DSpace at VNU: Antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery: cross-country evidence in Higher Education

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On: 28 January 2015, At: 04:18

Hong T.M Bui ac , Afam Ituma a & Elena Antonacopoulou ba

Business School, Bournemouth University , Poole , UKb

Business School, Liverpool University , Liverpool , UKc

Vietnam National University , Hanoi , VietnamPublished online: 04 Apr 2012

To cite this article: Hong T.M Bui , Afam Ituma & Elena Antonacopoulou (2013) Antecedents and

outcomes of personal mastery: cross-country evidence in Higher Education, The InternationalJournal of Human Resource Management, 24:1, 167-194, DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2012.669781

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Antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery: cross-country

evidence in Higher Education

a

Business School, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK;bBusiness School, Liverpool University,

Liverpool, UK;cVietnam National University, Hanoi, VietnamThis paper contributes to our understanding of personal mastery by providing freshinsights from a cross-national study in Higher Education (HE) It presents findings from

a rich sample of informants in two well-established universities in the UK and Vietnam,and develops a framework that illustrates the antecedents and outcomes of personalmastery in the two cultures The multi-level analysis performed provides valuableinsights that extend our current understanding of personal mastery beyond theindividual level as it is traditionally theorized Instead, we are able to show that

a number of contextual conditions at the organizational, industry and the nationalculture that may also have a bearing on the way personal mastery is cultivated Bycontributing a richer account of the multifaceted nature of personal mastery, the paperdraws attention to a range of implications for both future research and practice Inparticular, it invites practitioners in HE to apply the theories they develop in practice.Keywords:Higher Education; organizational learning; personal mastery

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to examine the antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery Inrecent years, human resource development (thereafter HRD) has been the subject ofconsiderable empirical and theoretical attention The literature in this area has highlightedthe importance of HRD in generating and sustaining competitive advantage (Barney 1991;Grant 1996) A key aspect of HRD that has attracted substantial interest is the concept ofpersonal mastery (Kristof-Brown and Stevens 2001; Garcia-Morales, Llorens-Montes andVerdu-Jover 2007) Although there is variety of definitions of personal mastery in theliterature, a common threat is the way personal mastery is conceptualized by focusing onindividual self-concepts of values, goals, personal and professional development (Senge1990; Senge, Ross, Smith, Robert and Kleiner 1994; Garcia-Morales et al 2007).The importance of personal mastery for organizations has become crucial in thecontext of what has become known as the knowledge-based economy The knowledge-based economy is characterized by a rapid expansion of knowledge-intensive industriesand by a marked increase in the importance of creating and exploiting knowledge andinformation in all sectors of the economy (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995) Against thisbackground, Senge argues that ‘organizations learn only through individuals who learn.Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning But without it noorganizational learning occurs’ (1990, p 139) This suggests that personal mastery is

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*Corresponding author Email: hbui@bournemouth.ac.uk

Vol 24, No 1, January 2013, 167–194

inextricably linked with organizational learning and innovation Such views haveprompted scholars to call for greater understanding of the nature of personal mastery(Pham, Taylor and Seeman 2001; Garcia-Morales et al 2007).

Despite an increasing recognition of the importance of personal mastery in theknowledge-based economy, scholarly research on personal mastery is still in its nascentstage In essence, the interest in this area has not been matched with equivalent empiricalattention The sparse studies in this area have collected data from industries such as foodfarming, manufacturing, construction and services (Llorens-Montes, Garcia-Morales andVerdu-Jover 2004; Garcia-Morales et al 2007) To our knowledge, there has been no priorempirical study that has examined personal mastery within the Higher Education(thereafter HE) context The HE context is a particularly interesting, due to the socio-political forces that affect the common and distinct trends in different aspects of scholarlypractice in HE institutions across different cultures Moreover, it should be noted that the

HE sector invests both human and financial capital in research, and focuses on knowledgecreation and dissemination that can be important aspects for understanding thecomplexities of personal mastery Furthermore, there is an increasing demand for HEglobally, which has consequently contributed to academics becoming more mobiletranscending across geographical borders for both teaching and research These issues areimportant as they fuel ongoing concerns about the impact of management education andresearch on management practice and call for a more careful examination of the corecapabilities of practitioners in HE such that their scholarly practices can be betterunderstood (Antonacopoulou 2009)

