ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOME OF EMOTIONAL SATISFACTION A STUDY OF HO CHI MINH CITY BANKING FRONT-LINE EMPLOYEES

The research on the relationships between: role stressors, employee emotional satisfaction and employees’ perceptions of service quality made by Slatten, 2008 has developed a model of th

NGUYEN XUAN PHUONG

ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOME OF

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 

NGUYEN XUAN PHUONG

ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOME OF

Doctor Nguyen Thi Mai Trang

Ho Chi Minh City – 2011

UNDERTAKING

I certified that research word titled “Antecedents and outcome of emotional satisfaction – a study of Ho Chi Minh City banking employees” is my own work I have myself studied and conducted the research process by the academic knowledge obtained from the MBA program and discussed with my supervisor

By this letter, I would like to undertake that this is my own research project All information, data and survey results are true and never announced in any other research project Where material has been used from other sources it has been referred

Ho Chi Minh City, May 2011

Nguyen Xuan Phuong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Actually, this thesis is completed due to the contribution of many people First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Doctor Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, for all she has done for me The thesis could not been finished without her great encouragements and dedicate helps from idea to the thesis format and content What I have learnt from her is as much as what I used

to learn before Again, I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to her

I would like to express my thanks to ANZ Bank Vietnam Ltd colleagues who help me to complete the qualitative research and all front line colleagues who helped me to complete the questionnaires

Finally, I sincerely thank my parents, my younger sister and my little daughter to help me to overcome difficulties during time of attending the course as well as preparing the thesis

My heartfelt thanks to you all

Ho Chi Minh City, May 2011

Nguyen Xuan Phuong

ABSTRACT

The economy has been developing more and more strongly, the competition among banks is fiercer and fiercer In order to run a bank’s business operation successfully, employees are like the blood of the bank Nowadays, many researches have done to explore many aspects of employees’ satisfaction However, when economy reaches a higher level, people needs also reach a higher level Not only physical needs are required, emotional needs are now an essential part Although emotional satisfaction was explored by foreign authors

in recent years, research on emotional satisfaction is hard to find This is the reason why the purpose of this thesis is to explore antecedents and outcome of emotional satisfaction

The research is conducted by organizing a survey and analyzing on 229 completed questionnaire Base on the results, some discussion on management implication are introduced to help management team in banks to keep key staff and attract good front line employees to work for them

CONTENTS

CONTENTS 6 

LIST OF TABLES 9 

LIST OF FIGURES 10 

ABBREVIATION 11 

CHAPTER 1.  INTRODUCTION 12 

1.1  Background   12 

1.2  Problem Statement   14 

1.3  Research Objectives   15 

1.4  Research Methodology   16 

1.5  Scope and Limitation   16 

1.6  Thesis Structure   17 

CHAPTER 2.  LITERATURE REVIEW AND MODEL 18 

2.1  Emotional satisfaction   18 

2.2  Employee emotional satisfaction and employee-perceived service quality   20 

2.3  Antecedents of employee-emotional satisfaction   21 

2.3.1  Role conflict   22 

2.3.2  Role ambiguity   24 

2.3.3  Role overload  26 

2.3.4  Work‐family conflict   27 

2.3.5  Task control stressors   29 

2.3.6  Perceived‐fairness of performance appraisal   29 

2.4  The Model   31 

2.5  Summary   34 

CHAPTER 3.  RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 35 

3.1  Research Design   35 

3.1.1  Research purpose   35 

3.1.2  Research approach   35 

3.1.3  Research process   38 

3.2  Quantitative Analysis Framework   40 

3.2.1  Measurement scale:   40 

3.2.2  Target Population and Sampling Method   45 

3.3  Data Collection Methods and Analysis   46 

3.3.1  Data Collection   46 

3.3.2  Analysis Method   46 

3.4  Summary   48 

CHAPTER 4.  DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS 49 

4.1  Sample Characteristics   49 

4.2  Data Analysis   51 

4.2.1  Evaluation of the measurement scale by using Cronbach’s Alpha:   52 

4.2.2  Evaluation of the measure scale by using exploratory factor analysis (EFA):   53 

4.3  Testing of hypotheses   57 

4.3.1  The outcome of emotional satisfaction:   57 

4.3.2  The antecedents of emotional satisfaction:   58 

4.3.3  Other model testing:   59 

4.4  Discussion   60 

4.4.1  The effect of emotional satisfaction on employee‐perceived service quality   60 

4.4.2  The effect of employee‐perceived fairness of performance appraisal on emotional  satisfaction   62 

4.4.3  The effect of role ambiguity on emotional satisfaction   62 

4.4.4  The effect of role conflict on emotional satisfaction   63 

4.5  Summary   64 

CHAPTER 5.  CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 65 

5.1  Summary of findings and Research contributions   65 

5.2  Managerial implications   66 

5.3  Limitations and Future research   69 

REFERENCES 71 

APPENDIX 1 INTERVIEWED FORM 74 

ENGLISH VERSION 74 

VIETNAMESE VERSION 76 

APPENDIX 2 SCREE PLOT OF ANTECEDENTS OF EMOTIONAL SATISFACTION 78 

APPENDIX 3 EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS 79 

APPENDIX 4 TESTS FOR NORMALITY OF RESIDUALS 82 

APPENDIX 5 TESTS FOR HETEROSKEDASTICITY 86 

APPENDIX 6 TESTS FOR COLLINEARITY DIAGNOSTICS 87 

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Result of agreement in qualitative research 32

