inaccurate and overestimated assessment (Boles et

al., 2007) Specifically, every facet may not have the equal effect on an individual’s

satisfaction, one may be highly satisfied with job due to a high satisfaction with salary,

promotion, supervisor rather than with the work itself The global or overall approach is

unable to analyse job satisfaction in more details because the survey questions primarily

evaluate one’s general feelings or attitude towards the job, thus it is difficult for Human

resources policies to be set up appropriately As argued above, the Job Satisfaction

Survey of Spector (1997) including eight-facet assessment was adopted to collect the

respondent’s detailed feelings about the job

3 Hypothesis development 3.1 Job satisfaction and affective commitment

The relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment is not a new topic in academic community It has been reported in numerous articles by scholars

all over the world that these two concepts have a positive connection, however, the

investigation results of this association reflected various scientific perspectives

According to some studies, job satisfaction was regarded as an antecedent to

organizational commitment, in other words, job satisfaction served as a predictor of

organizational commitment (Mowday et al., 1982; Porter et al., 1974)

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Conflicting with the above argument, there was another school of thought suggesting that organizational commitment is an outcome of job satisfaction, and that the

satisfaction can be explained by various degrees of organizational commitment (Bailey,

Albassami, & Al-Meshal, 2015; Baker &Baker, 1999; Laschingeret al., 2001) In the

context of this research, job satisfaction is identified as a determinant to organizational

commitment In line with the former perspective, the current research supposes that

satisfied employees are more committed to their job as well as to the bank whereas

dissatisfied employees might want to leave the organization if their attitude to the job is

no longer positive

Although three components of organizational commitment share the similar impact on an employee’s attachment to the organization, the nature of each commitment

may differ and has the separate meanings In a study conducted in 2002, Meyer et al

concluded that affective commitment occupies a greater contribution to employee’s

favourable work behaviours compared with normative and continuance commitment As

a result, when it comes to organizational commitment, affective commitment alone was

commonly used in majority of studies instead of three types of commitments (Jiang,

2014; Lövblad, Hyder, & Lönnstedt, 2012; Vandenberghe, & Bentein, 2009) This can be

explained by the fact that satisfied employees are committed to the organization for their

emotions rather than obligations or the cost they may pay if leaving In more detail, when

affective commitment was separately tested in the research of Boles et al (2007), the

result revealed that different facets of job satisfaction have various degrees of effect on

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the dependent variable Patrick and Sonia (2012) also discovered the significant role of

job satisfaction in explaining 67% the variation of affective commitment

Consistent with earlier research, this study consumes that eight dimensions of job satisfaction: Pay, promotion, supervisors, fringe benefits, operation condition, co-

workers, nature of work, communication have the positive effects on affective

commitment Therefore, the first hypotheses were formed as follow:

H1a: Pay is positively related to affective commitment

H1b: Promotion is positively related to affective commitment

H1c: Supervisors is positively related to affective commitment

H1d: Fringe benefits is positively related to affective commitment

H1e: Operation condition is positively related to affective commitment

H1f: Co-workers is positively related to affective commitment

H1g: Nature of work is positively related to affective commitment

H1h: Communication is positively related to affective commitment

3.2 Emotional intelligence and affective commitment

According to Wong and Law (2002), employees with high emotional intelligence are more satisfied with their jobs, enjoy a higher level of job satisfaction, as a result, will

be less likely to leave their jobs On the contrary, low emotional intelligence employees,

however, are more likely to leave their organizations due to less committed to their

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organizations Drawing from a study of Abraham (2000), emotional intelligence was

found to significantly associate with organizational commitment for most participants,

this association was even stronger than that between job satisfaction and organizational

commitment In line with Abraham’s finding, Gu¨leryu ¨z et al (2008) also pointed out

that all the direct path coefficients from dimensions of emotional intelligence to

organizational commitment were significant However, these findings were explored

along with the discoveries in which either moderators or mediators were included Hence,

although the direct paths were found significant, R2 was greater with the presence of

moderating and mediating effects

As previously discussed, among three types of commitment, affective commitment benefits the organization to a higher degree due to its strongest contribution to the

employee’s favourable work behaviours Therefore, based on the emotional

intelligence-organizational commitment relationship which was concluded to be significant, the study

desired to examine whether an individual who is good at managing and regulating

emotions is more affectively attached to the organization than individual who has

problems in controlling the feelings? The second hypothesis was thus stated as following:

