Factors affecting individuals’ subjective career success

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business - Tran Ha Quyen FACTORS AFFECTING INDIVIDUALS’ SUBJECTIVE CAREER SUCCESS MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2017 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business - Tran Ha Quyen FACTORS AFFECTING INDIVIDUALS’ SUBJECTIVE CAREER SUCCESS ID: 22130060 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2017 This page is intentionally left blank DECLARATION I hereby declare that: student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgement and citation is made in the thesis person This work has not been published Signature: Tran Ha Quyen ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis could not be complete without support, guidance, and encouragement of many people I would want to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, for her tremendous patience and professional guidance to my thesis I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the members of the examination committee for their valuable comments and suggestions for my thesis I would want to thank all of my lecturers at International Business School at University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City for their teaching and guidance during my Master course I also want to send a big thank you to the program coordinator, Ms Lien Nguyen, for her continuous admin support and paper work guidance I would like to thank my colleagues for their encouragement during the progress of this thesis Last but not least, I want to express my great thank you to my husband and family for their assistance and encouragement for my study ABSTRACT This study examines the factors affecting individuals’ subjective career success based on the sponsor and contest mobility of career success (Turner, 1960; Rosenbaum, 1984) Subjective career success has been normally approached by three perspectives: individual, structural, and behavioral in which the individual and behavioral approaches belong to the contest-mobility model of career success while the structural one belongs to the sponsored-mobility model With critical components of individuals’ subjective career success such as organizational sponsorship, external marketability, person-organization fit, and its consequence which is life satisfaction, the research makes an attempt to examine all of the three perspectives mentioned Research findings indicate that organizational sponsorship and external marketability make significant impacts on subjective career success and these relationships are positive This study also examines a number of personal information like gender, marital status, age, highest diploma, occupation, number of working years, and monthly salary when it comes to perceived career success In addition, subjective career success also positively affects life satisfaction The findings have important practical implications for managers and leaders, who generally seek to motivate their employees toward career achievement Key words: individuals’ subjective career success, organizational sponsorship, external marketability, person-organization fit, life satisfaction TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF APPENDICES CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research background 1.2 Research problem 1.3 Research objectives 10 1.4 Research scope 10 1.5 Structure of the thesis 11 CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 12 2.1 Theoretical foundation 12 2.2 The nature of subjective career success 12 2.3 Person-organization fit and subjective career success 15 2.4 Organizational sponsorship and subjective career success 16 2.5 External marketability and subjective career success 17 2.6 Subjective career success and life satisfaction 17 2.7 Conceptual model 19 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHOD 21 3.1 Research design 21 3.1.1 Research process 22 3.1.2 Measurement scales 22 3.2 Measurement refinement 26 3.3 Quantitative study 26 3.3.1 Sampling and data collection 27 3.3.2 Data analysis 27 CHAPTER RESEARCH RESULTS 28 4.1 Participant demographic 28 4.2 Scale reliability and validity 32 4.2.1 Reliability analysis 32 4.2.2 Convergent and discriminant validity 34 4.3 Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) 35 4.3.1 CFA for subjective career success 35 4.3.2 CFA for measurement model 36 4.3 The overall fitness of the structural equation model 38 4.4 Hypothesis testing results 40 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 