Table 3.2 Questions, factor and code of variables 38

Table 4.1 Sample Characteristics 44

Table 4.2 Employee emotional satisfaction among organizations 45

Table 4.3 Cronbach’s alpha 47

Table 4.4 Rotated Component Matrix 50

Table 4.5 Linear Regression analysis of outcome of emotional satisfaction 53

Table 4.6 Linear Regression analysis of antecedents of emotional satisfaction 54

Table 4.7 Descriptive analysis 55

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Outcome of emotional satisfaction 27

Figure 2.2 Theoretical Model 28

Figure 3.1 Research Process 34

Figure 4.1 The adjusted model 52

ABBREVIATION

Common Wealth : Common Wealth Bank – HCMC Branch

Military Bank : Military Joint Stock Bank

Saigonbank : Saigon Bank for Industry and Trade Joint Stock Bank

Agribank : Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural development

HSBC : The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporate Ltd

Indovina : Indovina Joint Venture Bank Ltd

VIB : Vietnam International Joint Stock Bank

Sacombank : Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank

Standard Chartered : Standard Chartered Bank Ltd

Vietcombank : Vietnam Commercial Bank

Prufinance : Prudential Finance Joint Venture Ltd

SPSS : Computer Statistic Package for Social Science

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Recently, the Vietnamese economy reached a higher level of growing The country has been one of the most impressive growth stories in the global economy over the last few decades As a consequence, Vietnamese achieve higher living standards

Banking services just like any services industry now must improve their service quality

to keep their business grow and make more profit It means the bank would not only be

a place to deposit and lend money, but also a place where customers could enjoy services and place their trust Moreover, it is easy to find that products of banks do not vary much between banks and it is not difficult to imitate banking products because there is no one can prevent the imitation of bank products

Banks come in all shapes and sizes and often exhibit more similarities than differences But one factor common to all is that success is highly dependent on the skills, knowledge and experience of the employees within them Ms Nguyet Nguyen, Human Resources Consulting Director of Nhan Viet Management Group expressed her view:

“Employees are core product of a business, main resource to improve competition ability because competitors can imitate business strategy, methods, and products but cannot copy excellent employees”

Actually, many public publication such as Tuoi Tre newspapers, Doanh Nhan, Cong Nghiep newspapers impressed important role of employee satisfaction More and more services of investigating employee satisfaction for management purposes are offered

by human resources companies in Vietnam Keeping employees sweet will therefore

go a long way to help any banks to provide a quality service to customers and achieve its business goals Logically, a company business’ prospects depend on how it

organizes its internal activities in such a way that enhance employee satisfaction so that employees would provide high-quality services and bring more benefit from that

A survey throughout Vietnam hold by IBG, a consulting services company specializing

in Human Resources and Management, in March 2011 found that 64% of interviewed employees would like to change their job While the survey by CareerBuilder found

that for each four employees, there is one person felt his work frustrating, each 4 Vietnamese employees has more than 2.5 ones had negative feeling of their job This

result is a threat for leaders of instability of human resources which push them to

change to adapt with new challenges Among main reasons for quitting the job, wage just occupied 22% while others emotional factors such as justice feeling and relationship are occupied the remaining

Vietnam’s banking sector comprises five state-owned commercial banks, thirty-nine joint stock banks, forty foreign bank branches, five 100% foreign owner banks, five joint venture banks, and two development and policy banks (source://www.sbv.gov.vn) According to the report in 2007 “The Dawn of Retail Banking in Vietnam” issue by RNCOS, A market research consulting Services Company specializing in BioPharma, IT & TELECOM, Retail and Services industries, there is a growing awareness among domestic banks about the crucial role of developing retail banking services Retail banking requires large number of front office staffs and service quality depends much on them A big question raised for all Vietnam

banks is that how to make their front office staffs perform their best They have attempted quite a lot of management styles and methods However, it would be a big failure if banks just focus on cognitive satisfaction of staff but abandon emotion of their staff Some managers let their front line employee flexible working time, support them

for their family role and design a flexible policy and procedure They have thought of emotional satisfaction for staff However, some systematic factors should be documented for management implication and practice

Against above findings of threat and opportunities in Banking Services labor market,

the idea for an in-depth study of employees’ emotional satisfaction emerged from

Slatten (2008)’s model of effects and antecedents of emotional satisfaction

1.2 Problem Statement

As per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, after all physiology, safety and social needs are satisfied, higher level needs should be reached to satisfy employees for better services that they deliver to customers Otherwise, it is more economic and sometimes more effective to control people by emotion than by physical things Employee satisfaction research has been conducted on a range of related topics with limited advances in the understanding of emotional satisfaction