H2: Emotional intelligence is positively related to affective commitment

3.3 Emotional intelligence as a moderator

Emotional intelligence has been reported as a moderator in numerous relationships Clarke and Mahadi (2011) emphasized the moderating role in their research

between quality of leader-member exchange and a series of work-related outcomes

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namely organizational citizenship behaviour, turnover intention, job satisfaction,

organizational commitment, in-role performance andpsychological well-being, the result

after using a hierarchical moderated regression model revealed that the higher relative

scores on emotional intelligence fostered the magnitude of the effect between each pair of

concepts Moreover, emotional intelligence was discovered to moderate the relationships

between emotional labor and strain, emotional labor efforts and outcomes, emotional

dissonance and work-family conflict, organizational politics and organizational

commitment, etc… (Cheung & Tang, 2012; Gao et al., 2013)

However, these above research heavily connected to the Western background and received little attention in Asia workplace environment Cultural differences between the

East and the West have been empirically proved to impact emotion experience and

display (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012) To be specific, individual achievement and

feelings are valued in Western countries whereas the interdependence of the self and

community is more valued in Eastern countries (Scott-Halsell et al 2008) This

distinction will to some extent determine individual’s thinking and action of each culture

Hence, studying emotional intelligence in the context of an Asia nation like Vietnam

should be taken into account for adequate consideration

The study supposed that the impact of job satisfaction on affective commitment is stronger when an individual has a higher level of emotional intelligence and vice versa

Up to the present, the moderating role of emotional intelligence in the relation of job

satisfaction and organizational commitment has not received much attention from

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academic community In order to enrich the organizational behaviour literature, the

current study observed the potential mixed moderating effect of emotional intelligence to

provide a deeper understanding for job satisfaction – affective commitment relation In

doing so, the interactions of job satisfaction’s facets and emotional intelligence were

added to test this potential effect The hypotheses were thus developed:

H3a: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between pay and affective commitment

H3b: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between promotion and affective commitment

H3c: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between supervisors and affective commitment

H3d: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between fringe benefits and affective commitment

H3e: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between operation condition and affective commitment

H3f: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between co-workers and affective commitment

H3g: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between nature of work and affective commitment

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H3h: Emotional intelligence plays a mixed moderating role in the relationship between communication and affective commitment

Figure 1 The conceptual model

4 Research methodology

4.1 Procedure and sample

The study was undertaken through two steps including pilot study (qualitative and quantitative) at the first stage and main survey (quantitative) at the second stage by

capturing responses of bank staffs of ten banks in Ho Chi Minh City

The qualitative pilot study involved an in-depth interview with 4 bank staffs The interview was implemented to assess the clarity of words, the content of the questions

and the ability to answer the questions of the interviewees Generally, all the items were

well understood The quantitative pilot study was then used to test the reliability and

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validity of the scale with the sample of 158 employees selected by convenient method

The purpose of this stage was not only to assure that the instruments employed in this

study was appropriate for the context of Vietnam but also to well prepare for the final

measurement which was subsequently used in the main survey

The main survey was conducted using convenience sampling As mentioned above, the method implemented in the main survey was the quantitative approach,

responses obtained from bank staffs were collected via their personal e-mails Surveys

were created by Google Form, the feedbacks then were used to assess the scale and test

the proposed hypotheses by means of Cronbach’s alpha and exploratory factor analysis

(EFA)

Based on the rule of five observations per parameter estimated of Bollen (as cited

in Nguyen, 2013), the sample size of minimum 280 participants is needed for the survey

that consists 56 parameters Therefore, 350surveys were distributed to employees of ten

banks located in Ho Chi Minhcity The respondents included employees from various

departments were selected to assure that the variety and reliability of the survey were

achieved

There were 322 feedbacks sent back to the collector However, there were 9 responses which were eliminated due to missing value or straight-lining (respondents

select the same answer choice for all questions) Consequently, there were 313 valid

feedbacks usable for further data analysis

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4.2 Questionnaire design

A questionnaire of the survey included 56 main questions The questionnaire survey used Likert scale seven levels (Totally disagree – totally agree) to measure bank

staffs’ attitude The remaining part contained questions related to gender, age, position,

education…to collect biodata The questionnaire was originally composed in English,

they were then translated into Vietnamese to assure that every question is well

understood by readers Finally, the responses were back translated to serve as materials

for further data analysis All the questions were arranged randomly instead of orderly to

prevent CMV (Common method variance) from taking place After respondents finished

filling the questionnaire, the collector immediately checked for any missing fields and

asked respondents to add in order to avoid insufficient information from any respondent

