Impacts of interpersonal conflict and occupational stress on the organizational commitment of vietnamese employees, and the role of social support

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY --- NGUYEN QUANG MINH IMPACTS OF INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT AND OCCUPATIONAL STRESS ON THE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT OF VIETNA

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

-

NGUYEN QUANG MINH

IMPACTS OF INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT AND OCCUPATIONAL STRESS ON THE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT OF

VIETNAMESE EMPLOYEES, AND THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SUPPORT

MASTER’S THESIS BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Hanoi, 2020

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

-

NGUYEN QUANG MINH

IMPACTS OF INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT AND OCCUPATIONAL STRESS ON THE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT OF

VIETNAMESE EMPLOYEES, AND THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SUPPORT

MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In this part, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and massive thanks to

my supervisors Prof Motonari Tanabu and Assoc.Prof Nham Phong Tuan With your support, guidance, comments, recommendations and encouragements, I have already overcome troubles in doing the master thesis and finally completed it

I would like to share my thanks to all of respondents who helped me accomplish the thesis with your provided data I also want to send my big thanks to Huong-san, an assistant of MBA Programs and all member of MBA-03 class Thank to them, I have the memorable and meaningful time in Vietnam Japan University in two years and I will never forget it

Thank you Viet Nam Japan University for supporting me a lot as well as giving

me an memorable opportunity to experience the academic environment that I could gain beneficial knowledge and assist me in expanding my perspective in life

Thank you so much for everything For me, that was unforgettable time in my life and also the great motivation and inspiration for me to improve myself in the future Nguyen Quang Minh

11/5/2020

ABSTRACT

Purpuse of the study: In the real time, the working context in Vietnam is recognized

with the high level of competitive pace, so the ratio of workers rotation is a crucial point for the development of busisses As a result, many Vietnamese employees have a sense of changing their works because they tend to seek for the better working environment in the new places where they can be treated with full of respective This is

a noticeable issue because it places a crucial task for Human Resource Managers in controlling and managing the labour of the company My research concentrates on two main parts that have already occured in the working environmenet in Vietnam The first problem links to the impacts from interpersonal conflict with both supervisors and coworkers on the commitment behaviors of Vietnamese employees In the second part, the issue of social support that employees can gain from outside of the company will decides the level of organizational commitment of them Besides, the factor occupational stress will also interfere in this relationship with the specific role as a mediator Within this relationship between three factors, the study contribute exams the effect from social support on engagement attitude of Vietnamese workers in both direct and indirect effect

Research Methodology/Design: The research will be implemented through 217

responses of employees who are working in Vietnam After collecting data from respondents, the next process will be using the SPSS tool for the analyzing step

Findings: Conflict with supervisors is the important point to decide commitment

behavior of Vietnamese employees, but the conflict with colleagues seems to increase a weak significant on their commitment Besides, Social Support will strongly contribute for the organizational commitment behavior, but it is lower when stress at work interferes Stress also has the weak positive effect with social support and commitment,

and takes a role as mediator when receiving the effect from social support on the side

of family

Research Limitations: The way that employees produce the weak positive effect from

their conflict with coworkers to their commitment behavior has not been clear with its reasons Another limitaition is the size of social support is only narrowed in the scale from Family and Friends And the final limitation is there is a shortage of determination about the positive impact from Stress at work with social support and organizational commitment

Contribution: Explore the factors affecting on Vietnamese workers‟ commitment

behavior

Keyword: interpersonal conflict, social support, occupational stress, organizational

commitment

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background of the Study 1

1.1.1 Practical Issues 2

1.1.2 Theoretical Issues 4

1.2 Research Objective and Research Questions 7

1.3 Subject and Scope of the Study 7

1.4 Outline of the Thesis 8

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT 9

2.1 Review of Conceptual Framework and Literature Background 9

2.1.1 Interpersonal Conflict 9

2.1.2 Social Support 16

2.1.3 Occupational Stress 20

2.1.4 Organizational Commitment 24

2.2 Review of Relevant Theoretical Model 26

2.3 Hypotheses Development and Conceptual Model 30

2.3.1 Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors and Organizational Commitment 31

2.3.2 Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues and Organizational Commitment 31

2.3.3 Social Support and Occupational Stress 32

2.3.4 Occupational Stress and Organizational Commitment 33

2.3.5 Social Support and Organizational Commitment 34

2.3.6 Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors and Occupational Stress 34

2.3.7 Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues and Occupational Stress 35

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 39

3.1 Sampling 39

3.2 Data Collection Procedures 40

3.3 Data Analysis 41

3.4 Measurements 41

3.5 The Development Processs of the Questionnaire 42

CHAPTER 4 RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 44

4.1 Demographic Analysis 45

4.1.1 Frequency Analysis 45

4.1.2 Descriptive Analysis 47

4.1.3 Reliability and EFA Analysis 51

4.2 Analyzing results of the relationship between “Interpersonal Conflict” and

“Organizational Commitment” 64

4.3 Analyzing results of the relationship between “Interpersonal Conflict” and “Occupational Stress” 68

4.4 Analyzing results of the relationship between “Social Support”, “Occupational Stress” and “Organizational Commitment” 72

4.4.1 The result of the relationship among Social Support from Family, Occupational Stress and Organizational Commitment 72