Lack of efficient ways to manage front line employees within organizations has discouraged their performance as an organizational phenomenon Although many organizations have paid a lot for their front line staffs and design a pay system depending on target sales, it is still not enough to encourage them Studying cognitive satisfaction variables has proved so inadequate at explaining the intricacies of front office employees Researchers are attempting more effective methods to control front line office employees’ behavior

The literature suggests relative agreement regarding effects and antecedents of emotional satisfaction Many organizations have deployed surveys to understand front line employees’ need to encourage their performance Clearly there is more to an effective management method system than higher pay and well defined policies and procedures

Identifying important variables of effects and antecedents of emotional satisfaction have proved to be a challenging task to researchers and practitioners Stressors are variables that have been indicated to be antecedents of emotional satisfaction

Moreover, justice is also considered to be important factor which influence employee satisfaction

The research on the relationships between: role stressors, employee emotional satisfaction and employees’ perceptions of service quality made by Slatten, 2008 has developed a model of the relationships that exist between the construct of “emotional satisfaction” and its antecedents and effects However, the study used a specific context and the correlations were relatively low because may be that there could be other factors that are either antecedents or outcome of emotional satisfaction Moreover, Vietnam banks need more management methods on emotional control in replacement for the old method of controlling people by rules and regulations

For this reason, this research discovers some factors considered to be antecedents and outcome of emotional satisfaction for Vietnam banking services

1.3 Research Objectives

The aim of this research is to undertake an empirical examination of some of the antecedents and outcome of emotional satisfaction from employees’ perspective Particularly, it investigates the relationships between:

• Role stressors (including role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload and work-family role conflict) and emotional satisfaction;

• Task-control stressor and emotional satisfaction;

• Employee-perceived fairness of appraisal system and emotional satisfaction;

• Employee emotional satisfaction and employees’ perceptions of service quality

1.4 Research Methodology

Data required for this project will be collected from a survey of front line employees serving retail banking products from many state-owned commercial banks, joint stocks banks and foreign banks and branches in Vietnam

To get the information, the research methods used in this project are:

- The research is conducted in two steps which are qualitative and quantitative research

- In qualitative research, set of measures from previous literature are compiled Group-discussion technique was used to consider antecedents and outcome of emotional satisfaction

- In quantitative research, two ways of interviewing are carried out to collect data:

o Face to face interviewing: the questionnaire is sent to retail front line employees in their office This is the main method to collect data for the research study

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZZNJVNX) also applied to expand the size of sample to get completed questionnaire faster and reach employees

of banks in far distance place

- Process and analyze data collected by SPSS: Refinement of scales through Reliability and Validity testing and multiple regression analysis are used to analyze data collected

1.5 Scope and Limitation

Because of time and resource limitation, this research focuses only on retail banking front line employees in HCMC with distributed questionnaires enough representative

for the sampling This study took place in a specific context in order to test whether there is a link between above constructs

1.6 Thesis Structure

This research includes 5 chapters:

Chapter 1 introduces the research background, the problem statement, research objectives and model

Chapter 2 includes the summary of relevant theories Based on them, the final research model and hypotheses was developed

Chapter 3 describes the operational process of this research in order to approach target respondents and find out the required data

Chapter 4 presents outcomes of data analysis Model and hypotheses tests are conducted

Finally, chapter 5 summarizes the main findings, implications and limitation as well as future research suggestion

CHAPTER 2  

LITERATURE REVIEW AND MODEL

2.1 Emotional satisfaction

Many researchers agreed that job satisfaction is a positive attitude with job and nature

of satisfaction is a kind of emotion (Nguyen Nhat Tan, 2009) So, it would be a wrong reach to job satisfaction if we only focus on wage and benefits It is clear that doing research on job satisfaction is finding out more about employees’ emotion

There are a variety of definitions of emotion and related constructs The term emotion, mood and affect have been used inconsistently for a long time However, there is considerable agreement that emotional responses are relatively brief, physic events that are accompanied by physiological process, often expressed physically (for example, in gesture, posture or facial features) and may result in specific actions to affirm or cope with the emotion depending on its nature and meaning for the person experiencing the emotion (Bagozzi, 1999 as cited in Stallen, 2008)

Bagozzi (1999) have defined emotions as “ mental states that arise from cognitive appraisals of events or one’s thoughts” In this instance, one’s positive emotion is linked to one’s decision to stay and continue involvement, while one’s negative emotion is linked to the opposite decision, such as to leave and discontinue involvement In addition, positive emotions may lead to positive word-of-mouth behaviors, while negative emotions may result in complaining behaviors (Liljander and Strandvik, 1997 as cited in Stallen, 2008)

Plutchik (1980, as cited in Laura and Amanda, 2007) used an evolutionary perspective

to identify eight “primary” emotions consisting of fear, anger, joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, expectancy and surprise According to Plutchik (1980, as cited in Laura &