The questionnaire surveys in both languages are shown in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2

4.3 Measurement scale

Affective commitment was measured with Affective Commitment Scale developed by Allen and Meyer (1990) included 8 items A seven-point Likertscale was

employed from strongly disagree to strongly agree Interviewees showed their feelings

about their banks by selecting one appropriate choice The higher the average score of a

specific dimension, the greater the level of that type of affective commitment

Emotional Intelligence was examined with self-report Wong Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS,Wong& Law, 2002) Applying the seven-point Likert, the

scale consisted of 16 questions belong to four dimensions that were consistent with

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Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) definition of Emotional intelligence However, these four

dimensions were combined into a single emotional intelligence measure rather than a

multidimensional one because the current study was interested in the overall construct to

examine how the magnitude of the examined relationship changes with and without the

presence of emotional intelligence

Job satisfaction was tested with the Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1997) including 8 dimensions: Pay, promotion, supervisor, fringe benefits, operating conditions,

co-workers, nature of work and communication The scale comprised 32 items, each

category consisted 4 statements which were scored on a seven-point Likert scale

4.4 Data analysis

Two first-order constructs (affective commitment and emotional intelligence) and one second-order construct (job satisfaction) were examined in the study The scales were

refined and validated using Cronbach’s Alpha and EFA from the pilot sample of 158

participants to gain more appropriate measurements, the results after being refined were

then used for the main survey Based on the data collected from main survey, Cronbach

alpha and EFA were once again employed with 313 respondents to assess how much the

measurement model fits the research data

In the next stage, three-step hierarchical regression was applied to analyse the relationships of job satisfaction, emotional intelligence and affective commitment At the

first step, all facets of job satisfaction were input to test its relationship with affective

commitment, the result demonstrated the first hypothesis Emotional intelligence was

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added at the second step to investigate how much affective commitment variation is

explained by its presence, the second hypothesis was thus examined Finally, the entry of

the interaction between job satisfaction facets and emotional intelligence revealed

whether emotional intelligence acted as a mixed moderator in the job satisfaction-

affective commitment association, by observing the change in R2 the third hypotheses

were proved because the result was significant

5.Result 5.1 Sample profile

350 online surveys were directly delivered to the employees (using Google Forms) via personal e-mails at identified banks in Ho Chi Minh city The employees were asked

to present their attitude towards the statements related to job satisfaction, affective

commitment and emotional intelligence The seven point Likert scales were designed by

selecting fixed choices that would enable interviewees to measure how much they agree

with a given issue There were 313 responses collected which were applicable for data

processing

Descriptive statistics provided detailed information of the collected data: Female labour force accounted for 59.4% of the sample, 18.8% higher than male participation

Besides, while more than a half of interviewees aged under 30 dominated the survey with

56.2%, bank staffs aged from 30 to 40 and over 40 just occupied approximately 30% and

15% respectively Most of the respondents working in banking sector had bachelor’

degree or lower, about 235 out of 313, whereas this figure of master’s degree or higher

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was 78 Finally, the bank type was classified into 3 categories namely State-owned banks,

joint-venture and foreign banks and others with the percentage of participants for each

type were 32.9, 26.2 and 40.9 respectively

Table 1: Demographic statistics

Specifically, all the answers were run employing SPSS to check duplication and to scan

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for anomalies or missing values using “frequency” function Cronbach Alpha and EFA

then were used to measure the internal consistency, analyse the reliability and to refine

the scale The result revealed that the job satisfaction’s facet named “Operating

conditions” should be excluded due to low Cronbach Alpha coefficient 0.269 because the

study of Nunnally and Bernstein suggested that Cronbach Alpha coefficient greater than

0.6 is acceptable (as cited in Nguyen, 2013) The result table is illustrated in Appendix

18

The output gained from EFA analysis also showed satisfactory indexes: Affective commitment was extracted 1 factor, emotional intelligence was extracted 4 factors and

job satisfaction was extracted 7 factors after the “Operating conditions” was deleted The

number of factors in each specific construct were identified at a greater than 1

Eigenvalue All factor loadings, extracted variances were higher than 0.5, KMO of three

scales were greater than 0.5 and Bartlett’s tests were significant, convergent as well as

discriminant validity was achieved In conclusion, the final scale which then would be

used for the main survey has three constructs and 52 questions eventually The completed

survey questionnaire can be seen in appendix 2

The process was repeated for the main survey of 313 responses Table 2 indicates the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient which is correspondent with each factor The result

pointed out all the alphas were greater than 0.6 together with high item-total correlation