4.4.2 Analyzing the relationship among Social Support from Friends, Occupational Stress and Organizational Commitment 76

4.5 Hypotheses Testing 79

4.6 The comparison of the research result between Robert Bosch Corporation and VietAbank 80

4.6.1 Robert Bosch Gmbh Company 80

4.6.2 VietAbank Company 82

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 84

5.1 Discussions of the Study 84

5.1.1 The relationship between “Interpersonal Conflict” and “Organizational Commitment” 84

5.1.2 The relationship between “Interpersonal Conflict” and “Occupational Stress” 87 5.1.3 The result of the relationship between “Social Support”, “Occupational Stress” and “Organizational Commitment” 88

5.1.4 The difference in these relationships between Robert Borsch Corporation and VietAbank 91

5.2 Implications of the Study 93

5.3 Limitations of the Study 96

CONCLUSION 99

REFERENCE 101 APENDIX

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 The general definition of Interpersonal Conflict types in an organization 10

Table 2.2 The reviewed instruments for measuring Interpersonal Conflict 14

Table 2.3 All items of the measured instruments for Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors and Colleagues ((Spector & Jex, 1998) (Belausteguigoitia et al., 2016) 15

Table 2.4 The reviewed instruments for measuring Social Support 18

Table 2.5 All items of the MSPSS instruments for measuring Social Support (Zimet et al., 1988) 20

Table 2.6 All items of the measured instrument for Occupational Stress (Cullen et al., 1985) 23

Table 2.7 All items of the measured instrument for Organizational Commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990) 26

Table 3.1 Measured Instruments of all related variables in the study 42

Table 4.1.1 The Frequency Statistics Table 45

Table 4.1.2 The table of Frequency Analysis for Age, Gender and Education Level 46

Table 4.1.3 The codes of relevant variables 48

Table 4.1.4 The descriptive statistics table of “Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors 48

Table 4.1.5 The descriptive statistics table of “Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues 49

Table 4.1.6 The descriptive statistics table of Social Support 49

Table 4.1.7 The descriptive statistics table of Occupatoinal Stress 50

Table 4.1.8 The descriptive statistics table of Organizational Commitment 51

Table 4.1.9 The Reliability Table of Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors 52

Table 4.1.10 The table of EFA Analyzing for Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors 53

Table 4.1.11 The Reliability Table of Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues 54

Table 4.1.12 The table of EFA Analyzing for Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues 54 Table 4.1.13 The Reliability Table of Social Support 56

Table 4.1.14 KMO and Barlett‟s Test, and Total Variance tables of Social Support 57

Table 4.1.15 The table of Rotated Component Matrix for Social Support before removing items 57

Table 4.1.16 The table of Rotated Component Matrix for Social Support after

removing items 58

Table 4.1.17 The Reliability Table of Occupational Stress 59

Table 4.1.18 The table of EFA Analyzing for Occupational Stress 60

Table 4.1.19 The Reliability Table of Organizational Commitment 62

Table 4.1.20 The table of EFA Analyzing for Organizational Commitment 63

Table 4.2.1 The correlations table of three variables ICC, ICS and OC 65

Table 4.2.2 The results of Regression Analysis for ICS, ICC and OC 67

Table 4.3.1 The correlations table of Interpersonal Conflict and Occupational Stress 69 Table 4.3.2 The regression analysis table of Interpersonal Conflict and Occupational Stress 70

Table 4.4.1 The outcome variables of the mediator relationship (with Social Support from Family) 73

Table 4.4.2 The description of effect of Social Support from Family on Organizational Commitment 75

Table 4.4.3 The outcome variables of the mediator relationship (with Social Support from Friends) 77

Table 4.4.4 The description of effect of Social Support from Friends on Organizational Commitment 78

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 The conceptual model of the effect of Interpersonal Conflict on

Organizational Commitment (Imanol Belausteguigoitia et al., 2016) 27

Figure 2.2 The general view of the Interpersonal Conflict‟s impacts (Frone, 2000) 28

Figure 2.3 The Model of the relationship between Interpersonal Conflict and Job Stress (Haq, 2011) 29

Figure 2.4 The conceptual research model of the study 37

Figure 4.1 The results of impacts from Interpersonal Conflict on Occupational Stress 71 Figure 4.2 The effect of mediation relationship between Social Support from Family, Occupational Stress and Organizational Commitment 76

Figure 4.3 The resuts of all variables in Robert Bosch Company 81

Figure 4.4 The resuts of all variables in VietAbank Company 82

Figure 5.1 The research model with final results 91

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ICS Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors

ICC Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues

OS Occupational Stress

OC Organizational Commitment

SS Social Support

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Observing deeper into Vietnam‟s society today, it is evident that Vietnam is a developing country with a high growth rate in the world The development of Vietnam can be observed in many industries and fields of various activities Along with this development, we can notice that Vietnam is also gradually expanding international cooperation with other territories around the world An example of Vietnam's internationalization can be found through some typical cooperation agreements such as Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) (General Statisitc Office of Vietnam, 2019) Based on those international agreements, Vietnam is standing chances to cooperate with many other areas around the world

Having the opportunity to develop based on the current situation of internationalization, it is indispensable for many Vietnamese businesses to emerge, including domestic enterprises, startups, and international joint venture enterprises This has made Vietnam become an ideal business environment with a high pace of dynamic and competitiveness

Based on the data from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam in 2018, the population of Vietnam is roughly 94.6 million that proves Vietnam is a relatively populous country in the world Thank the high population, combining with the strong pace of internationalization, there are many domestic and international corporations that have been formed and hold many opportunities to take advantage of the potential factor as a human resource in Vietnam