Amanda, 2007) these eight emotions have adaptive significance in the struggle for survival and are identifiable in some form at all levels in the animal kingdom There is

a perspective identifies emotion as a global feeling construct (Shapiro et al., 2002) where distinct emotional states can be described by their position on two fundamental dimensions: arousal and valence Valence is defined as pleasantness or hedonic value and arousal as bodily activation (Barrett, 1998, p 579 as cited in Stallen, 2008)

In order to capture emotional states or processes it is necessary to directly measure cognitive activities relate to these states or processes Self report scales of subjective experiences are the most frequently used procedure in this regard For example, joyful, happy, delighted and pleased were hypothesized to indicate a joy index, and ashamed, embarrassed and humiliated were hypothesized to indicate a shame index Then, based

on factor analyses of the 29 indices, a three factor solution for emotions was found: pleasure, arousal and domination which correspond closely to those discovered by Edell and Burke (1987 as cited in Stallen, 2008) Other researchers (Oliver, 1994; Westbrook, 1987 as cited in Stallen, 2008), also using factor analysis, have found emotional items to load on two factors: positive affect and negative affect Most studies incorporating multiple instances of both positive and negative emotions find that the measures load on two factors corresponding to positive and negative emotions (Bagozzi et al., 1998; Oliver, 1994 as cited in Stallen, 2008)

The role of emotion is gaining attention as a central element in service quality management (Oliver, 1997 as cited in Stallen, 2008) However, clear models in this research area are hard to find There have been some studies of the effects of emotions

on satisfaction with service quality Recent studies suggest that emotion is a fundamental attribute in satisfaction and that customer satisfaction should include a separate emotional component (Cronin, 2000) Wirtz and Bateson (1999) have similarly contended that a separation of the cognitive and emotional components is

both necessary and valuable for modeling behavior in service settings Indeed, Strauss and Neuhaus (1997, as cited in David, 2008) contend that most satisfaction studies have focused mainly on the cognitive component of emotion, while seemingly important affective component has been largely ignored Further, Liljander and Strandvik (1997) argue that customer satisfaction includes both affective (emotional) and cognitive components Wong (2004) found that negative emotions have a stronger effect on satisfaction with quality than positive emotions

2.2 Employee emotional satisfaction and

employee-perceived service quality

It is apparent that a services company’s prospects depend on how it organizes its internal activities to enhance employees’ satisfaction and deliver high quality services Research has suggested that the emotional feelings of employees do influence the way they interact with customers (Bitner, 1992 as cited in Yuhanis, 2008) Customer contact employees play very important roles to ensure the success or failure of the service exchange (Bowen, 1990; Levitt, 1981) Their personal conduct and attitude would affect customer’s awareness of the quality of service delivered (Brady and Cronin, 2001)

Furthermore, it is assumed that competitive advantage and continuing survival can only

be accomplished by establishing an emotional bond with the customers (Jain and Jain, 2005) In relation to service marketing, service employees are regularly required to express certain emotions as part of their job (Grayson, 1998) Yet, not much research has been done to investigate the relationships between employee’s emotions and its impact on the customers Customer contact employees possess and deliver this emotional bond by displaying the right emotions to ensure that customers remain happy and satisfied with the service provided (Yuhanis, 2008) For Schlesinger and

Heskett (1991), there is a link between employee satisfaction and high quality as perceived by the customer

These findings are in accordance with Gronroos’ (1984, as cited in Slatten, 2008) definition of service quality as a perceived judgment In this regard, the study has concentrated on employees’ personal perceptions of the service quality they provide Employee-perceived quality is defined as an employee’s personal evaluations of the service quality that he or she delivers to customers (Slatten, 2008) Therefore, the first hypothesis of this study is proposed

H1: There is a positive relation between emotional satisfaction and perceived service quality

The research would measure different degree of employee satisfaction and perceived service quality to find out the how emotional satisfaction contributes to the ser-quality that it provide to customers

employee-2.3 Antecedents of employee-emotional satisfaction

There are many factors affect employee emotional satisfaction All about emotion may have an influence on emotional satisfaction However, researches on stressors as below are proven to have strong influence Key to effective role behavior is the process of learning the expectations of others, accepting them, and fulfilling them (Katz and Kahn, 1978) If a person in a particular role is not able to fulfill the expectations associated with the position, the person will experience stress (Weatherly and Tansik, 1992) In the literature on role theory (Kahn, 1964 as cited in Slatten, 2008), these role demands and performance expectations are termed “role stressors”

Four major role stressors are posited for the purposes of this study:

(1) Role conflict;

(2) Role ambiguity;

(3) Role overload;

(4) Work-family conflict; and

Role stress is the most commonly studied work stress at individual level (Beehr, 1995

as cited in Jiunn, 2007) occurs if expected or perceived role differ It is viewed as detrimental to individual and organization outcomes, such as increases in perceived job tension, job dissatisfaction and diminished organizational commitment and performance (Tang and Chang, 2010)

Nowadays, many organizations have switched their focus to organizational change, flexibility, and employee empowerment However, the growing emphasis on organizational change, flexible work arrangements, employee empowerment, and autonomous working conditions has led to constantly changing job specifications and role uncertainty Moreover, losing stable job boundaries subsequently increases the potential for role stress (Paul, 2000; Cooper and Dewe, 2004) Still, role stress affects individual outcomes either positively or negatively