(>0.5), a more detailed Cronbach Alpha analysis performance is presented in appendix of

the study Consistent with the refinement of pilot study, EFA analysis (principle

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component with varimax rotation) of main survey resulted in a similar assessment which

is depicted in Appendix 22, Appendix 23 and Appendix 24 The measurement model

achieved a good fit to the data

Table 2: Cronbach’s Alpha analysis

- Self emotional appraisal

- Other’s emotional appraisal

- Regulation of emotion

- Use of emotion

.863 913 906 921

5.3 Measurement models:

5.3.1 Correlations analysis

Table 3 presents the correlations for the research variables As expected, seven facets of job satisfaction and emotional intelligence were significantly and positively

correlated to affective commitment However, some unexamined relation between job

satisfaction’s components and emotional intelligence exposes a strong correlation This

can cause the multicollinearity as they are simultaneously added into the further

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regression For this reason, these variables should be converted into mean-deviated

variables whose means = 0 and variances ≠ 1 before being input into Hierarchical

regression analysis in the next step

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

5.3.2 Hierarchical regression analysis

In order to test the main effect and discover whether emotional intelligence moderates the

relationship between job satisfaction’s facets and affective commitment, hierarchal

regression analysis was conducted Linear regression was the next step after correlation,

it was used to predict the value of dependent variable based on the value of independent

variables

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Before regression conduction, assumptions were checked to assure that the results gained

from data analysis are valid This study assessed the assumptions related to residuals by

using histogram to test whether the errors of the regression are approximately normally

distributed; and; scatterplots to illustrate homoscedasticity of the data The outputs

pointed out that all these assumptions were met These can be found in appendix 25 and

26

As indicated in the first step, the value of R2 was 0.825 which revealed that seven facets

of job satisfaction explain 82.5% of Affective commitment All Beta coefficient of the

facets showed positive values at p<0.001 Except for the hypothesis H1e which was not

supported due to low Cronbach alpha coefficient of operation condition, the result

obtained from step 1 supported the remaining hypotheses of the study that pay,

promotion, supervisors, fringe benefits, co-workers, nature of work and communication

positively related to affective commitment respectively

At the second step, emotional intelligence was added, the coefficient of determination

increased to 0.019 which was found to be significant The 1.9% higher in the variation of

dependent variable is explained by emotional intelligence This finding was consistent to

the statement of hypothesis 2 that emotional intelligence is positively related to affective

commitment

By adding the interaction of emotional intelligence and various dimensions of job

satisfaction in the third step, the mixed moderating role of emotional intelligence in the

last hypotheses including H3c, H3f, H3g were proved Withdrawing from the second and

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the third step of regression analyses, emotional intelligence can be concluded to serve as

a mixed moderator (rather than a pure moderator) for job satisfaction’s facets and

affective commitment because it was also found to have direct influence on the

dependent variable as mentioned

The output points out that the additional 2.7% in R2 was significant at 0.001 level which

means emotional intelligence has a considerable contribution to enhancing the

relationship between job satisfaction’s facets and employees’ affective commitment In

more detail, emotional intelligence exposed its mixed moderating impacts on the relation

between affective commitment and employees’ satisfaction with supervisors (H3c),

co-workers (H3f) and nature of work (H3g), however, this impact was found to be

non-significant with pay (H3a), promotion (H3b), fringe benefit (H3d) and communication

(H3h) H3e was excluded due to the elimination in Cronbach alpha analysis

As expected, the last step of table 4 shows that emotional intelligence moderated the

supervisors-affective commitment and co-workers-affective commitment relation

positively On the contrary, the moderating effect on nature of work-affective

commitment relation was not in the predicted direction In general, emotional intelligence

is likely to boost the magnitude of the relationship between affective commitment and

satisfaction with human factors which are supervisors and co-workers rather than

satisfaction with the work itself which is nature of work Under high emotional

intelligence level, the effect of satisfaction with nature of work on affective commitment

was negative and stronger, compared with it was under low emotional intelligence level

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Table4: Hierarchical Regression Analysis with Emotional intelligence as a moderating variable

change

Sig F change

H1d: Fringe benefits  Affective commitment Supported

H1e: Operation condition  Affective commitment Supported

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H1g: Nature of work  Affective commitment Supported