For Vietnamese companies, they will have the opportunity to recruit potential workers and turn around human resources so as to create the highest value for their

businesses As for foreign businesses, in addition to capturing high-quality human resources in Vietnam, they also focus on hiring Vietnamese laborers with their low budget, which helps a lot in cost savings and increases business growth Facing many opportunities, companies operating in Vietnam will always focus on the quality of their human resources and also have their own policies to attract workers from one place to another Besides the relatively competitive market economy in Vietnam, the rotation of resources is stronger and the impact of businesses on employees will have a great impact within only by the smallest policies or decisions

In contrast, for the Vietnamese workers, because the competitiveness between businesses is very large, they will have a lot of chances to see themselves in the business, assess it and select the suitable places for them to continue their careers

Consequently, in the scope of the study, I want to focus deeply on the aspect of organizational behaviors of employees in Vietnam, specifically the organizational commitment issue of Vietnamese employees in the current social context From the study of Organizational Commitment, I hope that my contributions to this research will

be beneficial for Vietnamese businesses in understanding its employees, as well as giving an overview of factors influencing the "Organizational Commitment" In the near future, the research can also assist businesses in retaining their human resources during the current development period

As I mentioned about Organizational Commitment, this is a backlog issue in Vietnamese businesses Therefore, to get specific evidence on this issue, I want to present specific shreds of evidence of Organizational Commitment in both the

“Practical Issues” and "Theoretical Issues"

1.1.1 Practical Issues

In the current context, there is an emergent issue in Vietnam is the increasing rate of employee turnover In general, the problem of leaving employees so far is very

common and based on many different factors leading to the employee's quitting decision Once the employee resignation issue is raised, we need to ask a question that

"What has affected the employee's commitment to the organization" when making this

decision

To put this issue in Vietnam society, a reality that can be seen in the corporate environment is that the commitment to the organization in the workplace environment

in Vietnam is rapidly declining

This issue is currently concerned and much evidence has proved this fact Researching on this issue, Anphabet, a pioneer company in Vietnam for a comprehensive employer brand solution, conducted a research on the job market, namely by conducting surveys of up to 75,418 employees The result was that they measured the employee turnover rates in Vietnam in 2017 and 2018 at 16% and 20% respectively, and Anphabe also forecasts this figure could reach 22% in 2019 (Anphabe, 2018), and this figure will gradually increase from the year 2020 Due to the concentration of internationalization with a high level of competitiveness, the level of turnover is also high and it causes a huge loss for the company in terms of Human Resources For example, it makes the recruitment for replacement can account for 15-20% salary of a year, or the compensation is higher if the quitter is the excellent employees because of the loss of knowledge, relationships and training costs

This is a heated topic and many authors have been focusing on this issue Therefore, many authors stand on the manager's perspective and see this as a part of Human Resource Management Under the perspective of a researcher, I would like to make this issue more obvious and contribute to conflict management for companies

In addition to the figures that Alphabe has researched on employee turnover rates in Vietnam, some of the other sources also prove this alarming fact

In the report of Navigos Search, the retail sector faced a high rate of turnover Specifically, 28% of employees lack their commitment to the organization, 49% of employees feel vulnerable to being approached by companies in the same industry and 60% of employees think their average tenure with their job is only 2 to 3 years (Navigos Group, 2018) In the 2016 survey report of Talentnet and Mercer, besides Retail with a high rate of turnover (39.2%), other fields also recognize these issues such as Medicine (17%), Technology (16.2%)

Through the data that organizations have researched on the labor market in Vietnam, it can be realized that the lack of engagement to enterprises and the high rate

of leaving become more common, especially in specific industries

1.1.2 Theoretical Issues

Facing organizational commitment issue, this can be considered as a relatively common problem in many countries around the world, not only existing in Vietnam Studying on this issue, Turunen (2014) concludes that commitment to an organization

is a crucial issue and this affects many related fields as well as the market of human resources

In addition to the perspectives on the role of organizational commitment, organizational commitment affects employees, who tend to be more satisfied with their work and reduce the risk of leaving the organization if containing a high level of commitment Consequently, two elements deciding the success of an organization are Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction (Mathur & Salunke, 2013) Besides, Organizational Commitment has the profound impact on Knowledge Management in both direct and indirect ways (Rocha et al., 2008) accompanying with the implication

to employees‟ Job Performance (Rafiei et al., 2014)

Normally, studying the responsibility of organizational commitment, the authors often focus on measuring the low or high level of commitment behavior (Meyer &

Allen, 1984) With high organizational commitment, the employee can enhance the quality of working pracice and working capacity (Arthur, 1994), besides commitment

of work with low pace places several negative consequences relating to leaving the job and behavior of defection (Blau & Boal, 1987)

The role of Organizational Commitment is very significant for the development

of the business However, achieving the commitment of employees in the company is a challenge because there are always many factors involved in the commitment behaviors of workers Jawaad et al (2019) toward the Human Resource Management sector, the organizational behaviors embedded in the influence of factors such as enrolling, workplace concern, job estimation, rewards and acceptance, and instruction process

Relating to this aspect, many authors also focus on studying the relationship between working pleasure and company engagement behavior, specifically through career development, pride at work, or emolument payment (Ali et al., 2014)