Among the numerous forms of work stress, work overload, work-family conflict and role stress (role conflict, role ambiguity and task control stressor) are included This study examines role stress, work overload and work-family conflict as antecedents of emotional satisfaction As it is widely assumed, role stress significantly contributes to organizational outcomes Emotional satisfaction should be influenced by role stress

2.3.1 Role conflict

Carson (1969) defines role as “a special set of behavioral rules that apply to persons occupying a given formal position or status in a social system” Then, Katz and Kahn (1978) point out that “organizations are open systems of roles” here individuals play

their parts with their interdependent behaviors forming a social system However, these open systems of roles are vulnerable to members’ role conflict because of the expectations that the occurrence and/or compliance with two or more roles can create conflicts (Carson, 1969; Katz & Kahn, 1978)

Role conflict, defined by Kahn (1964), “ the simultaneous occurrence of two or more sets of pressure [such] that compliance with one would make more difficult compliance with the other” There are several potential sources of such role conflict (Kahn et al., 1964), but all share one characteristic in common In all cases, role conflict in service delivery is caused by an organization or a customer exerting pressure to change the behaviour of a frontline service employee The stronger the pressures, the greater the conflict created for the service employee (Slatten, 2008) Cooper (2001) point out: "Role conflict in particular would appear to be very salient in development of emotional exhaustion" associated with burnout

Role conflict is not only a micro-level personal matter, but also an interpersonal issue leading to macro-level organizational consequences Indeed, if a person cannot resolve his/her role conflict by conforming to the expectations of the role and/or by changing his/her personality over time, he/she will develop intentions to leave the organization (Bedeian & Armenakis, 1981)

To sum up, role conflict is considered incongruity or incompatibility of expectations associated with the person’s role It occurs when two roles conflict with each other or when personal values conflict with work roles It is proven by researches to affect internal conflicts, anxiety, tension related with the job, job satisfaction and job involvement The second hypothesis is as follows:

H2: There is a negative relation between role conflict and emotional satisfaction

According to role theory, role conflict results dissatisfaction on employees There are a number of researchers examined the relationship between role stressors and job satisfaction Many have proved that role stressors did influence employees’ satisfaction

as mentioned above However, in some circumstances, this causal relationship did not seem to exist, for example, in Fuchang (2003)’s research, female managers were proven to be not affected by role conflict

2.3.2 Role ambiguity

As per role theory, task conflict occurs when employees perceive conflicting demands

or that carrying out one role expectation makes carrying out another more difficult Role ambiguity occurs when employees perceive a lack of clarity in the behavioral requirements of their job (Kahn, 1964)

Sufficient evidence indicates that both role conflict and role ambiguity lead to psychological strain (Cooper, 2001) and can affect employees’ job and organizational outcomes Such psychological strain is expected to affect employees’ organizational commitment Thus, it is expected that those who perceive higher levels of role conflict and role ambiguity would generally be less committed to the organization

House and Rizzo (1970) has defined role ambiguity as a “ lack of clarity and predictability of the outcomes of one’s behavior” In a similar vein, Sell (1981) has defined role ambiguity as: [ .] the degree to which information is lacking regarding: (1) the scope and limits of one’s responsibilities; (2) expectations associated with a role and the methods and behaviors for fulfilling one’s job responsibilities; (3) which expectations take priority or stated otherwise, which elements of the role are most important; and (4) the standards by which one’s performance is appraised

Fuchang (2003) posited that employees’ interpretation of role stressors might have differential impacts on the relative strength and type of their commitment

Incompatibility among role expectations and insufficient information needed to perform their roles would hinder employees’ effectiveness Thus, high levels of both role stressors would cause employees to perceive the organization as unsupportive and unfair, diminishing their affective commitment

According to Singh and Rhoads (1991), frontline service employees can experience ambiguity with respect to:

According to Singh et al (1996), there are four dimensions to role ambiguity:

(1) Process ambiguity: How a person should get things done and how to achieve the organization’s objectives

(2) Priority ambiguity: When things should be done

(3) Expectation ambiguity: What is expected of an employee or what that employee should be doing, or both

(4) Behavior ambiguity How an employee is expected to act in various situations

The greater the vagueness and unpredictability with regard to these matters, the greater the ambiguity felt by frontline service employees, Slatten (2008)

In short, role ambiguity is a concept that explains the availability of role-related information Certain information is required for adequate performance of a person to conform the role expectations held by the role senders The role incumbent must know what the expectations are: the rights, the activities and the responsibilities of his or her

position Additionally, he or she must know what activities will fulfill the responsibility of the position, how those activities are to be performed and potential consequences of role performance or non-performance for the individual and the organization are also considered Ambiguity in a given situation may result either because information is non-existent or because existing information is inadequately communicated That is role incumbent is assigned uncertain task and face with uncertain social expectations