H1h: Communication  Affective commitment Supported

H2: Emotional intelligence  Affective commitment Supported

H3a: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Pay - Affective

commitment relation

Not supported

H3b: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Promotion -

Affective commitment relation

Not supported

H3c: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Supervisors -

Affective commitment relation

Supported

H3d: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Fringe benefits -

Affective commitment relation

Not supported

H3e: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Operation

condition - Affective commitment relation

Not supported

H3f: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Co-workers -

Affective commitment relation

Supported

H3g: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Nature of work -

Affective commitment relation

Supported

H3h: Moderating effect of Emotional intelligence on Communication -

Affective commitment relation

Not supported

5.4 Discussion

This study examines the relationship between affective commitment and job

satisfaction’s facets as well as between affective commitment and emotional intelligence

It also explores the mixed moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the mentioned

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associations The results reveal that affective commitment is positively affected by

satisfaction with pay, promotion, supervisors, fringe benefits, co-workers, nature of work

and communication Similarly, emotional intelligence is concluded to have positive

influence on affective commitment Moreover, emotional intelligence is found to improve

the links between affective commitment and satisfaction with co-workers and with

supervisors yet reduce the impact of satisfaction with nature of work on affective

commitment The outcomes offer some considerable contribution in terms of theoretical

and empirical perspective

5.4.1 Theoretical implication

The study confirms the positive relationship between domains of job satisfaction and

employees’ affective commitment which is consistent with prior research (Boles et al.,

2007; Shalini, 2013) In line with the findings of Abraham (2000) and Gu¨leryu ¨z et al

(2008), this study once again suggests that emotional intelligence has a direct positive

impact on affective commitment Hence, the current study provides a test of the theories

in an Asian culture background to support the generalizability Moreover, in the context

of Vietnam banking industry, this study is among the first research which examined the

three constructs simultaneously

Additionally, this research contributions to the literature on emotional intelligence by

demonstrating its moderating role on the association between job satisfaction and

affective commitment The results extend the literature in organizational settings by

pointing out how the relation of affective commitment and satisfaction with co-workers

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as well as the relation of affective commitment and satisfaction with supervisors are

strengthened by the presence of emotional intelligence In contrast, the relation of

affective commitment and satisfaction of nature of work is weakened when emotional

intelligence effect is added According to Goleman (as cited in Beigi & Shirmohammadi,

1995), emotionally intelligent people are self-motivated which means everything they do

is driven by their inner ambition Therefore, they never stop looking for new challenges,

thus, they are likely to leave for other challenging jobs once the nature of current work is

clearly understood

5.4.2 Managerial implication

The findings of the research provide a closer understanding of job satisfaction’s crucial

role in explaining the variance of employees’ affective commitment Once different

aspects of the job are well managed, it will be easier for policy makers to devise a better

behavioral forecast, to well manage the stability of labor force which can further magnify

the productivity of employees

Furthermore, the discovery of emotional intelligence’s influence on the relationship

widens the administrator’s perception towards employee competency assessment To a

large extent, once emotional intelligence is taken into consideration, it can assist policy

makers to enhance the human resource management in terms of selecting and appointing

suitable bankers for every specific position

As mentioned above, emotional intelligence was shown to help in strengthening the link

between staff’s satisfaction with supervisors and co-workers and commitment because

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individuals with high emotional intelligence will be able to influence the emotions of

others by boosting their own as well as other’s morale Hence, it is necessary to develop

emotional intelligence training in workplace as an executive development program,

alternatively, along with the professional evaluation, banks should recruit qualified

candidates based on EQ (emotional quotient) instead of IQ test only

For the negative impact of emotional intelligence on the relationship between affective

commitment and satisfaction with nature of work, administrators could have some

changes in work arrangement such as job enrichment or job rotation When there is no

considerable difference in pay, promotion, benefit or communication among banks, a

suitable job design based on employee’s emotional intelligence level will help

organization to retain skilled labor as well as control the turnover as much as possible

5.5 Direction for further studies and limitations

First, further research should examine the facets of emotional intelligence rather than

only at a global level This can help organizations have a more detailed look at emotional

intelligence influences on other constructs

Second, the remaining components of organizational commitment which are normative

and continuance commitment should be paid a special attention from scholars The

participation of them can possibly explain some links of commitment, job satisfaction’s

facets and emotional intelligence which are unsolved in this study

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