According to Allen and Meyer (1990), Organizational Commitment is measured based on the nonphysical situations of attitude and thoughts toward the organization Therefore, the working place is a business environment where the linking between employees and their executives, or even coworkers is obvious (Subramanian, 2017) In this relationship among people, the interpersonal relationships will bring the connection to individual behaviors (Frone, 2000), and one of the main factors existing among them is called “Interpersonal Conflict”

Besides the factors mentioned above, within the scope of the study, it is essential to concentrate on the "Interpersonal Conflict" having impacts on Organizational Commitment, as this factor will be related to the result of individual study of mental process (Frone, 2000) In the aspect of Human Resouce Management, workplace conflict at the workplace stems from many diverse factors such as salary,

appraisals, psychological motivation, or working environment, in addition to employee conflict at work often Moreover, Interpersonal Conflict is recognized by the roots from the distinction in different identiy and consciousness of life values (Isa, 2015)

When employees have a conflict with each other, its impact on the business is utterly clear, as the implications to firm operation which including cliens, workers, financial issues, or internal system (Eunice et al., 2015) and conflict can also mitigate the efficiency of company operation leading to reduced capacity (Omisore & Abiodun, 2014)

The consequences of Interpersonal Conflict can also be recognized in both misconduct and hatred attitude (Bibi et al., 2012) Interpersonal Conflict can also relate

to engagement practice of employees (Belausteguigoitia et al., 2016), and dominates the quality of managerial arrangement besides the pride at work and commitment attitude (Medina et al., 2005) In the company, Interpersonal Conflict has been divided into 2 dimensions when moving to both bosses and coworker and releases different outcomes, which include the implications of commitment demeanour (Frone, 2000)

Relating to the factors that influence organizational commitment, within this study, I also focus on the social aspects of an individual Specifically, the level of commitment to an organization is maintained or not only based on the effects of stress

at work, as well as social support from society, also known as Social Support

The main plan of the study will aim to two parts The first part is investigating more clearly the implications of interpersonal conflict towards the organizational commitment of Vietnamese employees Another part is clarifying directly the impacts

of Social Support to Organizational Commitment, but the Occupational Stress factor, also known as workplace stress, will act as the mediator, which is affected by social support before indirectly influencing the commitment behaviors of Vietnamese workers

1.2 Research Objective and Research Questions

- Research Objectives: Investigating the impacts of Interpersonal Conflict,

Occupational Stress, and Social Support on the Organizational Commitment of Vietnamese employees Meanwhile, the Occupational Stress takes the role of mediator, affected by Social Support and mediated the relationship between Social Support and Organizational Commitment

- Research Questions:

Q1: How does Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors impact on Organizational

Commitment of Vietnamese employees?

Q2: How does Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues impact on Organizational

Commitment of Vietnamese employees?

Q3: How does Occupational Stress impact on Organizational Commitment of

- The subject of the study will be the Vietnamese employees working in Vietnamese

companies in a different type of job However, the number of companies they are working will be narrow in only 3 in this study, and they are in a similar field

- The Scope of the Study: The research is conducted in Vietnam and the data collection

time for this study from 5th April, 2020 to 15th April, 2020 All respondents in this research are Vietnamese and they are working in Vietnam companies

1.4 Outline of the Thesis

Besides the parts of abstract, research content, reference, and appendix, the study includes five chapters as below

Chapter 1: Introduction: Mentioning the background of the research including both

practice issue and theoretical issue; research objective and research questions; subject and scope of the study; and thesis outline

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypothesis development: introducing the literature

of former authors about “Interpersonal Conflict”, “Social Support”, “Occupational Stress”, and “Organizational Commitment

Chapter 3: Research Methodology: Describing the method of collecting data,

analyzing and forming the final results

Chapter 4: Research Analyzing and Results: Based on the data collected, the study

will extend to analyzing by using SPSS The final results will be displayed as the frequency, descriptive, correlation, and regression before concluding the relevant information to the study

Chapter 5: Recommendation, Solution and Conclusion: After analyzing the final

results, there are recommendations and solutions for the issues relating to interpersonal conflict, social support, and occupational stress that having effect on Organizational Commitment This is based on the author knowledge and could improve the organizational performance in reality

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Review of Conceptual Framework and Literature Background

In this chapter, the literature of the terms “Interpersonal Conflict”, “Social Support”, “Occupational Stress”, and “Organizational Commitment” will be presented and made clear when being used in this study

2.1.1 Interpersonal Conflict

2.1.1.1 Interpersonal Conflict Definitions

Before going into the "Interpersonal Conflict", it is necessary to understand the previous studies of "Conflict", which appeared in many the literature reviews by different authors

Presently, there are many various definitions of "Conflict", Omisore and Abiodun (2014) cited that the ideal way to understand Conflict's definition should be divided into three distinct approaches: a functional approach, situational approach, and interactive approach As a result, in order to grasp the definition of conflict, we can rely on the definition in three kinds of approaching

In the book “Conflict resolved? A Critical Assessment of Conflict Resolution”

(Tidwell, 2001), as for the definition of conflict by author George Simmel in 1955, he

pointeds “conflict acts as the method with tackling divergent dualism to archive the

unity, even it may eliminate the benefit from another conflict parties” Meanwhile,

following the situation approach, the book also mentioned the conflict based on

Bercovitch‟s definition in 1984 as “a situation creates the unbreakable aims and

values among various parties” Finally, according to the interactive approach, conflict

was compared with “the interaction among people who has the dependent on each

other, and perceives the inappropriate purposes and the intervention from each other

to attain these targets” in the conclusion of the author Folger in 1993 According to