Exactly how role expectations or goals affect emotional satisfaction need measuring Role clarity refers to how clearly a set of activities expected from an individual are expressed This implies that role ambiguity negatively and significantly affects employee satisfaction Therefore, we hypothesize the as below:

H3: There is a negative relation between role ambiguity and emotional satisfaction among employees

2.3.3 Role overload

Work overload represents the weight of the hours, the sacrifice of time, and the sense

of frustration with the inability to complete tasks in the time given Gmelch (1992 cited

in Donald, 2004) cite the time, pace, and pressure as major factors contributing to stress and burnout Work overload arises as a complex factor in the qualitative studies Once in the principal ship they discovered that the job was essentially undoable given the time and resources provided

Work overload, if not managed can result in unwanted results such as stress, fatigue, accidents, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, gastrointestinal disorders and other health hazards The sheer number of hours on the job is a component of work overload Sparks, Cooper, Fried, and Shirom (1997) (cited in Cooper et al., 2001) found "small,

but statistically significant correlations between hours of work and overall health Individuals who worked excessive hours showed more symptoms of ill health"

Both overload and underload can generate psychological strain In 1908, Yerkes and Dodson proposed their now well known Yerkes-Dodson Law, which states that there is

an inverted U relationship between the amount of work required of a person and his performance Each individual therefore has an optimal band of workload Substantial deviations above or below this optimal band are likely to induce strain (Donald, 2004) Overload occurs where demands exceed resources to carry out them There are two kind of overload First, quantitative over refers to excessive work whereby the employee is capable and to meet role demand, but there are too many to fulfill the demand Second, qualitative overload refers to a situation where a task is too difficult

to complete Most authors discuss overload in terms of the ealier While the two sets of overload may be independent, there may also be reciprocal relationships between them,

as a combination of tensions between career and domestic demands

Role overload is examined by Slatten (2008) to have an influence on emotional satisfaction but at a low level We would re-test and find the regression of this variable

in banking services as well The fourth hypothesis is below:

H4: There is a negative relation between role overload and emotional satisfaction

2.3.4 Work-family conflict

Work-family conflict arises when responsibilities in the work domain and responsibilities in the family domain become, to some degree, incompatible (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985) Responsibilities in each of these areas are important to any given individual; however, taken together, they often place unreasonable demands

on that person Every employee must overcome his or her difficulties at home to back

for work and bring all their work stress back home How well she acts as a wife could affect her perform as a staff

Work-family conflict is often discussed in relation to dual-career families (Greenhaus

& Beutell, 1985) Such conflict exists under three conditions: the time needed for one role makes it difficult to devote sufficient time to other roles; the strain from one role makes it difficult to fulfill the requirements of another; and specific behaviors of one role make it difficult to fulfill the requirements of another These three antecedents produce three distinct categories of work-family conflict, which may be time-based; strain-based or behavior-based

The changing nature of the workforce and society in general has led to both a greater number of single-parent households and an increase of households in which both partners wish to pursue a career These changes have increased the potential for conflict to occur between work responsibilities and family responsibilities in all working environments

Work experiences and family experiences have reciprocal effects Barling and MacEven (1992) have termed this reciprocity a “spillover effect” from one realm to the other However, the work-related consequences of family/work conflict have not been clearly determined (Boles and Babin, 1996) Similarly, no empirical study has assessed the effects of work-family conflict on the emotional satisfaction of employees

In Vietnamese tradition, women role in the family are very important and in Vietnamese thought, women have more responsibilities than man do However, in working place, there is no excuse for their error or working performance In sum, work family conflict seems to enhance or reduce work satisfaction for bank The author thus posits the below hypothesis:

H5: There is a negative relation Work-family conflict is negatively related to the degree of emotional satisfaction among employees

2.3.5 Task control stressors

Task control stressors refer to a situation where an employee has no control over his work due to environmental (uncontrollable) factors such as:

• Time,

• Quantity and quality

• Environmental factors

Low task control is a higher stressor when job also has high responsibility Task

Control Stressor is caused by:

• Due to lack control over how and when tasks are performed

• Stress increases with responsibility

Losing control over tasks is an important kind of stressors beside four typical types of role stressors By interviewing some front office staffs, the author would like to do the analyzing and testing if task control stressor is an antecedent of employees’ emotional satisfaction

Task control is a kind of stressor which is seen to affect employee emotional satisfaction similar to role stressor does The outcome is considered to be negative because when staff cannot control their tasks, they are not satisfied with the job and tend to quit it The sixth hypothesis is proposed as below:

H6: There is a negative relation between task control stressor and emotional satisfaction among employees

2.3.6 Perceived-fairness of performance appraisal

In research of Slatten about antecedents of emotional satisfaction, the correlation between Role stressors and emotional satisfaction are relatively low It can be

explained that there are other factors that are either antecedents of emotional satisfaction (Slatten, 2008)

The link between job satisfaction and job performance is one of the most popular relationships in psychology and human resources field Many potential causal models that explain this correlation; one possibility is that the satisfaction-performance relationship is actually spurious, meaning that the correlation is due to common causes

of both constructs (Cook, 2008)