The study reported in this paper aims to go some way to address these issues

by developing a conceptual framework that integrates the antecedents and outcomes ofpersonal mastery within the HE context The analysis in the paper develops and empiricallysubstantiates the hypothesized relationships of the antecedents and outcomes of personalmastery within the HE context, by comparing a UK university and a Vietnamese university

On the basis of the analysis of the findings, the paper contributes an empiricallyinformed theoretical foundation to guide future research on personal mastery as aphenomenon In doing so, it extends our understanding of personal mastery beyond theindividual forces that have hitherto been the focus of attention and, instead, reveals themuch richer set of forces at the organizational level Given the focus on the HE sectorand the considerations of the national culture, the analysis alludes to these additionalforces that act as antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery and the merit furtherconsideration There is a shortage of studies that compare the national context of HE,and we feel that as globalization continues to shape the character of HE, the need tounderstand the role of national culture becomes more critical This paper, therefore,examines personal mastery from an international comparative perspective using verysimilar samples from substantially different cultures: the UK, an individualistic westernculture (Hofstede 1993, 2001), and Vietnam, an Eastern collectivist culture (Theˆm1999; Vu’o’

comprehensive understanding of personal mastery and its role in scholarly practice in

HE and beyond

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows Firstly, a brief review of theliterature is presented based on which appropriate hypotheses are developed Secondly, theresearch methods used in this study are discussed The third section presents and analysesthe findings of the study The final section concludes with a discussion of the findings and areview of the implications for future research and scholarly practice in HE

Research background

Personal mastery has attracted a growing interest in recent years in the management field,especially due to its association with learning capability In particular, this concept hasbeen predominantly associated with organizational learning and the learning organization(Senge 2006; Garcia-Morales et al 2007) However, when examined more systematically

we note that personal mastery appears in a number of sciences, and unsurprisingly hasvaried conceptualizations and a relatively loose theoretical foundation In behaviouraldevelopment and education, it is understood as achievement-related behaviour fromchildhood to adolescence and adulthood (Berry and West 1993) According to Berry andWest (1993), personal mastery is a special domain through which to understand cognitiveself-efficacy Personal mastery, in medical and social behaviour, refers to ‘ the extent

to which people see themselves as being in control of the forces that importantly affecttheir life’ (Pearlin, Menaghan, Lieberman and Mullan 1981, p 340)

For the purposes of our analysis, we will retain the focus in the management field and willexamine the concept of personal mastery as currently defined: ‘ the capacity to grow andlearn on a personal level’ (Garcia-Morales et al 2007, p 547) Personal mastery enablespeople to explore deeper their personal vision, into what they truly desire, and focus all theirefforts on developing their personal and professional skills and capacities (Senge 1990; Senge

et al 1994) Common to these views is the notion that personal mastery is concerned with aninternal locus of control, self-belief and ongoing personal and professional development.Building on the broad conceptualization noted above, Senge (1990) notes that personalmastery is divided into different components, including personal vision, personal purpose,managing creative tension between vision and current reality (cognitive dissonance),obviating the impact of mental models that are contrary to personal mastery, commitment totruth and understanding of the subconscious He further argues that it is not a natural given, nor

an end-state Instead, it is a developmental process that occurs along a continuum, and, assuch, an individual can never fully achieve personal mastery It can be argued, however, thatpersonal learning can also lead to specific outcomes (e.g new skills, self-efficacy, modifiedknowledge) as postulated in the current study However, Senge’s concept of personal masteryleaves several questions unaddressed (Bokeno 2009) that require further research on the topic.Much of the work on personal mastery has focused on the West (particularly NorthAmerica and Europe) and has highlighted the ways in which personal mastery affects

a range of personal and organizational outcomes At an individual level, results fromseveral western-based studies suggest that personal mastery enhances individual well-being and better physical health outcomes, including a lower incidence of coronary heartdisease (Karasek, Baker, Marxer, Ahlbom and Theorell 1981), better self-rated health andfunctional status (Seeman and Seeman 1983), and a lower mortality risk (Seeman andLewis 1995) It also moderates how a predictable versus unpredictable environment isperceived and negotiated (Aspinwall and Taylor 1997) From an organizationalperspective, personal mastery has been found to lead to a higher probability of innovationand learning for organizations (Garcia-Morales et al 2007) From a slightly differentperspective, Pearlin et al (1981) argue that elevated economic strains are closelyassociated with the decline of mastery, and the worsening of mastery is related to anincrease in depression

Other work, however, argues that personal mastery can also lead to negative outcomes.For example, the work of Rodin (1986) and Thompson, Cheek and Graham (1988) suggeststhat, under some circumstance, higher beliefs in personal mastery can be associated withpoorer health outcomes Some authors (e.g Senge 2006) have also noted that organizations

resist encouraging personal mastery because of cynicism, and a fear that personal masterywill threaten the established order of a well-managed organization.

Our review of the personal mastery literature reveals that two key limitations areevident Firstly, despite widespread scholarly and applied interest, understanding ofpersonal mastery as a key aspect of learning capability remains narrowly bounded and work

in this area is fragmented As such, there is a crucial need for an integrative framework thatlinks the antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery Secondly, there is a paucity ofstudies that have examined personal mastery across units and levels of analysis; hence, there

is scope to understand the role of context – organizational, sectors, national culture and itsbearing on the development of personal mastery This study sets out to address theseconcerns

A conceptual model of the antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery in the HEsector

This study develops an integrative model of personal mastery by testing some hypothesesabout the antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery that is schematically presented inFigure 1 Acknowledging that there are many concepts potentially influencing personalmastery, we selected seven concepts for the antecedents and five concepts for the outcomesthat have attracted substantial theoretical and empirical analyses in the literature Hence,personal mastery is hypothesized to be influenced by a set of antecedents such ascompetence, personal values, personal vision, motivation, individual learning, training anddevelopment, and organizational culture Consistent with the work of Bui and Baruch(2010), the model also hypothesizes that personal mastery can lead to high individualperformance, self-efficacy and work – life balance This model has been examined in HE inthe UK and Vietnam Thus, we include organizational and sectoral characteristics, as well as

Administration performance

Teaching performance

Research performance

Self-efficacy

Work-life balance

PERSONAL MASTERY

Development

& training

Personal vision

Competence

Individual learning

Motivation

Personal values

Org culture

Figure 1 Hypothesized model of antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery

the national culture as moderating factors on the antecedents and outcomes of personalmastery, to acknowledge the potential influence of context.

As indicated in Figure 1, our model brings together in a systematic way the individual,organizational and societal level of analysis This approach is consistent with previous studies oflearning practices that adopt a multilevel approach (see Antonacopoulou 2006) to representingthe dynamic complexities of learning capability development We integrate various points fromthe literature about the aspects of personal mastery in a model that guide the development of a set

of hypotheses we subsequently tested In the following section, we discuss the components ofthe model and the relationships between the various aspects of personal mastery The variousaspects of personal mastery selected for further examination are variables that have attractedattention in the literature in their own right The intention is to provide an informedunderstanding of the chosen variables as antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery

Antecedents of personal mastery

Organizational culture

Organizational culture describes the fundamental assumptions of an organization’s values,beliefs, norms, symbols, language, rituals and myths that give meaning to organizationalmembers and are expected to guide people’s behaviour (Tyler and Gnyawali 2009) Anorganizational culture that is open, trustworthy, collective and empowering, and thatsupports learning is a lever for personal mastery (Watkins and Marsick 1993; Senge 1996).The personal mastery process cannot begin until the organizational culture issues areunderstood (McKenna 1992) Research has shown that organizational culture in HE hasentered ‘ a decline in which it will lose some of the vitality it has enjoyed amongacademics and even be discredited by practical people for failing ‘to deliver the good’(Bate 1990, p 83) Cultural archetypes and unique institutional cultures should also betaken into consideration when dealing with culture-related factors (Kezar and Eckel 2002).Organizational culture is highly influenced by the societal culture in which it isembedded (Dimmock and Walker 2000; Hofstede 2001) No direct comparison betweenthe UK and Vietnamese culture has been found in the comparative management literature.The UK, however, is highly scored as individualistic (Hofstede 1993, 2001; House,Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman and Gupta 2004), while Vietnam is seen as a collectivist culture(Theˆm 1999; Grinter 2006) In this study, we employ House et al.’s (2004) culturaldimension scores for the Anglo societal cluster to refer to the UK’s cultural dimensionsand Confucian Asia cluster to Vietnam’s Vietnam is geographically close to China andhas had cultural interactions with China for thousands of years through the Chineseinvasions throughout Vietnam’s 4000-year history Therefore, we argue that Vietnamshould be included in the Confucian Asia cluster, in which the institutional collectivismscore is higher than that of the Anglos societal cluster (House et al 2004)

The two universities that are under examination in this study are both well established intheir own context The British university has a strong international reputation for researchexcellence Although the Vietnamese university is one of the biggest HE institutions in thecountry, it operates in a weak competitive market compared to its UK counterpart It is under

a transition process from teaching to research orientation From a very close relationbetween organizational culture and societal culture, we hypothesize that:

and that the relationship is stronger within the UK university thanwithin its Vietnamese counterpart

Although personal mastery goes beyond competence, it is grounded in competence (Senge1990; Senge et al 1994) The term competence has multiple definitions (LeDeist and Winterton2005) Within the context of the current study, competence is viewed as capability exercised inacting successfully in a job or a situation (Gherardi 2000) Competences, including emotionalintelligence, interpersonal skills and systems thinking actively, contribute to personal mastery(Marquardt 1996) and modified knowledge Competence also receives attention throughvarious developmental forms in HE around the world (Weigel, Mulder and Collins 2007) In HE,the UK was the first to introduce occupational standards, based on five levels of competence(Weigel et al 2007) No evidence of competence among HE employees in Vietnam has beenfound There is, however, a significant gap between employees’ competence and the demands

of businesses in Vietnam (Nguyen, Truong and Dirk 2011) Thus, we hypothesize that:

relationship is stronger among the UK employees than among theirVietnamese counterparts

Personal values

Personal values are defined as a relatively permanent perceptual framework that shapesand influences the general nature of an individual’s behaviour (England 1967) Personalvalues have been studied for a long time (Feather 1975; Kahle 1983) Kahle (1983)suggested a list of positive personal values such as internal individual values (e.g self-respect and self-fulfillment), external values (e.g security and a sense of belonging) andinternal interpersonal values (e.g warm relationships with others, fun and enjoyment oflife) These values are an important component of personal mastery (Bui and Baruch2010) The impact of personal values is thought to be of special relevance in educationalsystems Educators are regarded as moral guides and exemplars, whose standards areperhaps ‘ a little above the level of the rest of society’ (Haydon 1997, p 5) Robertson(1991) stresses that employees bring their values into the work setting

Personal values seem to relate to in-group collectivism, defined by House et al (2004),

as the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness in theirorganizations or families In House et al.’s (2004) study, the Confucian Asians in-groupcollectivism scores higher than the Anglos Therefore, we hypothesize that:

that the relationship is stronger among the Vietnamese employees thanamong their UK counterparts

Motivation

Motivation has been studied to explain why humans are inspired to do certain things (Deci1975; Siebold 1994; Kanfer and Ackerman 2000) An individual with high personal masterywould be self-motivated (Ng 2004) In addition, with sufficient motivation inspired by theorganizational culture, employees may be willing to commit themselves to personal andprofessional development, which would result in better individual performance and higherindividual satisfaction (Mumford 1991) Research has also been carried out on motivation ineducational settings (Vallerand, Pelletier, Blais and Briere 1992; Osteraker 1999; Pintrichand Schunk 2002) In general, with sufficient motivation, staff might be willing to committhemselves to personal and professional development, which results in better individual

performance and more individual happiness In relation to national culture, House et al.(2004) highlight the importance of individuals’ interests and needs for understanding goal-related behaviour in relation to employee motivation in individualist cultures rather thancollectivist cultures Therefore, we hypothesize that:

relationship is stronger among UK employees than among theirVietnamese counterparts

Individual learning

Individuals are the primary learning entities enabling organization transformation (Dodgson

1993, p 377) Individual learning can promote personal mastery (Gong, Huang and Farh 2009)

In other words, personal mastery implies an individual taking ownership of individual learning(Damanpour 1991) Continuous learning and/or lifelong learning is part of a commitment topersonal mastery (Davies 1998) and to organizational change (London and Smither 1999).Academic scholars are highly qualified in terms of formal education; however, much of theirpost-degree learning is informal (Knight, Tait and Yorke 2006), and may occur via conferences,working with PhD students, self-learning, learning at work and learning through peers (Baruchand Hall 2004) Individual learning is found to be inconsistent in its implementation in the West(Rolling-Magnusson 2001) Culture may also have an impact, as individual learning is under-practised in Far Eastern academic institutions (Xiaozhou 2001) Also, based on thedevelopment of HE in the UK in comparison to Vietnam, we hypothesize that:

that the relationship is stronger among the UK HE employees thanamong their Vietnamese counterparts

Personal vision

Personal mastery cannot be built without personal goals and vision (Senge 1990) Personalvision is the groundwork for continually expanding personal mastery (Senge 1990) Forthose with a high level of personal mastery, a vision is a calling, not just a good idea, andbehind their goals is a sense of purpose (Appelbaum and Goransson 1997) The difficulty,according to Senge (1990), is that people often confuse goals and vision Vision isdeveloped on the basis of goals (Senge et al 1994) Personal vision relies not only onindividuals, but also on the support of their employing organizations There is an increasedconfidence in the staff’s personal vision when universities develop as learningorganizations (Wheeler 2002) If people have the right personal values, are motivated towork in HE and committed to lifelong learning, they are also more likely to develop

a personal vision (Senge et al 1994)

In relation to cultural dimensions, the Confucian Asia’s future orientation scores ashigh as the Anglo’s If, however, we take academic mobility into consideration as anindicator of personal vision for HE employees, we can see that the UK employees are morelikely to adapt to constant changes caused by society, organizations and/or their academicmobility motives We therefore hypothesize that:

relationship is stronger among the UK employees than among theirVietnamese counterparts

Training and development

Training and development (thereafter T&D) is believed to be important for employees’personal mastery (Senge et al 1994) Research also shows the effect of T&D on personalmastery (Blackman and Henderson 2005) Professional development will benefit fromT&D when these balance personal and organizational priorities (Antonacopoulou 2000).The universities can support staff through various T&D programmes If T&D is carried outeffectively, staff will gain the most benefit from their professional development(Blackmore and Castley 2005) In a study, Minarik, Thorton and Perreault (2003) find thatthe rate at which teachers leave their jobs far exceeds the erosion rate in private industry.They argue that one of the main reasons for this erosion is a lack of professionaldevelopment In countries, such as the UK, HE makes T&D a top priority (Dalin 1998).T&D in HE in Vietnam does not appear in the literature, but in other sectors in Vietnam itremains insufficient (Nguyen et al 2011) Thus, we hypothesize that:

mastery, and that the relationship is stronger among the UK employeesthan among their Vietnamese counterparts

Outcomes of personal mastery

On the basis of the five antecedents of personal mastery, we argue that there are three keyoutcomes of personal mastery in the HE context These are personal performance, self-efficacy and work – life balance

Personal performance

Previous research suggests that personal mastery influences performance (Nonaka andTakeuchi 1995; Glynn 1996) Garcia-Morales et al (2007) investigate several influences

on performance in large, medium and small enterprises, and find that personal mastery has

a positive and direct impact on individual and organizational performance According toHouse et al.’s (2004) study, the Anglo performance orientation score is as high as that ofConfucian Asia Looking at the performance in the HE world, however, the UKemployees’ performance exceeds that of their Vietnamese counterparts We thereforehypothesize that:

and that the relationship is stronger among the UK employees thanamong their Vietnamese counterparts

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to the ‘ conviction that one can successfully execute the behaviourrequired to produce outcomes’ (Bandura 1977, p 191) It is an individual difference thatrefers to a person’s perception of his or her own level of mastery within a limited taskdomain (Chowdhury 1993) Self-efficacy is strengthened through personal mastery(Bandura 1982) As self-efficacy has been more intensively researched in the Anglocultures than in the Confucian Asia cultures, we argue that employees in the UK have

a higher level of self-efficacy than do their counterparts in Vietnam Consequently, wehypothesize that:

Hypothesis 2b: Personal mastery is positively associated with self-efficacy, and that the

relationship is stronger among the UK employees than among theirVietnamese counterparts

Work – life balance

Personal mastery starts with the clarified understanding of what are the important things inpeople’s lives and how they lead their lives in the service of these aspirations (Senge2006) Personal mastery facilitates the belief that people’s professional, personal, socialand spiritual lives should not be in conflict, but can be integrated into a consistent, well-rounded, peacefully coexistent whole This has been demonstrated in empirical research(Ozbilgin and Healy 2004; Doherty and Manfredi 2006) In addition, based on House

et al.’s (2004) findings that collectivistic societies have a slower space of life, lower heartattack rates and lower divorce rates than individualistic societies, we hypothesize that:

that the relationship is stronger among the Vietnamese employees thanamong their UK counterparts

In combination with the sets of Hypotheses 1 and 2, the following hypotheses will also betested

individual performance

self-efficacy

work – life balance

Research methods

Data collection and sampling

Two universities in the UK and Vietnam were chosen to collect data for several reasons.First, these two universities were well established in each own country’s HE context.Second, they both had strong reputation in science and technology Third, they had asimilar structure of schools and size of employees Those similarities could producemeaningful international comparisons

Stratified random sampling was used to ensure representativeness (Wiersma and Jurs2005), and to decrease bias in the data as it eliminates subjectivity in choosing a sample (Fink

1995, p 10) First, a number of schools/departments were selected at random within the UKuniversity, including school of environment and earth science, school of computing andtechnology, school of maths, school of business, school education, school of languageand literature, school of history, and registry office (including managing board, administratorsand assisted staff) After that questionnaires were sent to academic and non-academic staff ofall levels in those schools The equivalent schools/departments were selected in theVietnamese university Participation in the research is voluntary and confidential

The survey was presented in English and Vietnamese, with a combination of threetranslation techniques (back-translation, committee approach and pre-test procedures)being used to ensure accuracy and appropriateness (Brislin 1976; Sperber, Devellis and

Boehlecke 1994) Firstly, the questionnaire is parallel translated from English toVietnamese by two Vietnamese who were pursuing doctoral study in the UK Then, afterworking together, the two persons agree on the Vietnamese version of the questionnaire.Thirdly, this version is then sent to two other persons to translate into English to detect anydifferences compared to the original English version Fourthly, adjustments are made inthe Vietnamese version before sending out for a pilot test Feedback from the pilot test isused to improve the accuracy and appropriateness of the questionnaire before sending itout to all the participants The careful translation procedure followed sought to avoidcultural biases and ensure conceptual equivalence.

Stratified random sampling of 1391 questionnaires was distributed A total of 687completed questionnaires (341 in Vietnam and 346 in the UK) are used for analysis in theresearch This represents an effective response rate of 53.5%, which is above the norm forsocial science (Baruch and Holtom 2008) Large sample size also helps to reduce researchbias (MacKinnon, Lockwood, Hoffman, West and Sheets 2002)

Most of the respondents are highly qualified, with 308 (44.8%) PhD holders, 141(20.5%) master’s degree holders and 146 (21.3%) bachelor’s degree holders Of the total,

446 (65.2%) respondents are academics (who are involved in teaching and research) and

239 (34.8%) are non-academics (who were involved in administrative and specialistactivities such as managers, technicians and porters) Slightly more than half, 383 (55.7%)

of the respondents are working in science (schools of natural sciences and technologies)and 303 (44.1%) are working in non-science (schools of social sciences and humanity) Ofthe total, 315 (45.9%) respondents have worked in their organizations for five years or less,

362 (52.7%) respondents have worked for more than five years and 10 (1.5%) respondentsdid not provide this information See more in Table 1

Measures

To examine the concepts that we advance in the current study, scale development andadaptation are required To this end, we developed relevant scales using conventionalpsychometric procedures; we mainly adapt them not only from extant measures, but also

on the basis of scale development work conducted during pre-testing A seven-pointordinal scale was adopted in this study for all items guided by previous studies (e.g.Churchill and Peter 1984; Preston and Colman 2000) that have found that this increasesthe reliability of empirical data

Personal values

Five out of nine items were taken from Kahle (1983) as they obtain higher response ratesthan the other four items The scale has been used in some other studies (Kahle, Beatty andHomer 1986; Kamakura and Novak 1992)

Competence

A three-item scale of competence is used from Spreitzer (1995) The scale has been used in anumber of studies (Koberg, Boss, Senjem and Goodman 1999; Jung, Chow and Wu 2003;Avolio, Zhu, Koh and Bhatia 2004) A sample item is: ‘I am confident in my ability to do

my job’

Training and development

Although T&D has been studied in a number of research studies (Forssen and Haho 2001;Noe 2002), no suitable construct is found A four-item scale was therefore created tomeasure T&D in organizations Those items include: ‘This university encourages staff todevelop team-working skills’; ‘This university encourages staff to identify skills they need

to adapt to changes’; ‘I was mentored when I first took up the job here’; and ‘I receive thetraining I need to perform my current job effectively’

Table 1 Demographic characteristics of the sample and subgroups

Variables

Personal vision

With no known measure for this construct existing in the literature, a four-item measure ofpersonal vision was developed Those items include: ‘I set up career goals of my own’; ‘Ihave my personal vision for my career’; ‘Part of my personal vision is to make theuniversity more successful’; and ‘I understand how the work I do helps this universityachieve its vision’

Organizational culture

Employees’ perceptions of organizational culture are measured by asking them to indicatehow they describe the culture within the working organization on six scales adopted fromBaruch and Peiperl (2000) Each scale ranges from 1 (one extreme) to 7 (the oppositeextreme)

Personal mastery

Reed (2001) uses Senge’s (1990) model quantitatively in research on realizing a learningorganization in a medium-sized company Reed (2001) designs a set of questions tomeasure personal mastery A four-item construct of personal mastery was adapted andadjusted to fit the research intention A sample item is: ‘I have a clear idea of my careerfuture as an employee in this university’

Self-efficacy

A three-item scale from Tierney and Farmer (2002) is used to measure self-efficacy Thescale has been used in a number of works (Miron, Erez and Naveh 2004; Shalley andGilson 2004; Rindova, Williamson, Petkova and Sever 2005) A sample item is: ‘I haveconfidence in my ability to solve problems creatively’ (Tierney and Farmer 2002)

Work – life balance

Four items to measure work – life balance are taken from Hayman’s (2005) work A sampleitem is: ‘My job makes me happy’

Performance appraisal

Two different sets of performance appraisal are used separately for academic and academic staff A one-item scale for measuring non-academic staff is based on Baruch(1996) Respondents are asked to rank their performance score from number 1 (too early toassess) to number 7 (outstanding/effective) A two-item scale is used for academic staff:one item is for teaching performance, ranking from 1 (unacceptable) to 7 (outstanding),and the other is for research performance based on the RAE score (in terms of the 2008Research Assessment Exercise)

non-Analysis of the results

Multivariate normality was examined through univariate distribution (Tabachnick andFidell 2001; Kline 2005) The skewness and kurtosis statistics are investigated, but no cases

of univariate nonnormality were found (all the values of skewness and kurtosis are far lowerthan 3 and 5, respectively) Reliability of the measurement scales was assessed via

Cronbach alpha and was found to be at the acceptable level of 0.69 and above (Nunnally1978) Table 2 presents descriptive statistics on the variables and their correlations.

of those variables in the structure matrix showed one cross-loading, suggesting some correlation among the factors (Field 2005) After revising, an item was taken away frompersonal mastery to improve the internal reliability

non-Confirmatory factor analysis is conducted to verify the variable distinctiveness amongsix constructs, including competence, motivation, organizational culture, personal values,self-efficacy and work – life balance All fit indices are within the recommended range(Byrne 2001), indicating an acceptable model fit and allowing further tests

Regression analyses

Table 3 presents the regression results that tested the set of Hypotheses 1 with the twoseparate universities and the aggregate data The three control variables are entered intoModel 1, and the respective independent variables are entered into Model 2

Fchange(28.651**) in Vietnam

The coefficient of organizational culture was significant in the aggregate sample

The coefficient of competence is significant in the aggregate sample (0.098*) It is,

(0.132*) Thus, Hypothesis 1b is partially supported

The coefficient of personal values is significant (0.103*) in the aggregate sample The

among the UK counterparts Thus, Hypothesis 1c is fully supported

The coefficient of motivation was non-significant in the aggregate sample (0.038) It is

counterparts (0.008) Thus, Hypothesis 1d is partially supported

The coefficients of individual learning are non-significant in the aggregate sample(0.020), and negative but non-significant in both sub-samples (2 0.070 and 2 0.045 in the

UK and Vietnam, respectively) Thus, Hypothesis 1e is fully rejected

the Vietnamese employees Thus, Hypothesis 1f is fully supported

The coefficient of development and training is significant in the aggregate sample