Thakore (2013), conflict is explained as the antipathy between two people or many different individual or even various teams when they have effort to archive the agreement from the opposition sides

The object of this study is to target conflicts that occur within an enterprise Conflict happens among individuals and group, specifically some people of one group interact with others in different groups, or it can also occur inside a specific group (Nicholson, 2009) Based on the motivation on the interpersonal conflict that happens inside employees and has a significant effect on their commitment to companies, there are several former researches focusing on this issue in the past

Going deeply into conflict in the organization, in the book “Organizational

Behavior: Integrating Individuals, Groups, and Organizations” published in 2016, the

author Champoux pointed out that the conflict in the organization can be determined

under six levels and various forms

Table 2.1 The general definition of Interpersonal Conflict types in an organization

organization, as Interpersonal Conflict

Intragroup

Conflict

Conflict existing among representatives in a specific team These conflicts may occur during the work process to achieve the organization's overall goals

Regarding the division of types of conflict, according to Simons and Peterson (2000), they researched the existence of two distinct types of conflict: Task Conflict and Relationship Conflict Specifically, with the definition of each type of conflict, the author Jehn (1995) clearly distinguished these two types as follows:

- Task Conflict: It is considered as the awareness of disagreements about ideas,

viewpoints, and opinions among the members in the decision making process when working together and this causes a divergence between them

- Relationship Conflict: Also known as an emotional conflict This type of conflict

occurs between individuals, rooted on the contrary of personalities This leads to the employees feel uncomfortable, creating large pressure on each other at work

Expanding on other types of Conflict, Fisher (2006) defined another three kinds

of conflict with the larger scale:

- Economic Conflict: This type of conflict relates to the economic aspect, in which two

conflicting parties are seeking for maximizing what they can implement to achieve economic goals Usually, these two sides of the conflict will not have mutual goals

- Value Conflict: The difference occurs in the principles and practices in life Typically,

this type of conflict comes from the difference between individuals in factors related to culture, lifestyle, morality, religion, or politics

- Power Conflict: A conflict related to the attainment of a power element among

relevant parties Each part always looks for achieving and maintains maximum power, and this will directly affect the other one

When placing conflict factor within the business area, many authors have assessed the negative impact of conflict, but several authors still emphasized the beneficial effect that conflict can bring to enterprises, especially the positive impacts viewed at Task Conflict at both individual level (Baron, 1991) and the group level (Fiol, 1994)

Although the elements of conflict come from various sources and approaches in this study, the influence of Interpersonal Conflict on Organizational Commitment will

be measured Besides implications of conflicts to specific benefits like salary or labour wages (Isa, 2015), the study only focus Interpersonal Conflict on the emotional behavior, which exists inside employees and that is indispensable at organization‟s life (Kumar et al., 2018) In addition to the implications of Interpersonal Conflict, many authors aim to study, for example, its impact on individual aberrance and organizational deviation, or even leaving purpose, (Haq, 2011)

2.1.1.2 Interpersonal Conflict Measured Instruments

When the relationship between interpersonal conflict and organizational commitment is determined, analyzing the objects which were targeted in the interpersonal conflict variable including interpersonal conflict with colleagues (horizontal level) and interpersonal conflict with supervisors (vertical level) The next step to facilitate the measurement and evaluation of these two levels of interpersonal conflict is to find the specific scales for them The scales with defined items were found, so I split the scale separately to evaluate these 2 levels

Briefly, to evaluate Interpersonal Conflict in the research, I summarized the assessments from various authors within specific dimensions

Table 2.2 The reviewed instruments for measuring Interpersonal Conflict

2016)

Workplace Interpersonal Conflict Scale (WICS) (Wright,

et al., 2017)

Interpersonal Conflict in the Workplace (ICW) (Schieman

& Reid, 2008)

Frustration Interaction Irrresponsibility Injustice

Incompetence Inequity Work Disagreement Unfairness

Thwarted aims Incompetence Physical antagonism Personal‟s Verbal Agression The instruments above are used to evaluate Interpersonal Conflict in an organization with different scales Within the scope of this paper, ICAWS (Interpersonal Conflict at Work Scale) (Spector & Jex, 1998) and measurement performance of author Belausteguigoitia et al., (2016) are appropriate compared to the remaining ones, so these two instruments will be used to assess the Interpersonal Conflict variable

For the evaluation of Interpersonal Conflict with Colleagues, the scale was used with 4 items to assess the level of employees having a conflict with their colleagues (Belausteguigoitia et al., 2016) For instance, in this instrument, some of the questions

target tension among employees as “My colleagues and I often get angry while

working together”, or “There often are tensions in the relationship between my colleagues and myself.”

To be convenient in evaluating the aspect of Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors, the instrument that I use in this study is ICAWS (Interpersonal Conflict at Work Scale) In essence, ICAWS consists of 4 items to assess the goodness of respondents toward acceptable accord with other members in their company when working (Spector & Jex, 1998) While this study evaluates the relationship among workers and their managers, ICAWS is modified to be suitable for this assessment with

questions like “How often does your supervisor gets into arguments with others at

work”, or “How often are people rude to you at work” In this study, when evaluating

the relationship between employees and their managers, ICAWS was modified to fit this assessment process, with suitable questions such as “How often does your

supervisor gets into arguments with others at work" or "How often are people rude to

you at work” The scale is based on the 5 levels of Likert-scale, which formulate the

ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree) The table below shows the information of the selected instruments to measure Interpersonal Conflict

Table 2.3 All items of the measured instruments for Interpersonal Conflict with Supervisors and Colleagues ((Spector & Jex, 1998) (Belausteguigoitia et al., 2016)

Factor Source Items’

Codes Items’ Questions Assessment

5-Point Likert Scale

ICS2 My Supervisor yells at me

2.1.2 Social Support

2.1.2.1 Social Support Definition

When conducting the research, in addition to the influence of Interpersonal Conflict on the Organizational Commitment of the employees in Vietnam, a factor that interferes with OC of employees is Social Support

The Social Support element has been studied in numerous academic researches over 30 years and considered as a sociological issue (Lijun et al., 2011), the role of Social Support was recognized with its catalysis to protect the health for behaviors (Phelan et al., 2010)

Because Social Support is placed in academic research and considered as one of the new concepts, its definition is quite diverse by many different authors (Lijun et al., 2011) Besides the classification of Social Support based on the network size, and its functions as the author of mention also discloses are specific forms such as emotional support, instrumental support, informational support, and appraisal support (House, 1981)

Interpersonal

Conflict with

Colleagues

(Belausteguigoitia et al., 2016)

ICC1

My colleagues and I often get angry while working together

ICC2

There often are tensions

between my colleagues and myself

ICC3

My colleagues and I do not get along well with each other

Up to now, the term “Social Support” has been put in a lot of academic researches Therefore, there are various forms of “Social Support” definition based on the different ways which can fit the approaching ways of researchers

According to Cobb (1976), Social Support is recognized as a source of information that allows a person to have a faith that they are treated, cared, loved, respected Demonstrating this aspect causes them to connect to the conversation network and accountability to each other

In 1980, Kahn and Antonucci (1980) assessed Social Support based on three factors: affect, affirmation, and aid The effect includes respect or affection Affirmative expresses proper behavior or personal attitude Finally, Aid is considered

to direct support, such as supporting people financially or assist them in completing tasks or works

As for the opinion of Sarason et al (1983), Social Support appears as an ability

of people toward others whom we can depend on People can tell us what they care about, as well as their thoughts, the values they are chasing , and sentimental feelings

Regarding the interpersonal interaction, Social Support acts as an exchange of resources between two different people, including both provider and receiver, but they have a final target as promoting the satisfaction of receivers (Shumaker & Brownell, 1984) Deelstra et al (2003) suggested that Social Support is the actions of others, which may help or intend to be assisted

Relating to the concept, Gonzalet and Restrepo (2010) inserted Social Support is

a fact appearing in the disadvantageous cases that an individual can survive from receiving the support from others

Mentioning Perceived Social Support, Barrera (1986) defined perceived social support as the explanation of the effect on individuals who faced negative issues In

this definition, he concentrated on the personal faith of each person about support providers from their social networks With support receivers, they will have the positive and negative perspectives of their faith

Through the literature reviews on social support that each author has defined, although these definitions are quite diverse, in general, Social Support is mentioned with the interaction between at least two individuals Especially, it appears when one side provides care, respect, and value to recipients, and this assists the recipients in overcoming disadvantageous situations and feeling satisfied

2.1.2.2 Social Support Measured Instruments

As for the measurement performance for Social Support, each author has specific instruments to measure Social Support The instruments that I want to mention are MSPSS (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support) (Zimet et al., 1988); NSSQ (Norbeck Social Support Questionnaire) (Norbeck, 1995); and Tardy‟s Scale (1985) (Tardy, 1985) To have a general perspective of these scales, the table below will show the dimensions of each instrument

Table 2.4 The reviewed instruments for measuring Social Support

MSPSS (Zimet et al., 1988) NSSQ (Norbeck,

1995)

Tardy’s Scale (Tardy,

1985)

Network Source (Family, Friends,

Significant Others)

Each instrument has different dimensions to measure the Social Support level of employees NSSQ focuses on three main functions of Social Support: Affect, Affirmation, Aid and network size of respondents Meanwhile, Tardy's Scale focuses

on other specific functions such as Direction or Content, besides also focusing on Network In this study, I chose the MSPSS (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support), because this measured instrument focuses on assessing not only the functions focusing on depression, respect or anxiety, but also the network of respondents, which are shown specifically in all three main subjects are Family, Friends, and Significant Others (Zimet et al., 1988) This could be proper and convenient in collecting and evaluating "Social Support" through specific data

To introduce MSPSS, according to the author Zimet et al (1988), MSPSS solves the social support adequacy with its subjective assessment This assessment is aimed at all three objects such as family, friends and significant others, who play a crucial role

in providing social support to the surveyed employees For instance, through questions

like “I get the emotional help and support I need from my family”, “I have friends with

whom I can share my joys and sorrow”, or “I have a special person who is a real source of comfort to me” Generally, MSPSS will investigate directly the relationship

between perceived social support and the expression of anxiety, depression, and respect

of employees, when influenced by Social Support

The table below shows the selected instruments for Social Support in the research from Zimet et al (1988)

Table 2.5 All items of the MSPSS instruments for measuring Social Support (Zimet et

al., 1988)

Factor Subscales Items’