Beside the outcome of job performance on employee satisfaction, how employee feel

of job performance appraisal is a special feeling which may cause emotional satisfaction or dissatisfaction

In a research of Marie (2003), perceived-fairness of performance appraisal is discovered as a socio-emotion factor affect job satisfaction Performance appraisal is a process by which a superior evaluates and judges the work performance of a subordinate Performance appraisal systems include the processes and procedures involved in implementing, managing, and communicating the events involved in performance appraisal In many cases it is a formal process and is a part of the personnel management policy (Marie, 2003)

Numerous organizations employ a formal or informal assessment system that measures employee performance and contribution (Carroll & Schneier, 1982)

Researchers have been concentrated on employee satisfaction and perceptions of the performance appraisal process This direction has lead researchers to take a more comprehensive view of performance appraisal system efficacy and evaluation of systems which include these factors Employee perceptions of fairness of performance appraisal have been shown to be linked to satisfaction with the system Fairness of performance appraisal has been studied by a number of researchers over time Bretz,

Mikovich and Read (1992) indicated that the most important performance appraisal issue faced by organizations is the perceived fairness of the performance review and the performance appraisal system Their findings suggested that most employees perceive their performance appraisal system as neither accurate nor fair Skarlicki and Folger (1997) suggest that the appraisal process can become a source of extreme dissatisfaction when employees believe the system is biased, political or irrelevant A major problem for organizational leaders is that the performance appraisal process and the performance evaluation system are often perceived as both inaccurate and unfair Fairness of appraisal system is very important to motivate staff spirit and encourage their emotion for better performance It is expected to have positive outcome on the satisfaction Today, most banks could satisfy their staffs’ needs of physiological needs, safety and social needs As per Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory, people are motivated by needs that remain unsatisfied, and that certain lower factors have to

be satisfied in order for higher needs to be recognized as unfulfilled Esteem needs and self-actualization are required Banking staff needs to motivators such as justice, truth and recognition That is the reason why the factor employee-perceived fairness should

be added to the model as the final hypothesis:

H7: The is positive relation between employee perceived-fairness of performance appraisal and emotional satisfaction among employees

2.4 The Model

There are many researches on the effect of employees’ satisfaction on their performance and the service quality that they provide customers The emotional feelings of employees do influence the way they interact with customers (Bitner, 1992) The finding is in accordance with Schlesinger and Heskett (1991), there is a link between employee satisfaction and high quality as perceived by the customer

Therefore, the study has concentrated on employees’ personal perceptions of the service quality they provide Accordingly, this study defined employee-perceived quality as an employee’s personal evaluations of the service quality that he or she delivers to customers This study proposed, moreover, that a given employee’s degree

of emotional satisfaction influences this employee-perceived service quality

Figure 2.1 Outcome of emotional satisfaction

In Vietnam, we have quite a lot of researches on employees’ satisfaction such as improvements to enhance employees’ satisfaction, determinants of job satisfaction Nguyen (2009), satisfaction evaluation (2008) Nguyen (2010) based on Petrescu & Simon (2008) model to test relationship between HR management factors and job satisfaction in Vietnam Airlines fly attendance These researches used Likert scale to measure employees’ satisfaction

Back to antecedents of emotional satisfaction, Behrman and Perrault, 1984; Sigh et al.,

1996 have provided the model of three role stressors (role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload) are negatively related to job satisfaction On the basis of a large empirical study, Brown and Peterson have reported role conflict and role ambiguity are antecedents of job satisfaction Moreover, the third role stressor, role overload is confirmed by Slatten’s research to have an influence on job satisfaction The remaining role stressor, work-family conflict is indicated to be antecedent of job satisfaction by Boles and Babu (1996) The model is suggested and examined by Slatten as in Figure 2 below

Emotional Satisfaction

perceived service quality

Employee-All role stressors are examined to be antecedents to employees’ satisfaction Logically, although no study has explicitly accessed the outcome of “Task-control stressor” on emotional satisfaction, it seems reasonable to suppose that this stressor has an adverse effect on emotional satisfaction of employees Therefore, this study has suggested adding Task-control stressor to the model to examine the relationship for banking services

Marie (2003) argued that perceived fairness of employee performance appraisal did effect employee satisfaction and did provide some methods for perceived fairness measuring

In short, the research would add two more antecedents to Slatten’s summary model to examine based on some extra researches We then have the model as below Figure 2.2

Figure 2.2 Theoretical Model

Role Conflict Role Ambiguity

Role Overload

Work Family Conflict

Task Control Stressor

Employee-perceived fairness on appraisal

Emotional Satisfaction

perceived service quality

Employee-H2

H4  H3

H5  H6 H7

H1

2.5 Summary

In this chapter, the outcome and antecedents of employees’ emotional satisfaction on employee-perceived service quality are established In that, there are two main relationships When employee-perceived service quality is result of emotional satisfaction, employee-perceived service quality is dependent variable and emotional satisfaction is independent variable The second relationship group has two groups: group of dependent variables including emotional satisfaction and group of independent variables including role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, work-family conflict, task-control stressor and employee-perceived fairness of performance appraisal