42 5.1 Key findings of the study 42 5.2 Managerial implications 43 5.3 Limitations of the study and future research 45 REFERENCES 46 APPENDICES 52 LIST OF TABLES Table Operationalization of the variables .24 Table Descriptive statistics of demographic variables (Base=150) 28 Table Descriptive statistics of items (Base=150) 30 Table Cronbach’s alpha coefficients 33 Table Assessment of convergent validity 34 Table Assessment of discriminant validity 35 Table Correlation coefficients 38 Table Overall fitness 38 Table Regression weights 40 Table 10 Hypothesis testing results 41 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Conceptual model 19 Figure Research process 22 Figure CFA for subjective career success 36 Figure CFA for measurement model .37 Figure Structural results (standardized estimates) 39 LIST OF APPENDICES APPENDIX A - IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW 52 APPENDIX B - QUESTIONNAIRE 53 APPENDIX C- QUESTIONNAIRE – VIETNAMESE 63 APPENDIX D - DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS 67 APPENDIX E - MODEL FIT SUMMARY 68 APPENDIX F - CORREATION COEFFICIENTS .71 APPENDIX G - REGRESSION WEIGHTS FOR HYPOTHESIS TESTING 72 APPENDIX H - REGRESSION WEIGHTS FOR CONTROL VARIABLES 76 Estimate S.E C.R P Label EMA3 < - EMA 1.110 117 9.453 *** par_10 SCS1 < - SCS 1.000 SCS2 < - SCS 1.030 077 13.326 *** par_11 SCS3 < - SCS 1.021 090 11.356 *** par_12 SCS4 < - SCS 1.038 084 12.303 *** par_13 SCS5 < - SCS 895 091 9.809 *** par_14 LS5 < - LS 1.000 LS4 < - LS 773 074 10.383 *** par_15 LS3 < - LS 811 078 10.351 *** par_16 LS2 < - LS 880 082 10.730 *** par_17 LS1 < - LS 858 072 11.895 *** par_18 S TANDARDIZED R EGRESSION W EIGHTS : (G ROUP NUMBER - D EFAULT MODEL ) Estimate SCS < - POF 174 SCS < - OSP 550 SCS < - EMA 176 LS < - SCS 730 74 Estimate POF3 < - POF 800 POF2 < - POF -.005 POF1 < - POF 819 OSP1 < - OSP 780 OSP2 < - OSP 758 OSP3 < - OSP 852 OSP4 < - OSP 775 OSP5 < - OSP 840 OSP6 < - OSP 818 OSP7 < - OSP 797 EMA1 < - EMA 760 EMA2 < - EMA 851 EMA3 < - EMA 807 SCS1 < - SCS 831 SCS2 < - SCS 880 SCS3 < - SCS 795 SCS4 < - SCS 839 SCS5 < - SCS 722 75 Estimate LS5 < - LS 770 LS4 < - LS 805 LS3 < - LS 795 LS2 < - LS 947 LS1 < - LS 913 76 APPENDIX H - REGRESSION WEIGHTS FOR CONTROL VARIABLES Regression Weights: (Group number - Default model) Estim ate S.E C.R P Label SCS < - POF 0.182 0.137 1.331 0.183 par_19 SCS < - OSP 0.447 0.114 3.919 *** par_20 SCS < - EMA 0.169 0.082 2.062 0.039 par_21 SCS < - 0.103 0.101 1.016 0.31 par_29 LS < - SCS 1.117 0.137 8.179 *** par_22 POF3 < - POF POF2 < - POF 0.147 -0.059 0.953 par_1 POF1 < - POF 1.034 0.109 9.485 *** par_2 OSP1 < - OSP OSP2 < - OSP 0.873 0.088 9.933 *** par_3 OSP3 < - OSP 1.01 0.088 11.507 *** par_4 OSP4 < - OSP 0.904 0.088 10.229 *** par_5 OSP5 < - OSP 0.977 0.086 11.357 *** par_6 OSP6 < - OSP 0.978 0.089 11.021 *** par_7 OSP7 < - OSP 0.866 0.082 10.549 *** par_8 EMA1 < - EMA EMA2 < - EMA 1.025 0.108 9.466 *** par_9 EMA3 < - EMA 1.11 0.117 9.454 *** par_10 SCS1 < - SCS SCS2 < - SCS 1.028 0.077 13.331 *** par_11 SCS3 < - SCS 1.019 0.09 11.357 *** par_12 SCS4 < - SCS 1.037 0.084 12.311 *** par_13 Gender _re 0.009 77 SCS5 < - SCS 0.894 0.091 9.816 *** par_14 LS5 < - LS LS4 < - LS 0.773 0.074 10.388 *** par_15 LS3 < - LS 0.811 0.078 10.355 *** par_16 LS2 < - LS 0.88 0.082 10.732 *** par_17 LS1 < - LS 0.857 0.072 11.9 *** par_18 Regression Weights: (Group number - Default model) Estimat e S.E C.R P Label SCS < - POF 0.193 0.137 1.411 0.158 par_19 SCS < - OSP 0.462 0.113 4.087 *** par_20 SCS < - EMA 0.133 0.084 1.581 0.114 par_21 SCS < - Spouse_re 0.174 0.103 1.684 0.092 par_29 LS < - SCS 1.117 0.136 8.198 *** par_22 POF3 < - POF POF2 < - POF -0.01 0.147 -0.066 0.948 par_1 POF1 < - POF 1.032 0.109 9.493 *** par_2 OSP1 < - OSP OSP2 < - OSP 0.873 0.088 9.93 *** par_3 OSP3 < - OSP 1.01 0.088 11.494 *** par_4 OSP4 < - OSP 0.903 0.088 10.21 *** par_5 OSP5 < - OSP 0.978 0.086 11.355 *** par_6 OSP6 < - OSP 0.98 0.089 11.03 *** par_7 OSP7 < - OSP 0.867 0.082 10.553 *** par_8 78 EMA1 < - EMA EMA2 < - EMA 1.028 0.109 9.436 *** par_9 EMA3 < - EMA 1.111 0.118 9.438 *** par_10 SCS1 < - SCS SCS2 < - SCS 1.027 0.077 13.359 *** par_11 SCS3 < - SCS 1.017 0.09 11.367 *** par_12 SCS4 < - SCS 1.033 0.084 12.276 *** par_13 SCS5 < - SCS 0.894 0.091 9.841 *** par_14 LS5 < - LS LS4 < - LS 0.774 0.075 10.39 *** par_15 LS3 < - LS 0.812 0.078 10.357 *** par_16 LS2 < - LS 0.88 0.082 10.731 *** par_17 LS1 < - LS 0.858 0.072 11.9 *** par_18 Regression Weights: (Group number - Default model) Estimat e SCS SCS SCS SCS SCS