Codes Items’ Questions Assessment

SS2 I get the emotional help and support I need from my family

SS6 I can count on my friends when things go wrong

SS7 I have friends with whom I can share my joys and sorrows

with my friends

Special Person

SS9 There is a special person who is around when I am in need

SS10

There is a special person with whom I can share joys and sorrows

SS11 I have a special person who is a real source of comfort to me

SS12

There is a special person in my life who cares about my feelings

2.1.3 Occupational Stress

2.1.3.1 Occupational Stress Definition

The next variable identified in the study is Occupational Stress Before focusing the Occupational Stress in this study, an overview of this factor through the analysis

articles of the previous authors, including the concepts and assessing instruments will

be reviewed

Being similar to the factor of Social Support, Occupational Stress is approached

by a lot of authors According to the concept of Weiman (1977), “Occupational Stress

is a combination of factors related to psychosocial and physiological homeostasis of labours, in which stressors are recognized as individual circumstances and stress is the reaction reaching those stressors” Extending the research direction on Work

Stress, it is heavily researched in academic studies and various authors place it in behavioral studies in the organization, with its psychosocial and physiological impact

on reducing workers' capacity (Babatunde, 2013)

Regarding National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Stress at Work

(NIOSH) (1999), “Occupational Stress is the physical and mental reactions with

negative manner These stem from the job requirements that have a profound effect on resources, productivity or employees‟ demands” Similarly, Mustafa et al (2015)

asserted that “Occupational Stress is determined as the adjustment of physical and psychological status of an individual to the workplace that has a role in countering an evaluation objection and threat to staffs”

Meanwhile, Work Stress links to negative concerns related to such as anxiety or nervousness and affect the psychological and physical energy of workers (Netemeyer,

et al., 2005)

Normally, when defining the Stress, many different researchers focus on Stress

as the negative stressors to interact with humans Nevertheless, to understand deeply

about the Stress definition, in the book “Stress with out distress” in 1974, the author

Selye (1974) mentioned Stress is the non-specific response of the body to any demand

He also inserted an important point that two kinds of stress were two stressors including Distress (negative stress) and Eustress (positive stress)

- Distress (negative stress): This kind of stress normally brings negative emotions such

as frustration, worry, anxiety, or even physical consequences such as headaches or rapid heartbeat

- Eustress (positive stress): Type of stress that brings the stimulation on individuals‟

feelings toward happiness or positive psychological response to stressor for prosperity

Stress ís normally mentioned as negative stressors by various researchers, but stress also itself contains positive influences In the following part, several measured instruments for work stress are reviewed

2.1.3.2 Occupational Stress Measured Instruments

Regarding the measurement instrument of Occupational Stress, because a lot of researchers focus on this issue, so there are various assessing scales based on the different approaches ways of authors

Currently, instruments for measuring Occupational Stress are relatively common

in academic researches Take Parker's Scale as an example with dimensions focusing

on Time Stress, Anxiety and their relationship with Stressor Category (including working mechanism, working asmostphere, relationship among individuals, and career) with 15 separate items (Parker & DeCotiis, 1983)

In the Judge‟s scale for Job Stress, Judge et al (1994) inserted 16 items to use for respondents and figure out the stress at workplace, with 5 levels of Likert Scale (1 for “Produce no stress” and 5 for “Produce a great deal of stress”) In the 16 items of this measuring instrument, 4 of them from Michigan Diagnostic Survey (French & Kahn, 1962), 8 items from Stress Diagnostic Survey (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1987), and 4 items from Job Stress Index (Sandman, 1992)

In another assessing instrument for Work Stress, Wu et al (2018) concentrated

on an empirical study to develop a Job Stress Scale, which measured Job Stress and

researched its reaction to Safety Behaviors of Chinese employees In this research, the Job Stress was measured by the scale with 6 different dimensions as Job Itself, Role Management, Interpersonal Relationship, Organizational Style, and Career Development, Family-Work Conflict, with separated 20 items In general, the instrument measures Job Stress through different dimensions

On the other hand, in this study, to measure the Occupational Stress variables, I decide to use the instruments of Cullen et al (1985), which includes 6 items to examine the work stress of staff In the near research, Higgins et al (2012) have already retested the structure of this measure and identified that one item (W2) has a weak correlation

to other items Therefore, I will only use 5 items of this measure with a 5-Point type scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)

Likert-The table below will show the information of the selected instrument of Cullen

et al (1985) for assessing the factor “Occupational Stress”

Table 2.6 All items of the measured instrument for Occupational Stress (Cullen et al.,

very frustrated or angry

am working

pressure when I am at work

OS5

There are a lot of aspects about my job that can make me pretty upset about things

2.1.4 Organizational Commitment

The final variable I want to concern about in this study is Organizational Commitment In this factor, I won't focus on identifying the impact of Interpersonal Conflict, Occupational Stress and Social Support on it

With the basic concepts of Organizational Commitment, according to Mowday

et al (1982), OC was defined as the behavior links workers to an organization In other words, some of the other authors define OC as an loyal attitude of workers that they would like to express to their companies (Muller et al., 1992), or psychological state illustrates the relationship of employees with their organizations and has meanings with worker whether continue being members of an organization or not (Meyer & Allen, 1991)

Normally, authors tend to focus on the affection aspect of an employee on work when defining However, when measuring the Organizational Commitment of workers, the authors N.J.Allen and J.P.Meyer (1984) suggested that OC is formed by two separate types of commitment, Affective Commitment, and Continuance Commitment Nevertheless, the research in 1990 inserted the third dimension “Normative Commitment” into the assessment instrument for OC by two authors, and they developed their assessment scales to measure the OC of employees based on three dimensions: Affective Commitment (AC), Continuance Commitment (CC), and Normative Commitment (NC) (Allen & Meyer, 1990) To have a deep understanding

of three types of commitment, the concepts regarding each of them are also determined

by two authors:

- Affective commitment: is the positive emotion of employees, which acts as a catalyst

for making them feel like the connection to their organization

- Continuance Commitment: Expansion towards employees, making them committed

to the organization through awareness of the benefits of embedding as well as the costs

of leaving the organization In short, employee engagement depends on the benefits they can explore in the organization

- Normative Commitment: It is the employee's commitment depending on their

responsibility to the organization This commitment occurs when employees realize they need to stay at the company because they have feelings of duty to continue being

in the organization

Based on the three-dimensional measurement of “Organizational Commitment”, many authors cited this in their academic studies relating to “Organizational Commitment” Many implications are linking to Organizational Commitment such as work turning or pleasure at work (Ho et al., 2009) Several authors focus on working pride lên engagement behavior through factors relating to Human Resource Management, such as redress, linking status between colleagues, quality of working provision, ability of application, accomplishment or acceptance (Eliyana et al., 2012) Nevertheless, in some specific cases, the stress at working place can also link with the commitment behaviors of employees by producing a little amount of positive effect (Ates & Ihtiyaroglu, 2019) For the most part, among the studies of OC, researches used the Allen and Meyer instrument Because Organizational Commitment in the scale of this study I am concentrating on is the cohesive relationship that has the positive feeling of employees toward their Organization, instead of problems relating

to wages, salary or obligation Thus, the scale to measure OC in this study focuses on only the Affective Commitment of employees, which includes 8 assessing items The table below will display the measured instruments of Allen and Meyer (1990)

Table 2.7 All items of the measured instrument for Organizational Commitment (Allen

I would be very happy to spend the

organization

5-Point Likert Scale

with people outside it

problems are my own

OC4 I think that I could easily become as attached to another organization as I

personal meaning for me

belonging to my organization

2.2 Review of Relevant Theoretical Model

Before displaying the conceptual model and hypothesis in the next part, the necessity of this part is to show the related studies of different authors that contain the involved theories, models and the contribution to my study‟s research model

According to the relationship between Interpersonal Conflict and Organizational Commitment, diverse researchers also pointed out the impacts of this factor on Organizational Commitment Imanol Belausteguigoitia et al (2016) determined that interpersonal conflict and work overload was two main factors linking to the practice

of commitment among workers, before moving to Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Figure 2.1 The conceptual model of the effect of Interpersonal Conflict on

Organizational Commitment (Imanol Belausteguigoitia et al., 2016)

Belausteguigoitia et al (2016) inserted that “Interpersonal conflict” has just put

on the relationship between employees and colleagues Although it linked to

“Organization Commitment”, the measurement with a multidimensional perspective for “interpersonal conflict” is just based on the horizontal level, so defining the relationship between employee and supervisor is also necessary for this study to make the full perspective of Interpersonal Conflict in organizations

In another study, the impacts of Interpersonal Conflict are also mentioned by others authors, Frone (2000) pointed that Interpersonal Conflict can be the interaction between one employee to other employees, or supervisors and brings the psychological consequences It means that it could spread out the different outcomes in both organizational relations when interacting with supervisors such as Job Satisfaction,

Organizational Commitment, and Turnover intension; and personal relations when affecting colleagues such as Depression, Self-Esteem and Somatic Symptoms

Figure 2.2 The general view of the Interpersonal Conflict‟s impacts (Frone, 2000)

In general, this research contributes to the sector of working health and human resource management Although the Organizational Commitment was shown as the Interpersonal Conflict‟s impact, it only existed in the linking between employees and supervisors, besides other consequences from this relationship

Regarding the implications of Occupational Stress, this part brings negative impacts to workers such as employee acts besides the influence relating physics, mentality, inner behaviors (Asamoah-Appiah & Aggrey-Fynn, 2017) Going deeply to figure out the impacts on Stress at work, the author Haq (2011) researched and pointed out that Interpersonal Conflict is one of the main factors formulating Stress, and he also assessed the positive relationship among these factors

Figure 2.3 The Model of the relationship between Interpersonal Conflict and Job Stress

(Haq, 2011)

In this study, Haq (2011) not only focused on the direct relationship from Interpersonal Conflict to various factors such as Organizational Deviance, Interpersonal Deviance, Intention to Quit Besides Job Stress at the working area, he also evaluated the indirect relationship from Conflict to those outcome factors through another mediator, the Perception of Politics

Based on the relationship between Interpersonal Conflict and Occupational Stress in former researches, the response from employees who are working in Vietnamese businesses to Stress when they are faced with Conflict is necessary to conduct an investigation

Studying Organizational Behavior, Occupational Stress can interact with Organizational Commitment of workers and this relationship is put in various environments by academic studies and produces divergent conclusions, even positive effects (Velnampy & Aravinthan, 2013), or detrimental outcomes in the organization (Viljoen & Rothmann, 2009) For all that, researching this relationship in the competitive market at a high pace as Vietnam, the impact of Occupational Stress on Organizational Commitment will be assumed to be negative