In order to test the hypotheses derived from the proposed model and research model, the research methodology is presented in the next chapter

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents research methodology used in this research Firstly, methodology and data collection are introduced Secondly, it is how measurement scales is verified and the questionnaire is designed The next section discusses how to select an appropriate sampling Finally, last section discusses about data collection methods and analysis

3.1 Research Design

3.1.1 Research purpose

The purpose of this project is finding out the outcome and antecedents of emotional satisfaction and validates the proposed model in Vietnam banking services, especially for management practice This research is based on existing theories and hypothesizes

of Slatten (2008) Two more factors considered antecedents also are taken into proposed model based on a research of Marie (2003) and logical deducing from stressors theory Hence, the further purpose of this research is to give some recommendations to increase front office employee satisfaction

To ensure the measurability of the scale as well as the reliability of them were not extremely essential but to design the success or failure of the study The questionnaire was designed and then was adjusted to have final questionnaires for research

In study of emotional satisfaction, Slatten (2008) used a set of measures that were adopted from previous literature of Reynolds and Beatty (1999), Dabholkar et al., 2000 and Rizzo et al (1970) In this research, tentative qualitative questionnaires are compiled from such a set of measures

Survey questions of some banks on employees’ satisfaction were analyzed and discussed with experts Some front office employees, managers and human resources experts were interviewed to build initial factors for questionnaires Most of them show

a high concern in role conflict, role ambiguity, the appraisal fairness but not much concern on role overload and work-family conflict However, all factors are added in the model in order not to skip important factor

Firstly, the author discussed with some front line employees and played the role of a front line employee to find out which factors affecting their emotional satisfaction Achieved result was first adjusted model with antecedents and outcomes of emotional satisfaction in banking sector

Then, a group discussion including twelve front line employees, two team leaders and

an experienced HR manager was hold After the discussion, some factors were eliminated because more than 75% members thought that those factors were not important or not suitable Second discussion result showed that there were eight official factors (21 sub-factors) for survey that banking front line employees cared about when they worked for a bank

Factor Question/ Item/ Variable Agreed Percentage

I provide my customers excellent, high quality and

2 We regularly use customer feedback to improve

3

As a customer of this organisation, I would be extremely satisfied with the quality of the products and services I receive

5 34%

4 I truly feel like I can perform to the very best of

6

Emotional

Satisfaction

I feel enjoyable about my job and workplace 12 80%

7 I believe this organization has an outstanding

8 I trust this company could give me a brilliant

9 I would recommend my company as an excellent place to work 12 80%

12 On the job I work under incompatible policies and guidelines Similar to factor 14

13 I receive incompatible requests from two or more people 15 100%

14 I have to disobey a rule or policy to carry out some

15

Role ambiguity

I have clear, planned goals and objects for my job 12 80%

18

Role overload

Even if I work hard, I often don’t manage to do all

19

I often have to ask one of my colleagues for help because I don’t know exactly how to perform the work task

21 I find it easy to combine my private life (time for

22 On the job I have so much work to do that it takes away time for my family interest 8 53%

24 stressor I find my job peaceful and easy to control 14 93%

26 My most recent performance rating is based on

28 Where I work, we set clear performance standards for employee 14 93%

Table 3.1 Result of agreement in qualitative research

3.1.2.2 Quantitative research:

Quantitative methods: this method is applied in official research The data was collected by many methods:

- Interviews were taken in face-to face communication

- Questionnaires were distributed and delivered via email

- Questionnaires also were sent to front-line employees out of HCM City vis the link (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZZNJVNX)

Base on the result of the survey, research analysis was conducted Quantitative research is detailed in below section

3.1.3 Research process

In the previous section of this research, the problem statement, objectives, research model and hypotheses are introduced This section covers measurement scales and questionnaire Analyzing data collected are conducted in the next section

Figure 3.1 Research Process

Regression Analysis

Research Findings and Commendations

3.2 Quantitative Analysis Framework

3.2.1 Measurement scale:

3.2.1.1 Emotional Satisfaction:

Researches about emotional satisfaction have been conducted by Slatten (2008) The author developed and tested a reliable and valid emotional satisfaction measurement scales As mentioned in previous section, base on research model, literature review and experts’ advice, variables are defined to test in Vietnam Banking market This study used the measure suggested by Reynolds and Beatty (1999) to assess “emotional satisfaction” This measure has previously been used to measure emotional satisfaction among customers (Wong, 2004) The questionnaire asked employees to indicate their feeling with their job and workplace on seven-point Likert-type scales, ranging from 1-strongly disagree to 7-strongly agree The research also takes some items that ANZ bank use in their survey to investigate their employee emotional satisfaction The items

on which they were asked to respond were:

(1) I feel enjoyable about my job and workplace

(2) I believe this organization has an outstanding future

(3) I would recommend my company as an excellent place to work

(4) This organization is creating a work environment that is open and accepting of individual differences

3.2.1.2 Employee-perceived service quality:

Slatten used the four-item scale to measure “employee-perceived service quality” of Dabhokar et al., 2000: