The Effect of Efficiency Evaluation on the Organizational Effectiveness of the Cabin Crew's Competency -Focusing on the Job Satisfaction of the Personal Capacity of Airline Cabin Crews-

Abstract

Purpose - In order for companies to be competitive and adapt to the trend of development, it is important for many airlines to secure outstanding human resources and the need to nurture them. It can be expected that by systematically analyzing and organizing the characteristics and types of competences considering the duties of the airline cabin crew, the personal and organizational capacities of the cabin crew can be defined and presented theoretically. Research Design, Data, and Methodology - This survey was conducted over a seven-month period from February 1 to September 30, 2018 and was designated as a domestic airline flight attendant. Direct visits to Incheon International Airport and Gimpo International Airport were also conducted through an online questionnaire. A total of 515 questionnaires were used for empirical analysis. To verify two hypothesis of this study, a regression analysis and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were performed using SPSS WIN 26.0. Results - Analysis on the impact of personal capacity of airline cabin crew on job satisfaction showed that technical competence, knowledge capacity and ability capacity, which are sub-factor factors of personal capacity, had a positive effect on job satisfaction. Recovery resilience also plays a positive role in relationships between individual competence and job satisfaction. Conclusions - It has been empirically analyzed that the personal characteristics of the airline crew have a significant effect on flight attendant's job satisfaction. It can be seen that flight attendants tend to perform well beyond what is required in their duties, and that active and confident cabin crew members tend to perform well in the direction of improving their duties, and are also highly satisfied with their duties.

1. Introduction

In order for airlines to keep pace with the development trend and to be competitive, it is important for many airlines to secure outstanding manpower and the need to foster manpower is highlighted. In addition, the service industry has recently seen an increasing number of customers' living standards and diverse types of needs, increasing the awareness of customers who grow rapidly and receive services directly. Therefore, companies are securing efficiency or differentiation and are pursuing changes, and what is proving to be an important task to do is to secure outstanding human service resources and develop capabilities.

The purposes of this thesis is to understand how the capacity of the cabin crew of the airline has an effect on job satisfaction. First, we will identify the attributes and types of capabilities that take into account the duties of the airline passenger flight attendant and examine whether the individual capabilities of the airline cabin crew affect their job satisfaction through an empirical analysis. We also want to present practical implications for the management of human services in the aviation industry by looking at the empirical analysis of the effects of control of resilience in relation to the personal capacity of flight attendants and task satisfaction.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Personal Capacity

The study of the capabilities of individuals in the organization began to draw attention through "Testing for Competency Other than Intelligence" by McClelland (1973) of the United States. The ability to describe a person's performance as various psychological and behavioral characteristics, and to achieve individual capabilities in an enterprise's environment by focusing on a form of behavior. Klemp (1980) defines competencies as potential characteristics of individuals who increase the effectiveness of their work and show excellence. Klemp's theory is most widely accepted in terms of human resources in the enterprise.

Boyatzis (1982) defined that an individual's actions exist with factors of function, motivation, character, self-image and social role and are expressed in action through interactions that affect an individual's behavior to respond to the needs of the environment and tasks. This is the definition of competency that is most widely used in research on individual competencies to date.

Spencer and Spencer (1993) argued that certain situations or tasks are the internal characteristics of individuals that contribute to excellence based on achievement criteria and are defined by knowledge, motivation, characteristics, self-concepts and techniques according to the degree of development potential. It also distinguishes between the surface and the interior, and states that the surface is easily developed and the core personality is relatively difficult to develop relative to the surface.

Sparrow (1996) classified competencies as individual and organizational competences and argued that the two dimensions of common ground are performance-critical or relative advantage-specific. In addition, it was said that the individual competency, management capacity and organizational competency could be divided into three factors, based on this, the capacity is best suited to the organizational purpose at the organizational level, and the capacity is best suited to the individual duties or duties at the individual level.

As such, there are differences in the definition of competency, depending on the area of learning and scholars, but the ability can be summed up as an individual's inherent characteristics that allow an individual to produce excellence in a particular area or task, and is related to the attributes for performing effective tasks. In this study, individual competencies are defined as "causes for successful performance or role and good performance" based on the definitions of McClelland (1973), Klemp (1980), Boyatzis (1982), McLagan (1989), Spencer and Spencer (1993), and Sparrow (1996).

2.2. Job Satisfaction

Although there are many different views of an organization or goal and difficulties in measuring it, it is difficult to define the validity that is universally applied to all organizations, it requires conceptualization of performance on that basis it represents the performance of the organization and can provide a gap in the concept of comparing the organization.

Locke (1976) defined task satisfaction as a positive state of emotion by assessing individual tasks and related details and assessing experience gained through their duties, and suggested that factors such as job, remuneration, promotion, and job environment influence it. In addition, job satisfaction was defined as a positive emotional state gained by an individual evaluating his or her or his or her own experience gained through his or her or her duties.

Aryee (1995) defined job satisfaction as an attitude toward duty, an emotional state resulting from an individual’s job evaluation, and expressed in a positive or neutral manner. Because the airline cabin crew’s job satisfaction is a factor in the productivity of the in-flight service, the airline considered the job satisfaction element of the cabin crew as a key element of the in-flight service.

Smircich (1995) defined task satisfaction as a series of attitudes that result from a balance of all preferences or preferences that each experiences in relation to her job.

Wood and Zeffane (2001) defined task satisfaction as a positive emotion that the person performing the task feels about the conditions under that it is performed.

Boswell, Tichy. and John (2005) defined task satisfaction as an important evaluation criterion for the operation of an organization, that the cultivation of self-esteem and loyalty of employees to their organization has some positive impact on management performan,e.

A similar concept to resilience is the notion of self-elasticity. Self-elasticity is a concept viewed as a type of personality, which differs from resilience, which means a dynamic process. Although self-elasticity is considered to be the ability to strengthen and mitigate self-control, it has the disadvantage of overlooking various factors related to the personal development process

Based on such prior research, the job satisfaction of Airline's cabin crew is defined as "The psychological performance indicator of the organizational Members, positive feelings and attitudes about their duties," and the following hypotheses are established.

H1: The personal capacity of the airline cabin crew will affect job satisfaction.

H1-1: The technical capacity of the airline cabin crew will affect job satisfaction.

H1-2: The knowledge capacity of the airline cabin crew will affect job satisfaction.

H1-3: The attitude capacity of the airline cabin crew will affect job satisfaction.

2.3. Resilience of Recovery

Resilient flexibility means spiritual resistance academically and defines mental immunity to stress or adversity, and the ability to convert adversity into mature experience (Waters & Srufe, 1983; Polk, 1997).

Luthar (2000) defined resilience as an individual's psychological resource to overcome various stressors and the ability to recover and adapt from that stress and perform functions above average despite various serious circumstances.

In this study, we intend to define resilience as the means to recover from adverse circumstances such as stress and the meaning of mental growth with resistance, based on a preceding study that defines 'resilience' as the meaning of 'restoration' that adapts to difficult and stressful situations and the word 'elastic' that indicates growth.

Russell and Russell (1995) defined as a component of resilience as personal vision, planning, interpersonal, problem solving, flexibility, self-confidence and organizational strength and described that these factors can effectively control stress or change.

The components of resilience are defined differently by academic areas and researchers.

Russell and Russell (1995) described these factors as components of resilience, defining them with personal vision, planning, interpersonal relationships, problem solving, flexibility, self-confidence, and organizational strength, and that these factors can effectively control stress or change.

Reivich and Shatte (2003) defined the components of resilience as seven factors: emotional control, empathy, optimism, cause analysis, self-efficacy, active challenge and impulse control. Emotional ability means the ability to control one's emotions under pressure and stress. Resilience is a force to overcome negative emotions, such as depression and anxiety, because emotion control controls and maintains positive emotions. Impulse control means the ability to restrain and persevere in action for temporary impulses or immediate gratification to achieve a goal. Since impulse control makes any problem or difficulty think carefully rather than improvise and act upon it, resilience allows patience to achieve any purpose. Optimism is defined as a positive expectation of the future, a belief that you can temporarily consider the failures you face and overcome adversity. Optimism gives you a positive attitude in the future, so resilience keeps you active and confident in your life. Cause analysis capability refers to the ability to analyse the root causes of a phenomenon of an object or condition. Cause analysis capability is the ability to pinpoint the cause of conflict or problem, and resilience is also the ability to solve problems. Empathy means the ability to feel and understand other people's feelings, psychological states, and internal experiences. This ability is a basic quality in a smooth interpersonal relationship. Since synesthesia is the ability to keep a positive relationship with others, resilience promotes social and emotional stability. Self-efficiency means believing in yourself. Self-efficiency is the belief that you can solve all the problems, which comes from a positive relationship with others. Self-efficiency makes you feel positive about yourself, and resilience gives you self-respect and self-confidence.

Based on these prior studies, the following hypotheses were established:

H2: Resilience will have a modulating effect in the relationship between the individual capability of the airline cabin crew and the job satisfaction.

H2-1: Emotions will have a modulating effect in the relationship between the individual capability and job satisfaction of an airline cabin crew.

H 2-2: Attitudes will have an modulating effect in the relationship between the individual capability and job satisfaction of an airline cabin crew.

H 2-3: Personality will have the modulating effect in the relationship between the individual capability and job satisfaction of an airline cabin crew,

3. Research Methodology

3.1. Research Model

The purpose of this thesis is to show the impact of the individual capacity of the airline cabin crew on job satisfaction and to verify the effect of adjusting resilience through empirical analysis. In this study, the following research model was established based on the preceding study, which formed the room crew's capacity based on the general capacity modeling of the Spencer and Spencer (1993) through the prior study. Based on these prior studies, the study model for empirical analysis of this study is shown in Figure1.

Figure 1: Research Model

3.2. Measurement

The purpose of this study was to analyse the impacts of the individual competence of Airline's cabin crew on job satisfaction and to provide efficient and practical human resources recruitment and development, reference materials and basis for training based on Airline's ability to positively manage Airline's human resources, and to present policy establishment and direction for Airline's human resource management.

Based on the preliminary survey results, the survey completed the final questionnaire for this survey by revising and supplementing the questionnaire's questionnaire by analyzing factors and validating the validity of the questionnaire through reliability verification. The purpose of the analysis and how to respond to the questionnaires was explained by visiting Gimpo Airport or Incheon International Airport in a rewritten questionnaire, and the questionnaires were asked to respond with a self-addressed expression. Variables configured for hypothesis testing are as follows in Table 1 for operational definitions of measurement variables with personal competence, task satisfaction, and resilience. In this study, the individual competence of Airline cabin crew is defined by the behaviour or characteristics of individuals who perform their duties successfully and who produce desirable results. The components of the personal capacity of a flight attendant are Berry and Parasuramen (1991), Hoffman and Ingram (1992), Kotler (1991), Spencer and Spencer (1993), Jaworski and Kohli (1993), Brown, Mowen, Donavan, and Licata (2002), Henning (2004).

Table 1: Operational Definitions

This study aims to define Job Satisfaction as "the positive emotion and attitude of the task as a psychological performance indicator of the members of the organization." based on the definitions seen in prior studies using the emotional and psychological task fulfillment concept (Locke, 1976; Aryee, 1995; Smircich, 1995; Wood & Zeffane, 2001; Wendy, 2005), which is most commonly used in empirical studies of the organization members of the Airline. This study uses the most commonly used concepts in empirical studies of resilience (Luthar, 2000; Russell & Russell, 1995; Reivich & Shatte, 2003) to define resilience as the ability to remain complacent with active challenge and not reluctant to challenge new things.

4. Methodology

4.1. Demographic Characteristics of the Subjects

This study conducted an analysis of the performance of the cabin crew, the causal relationship of job satisfactionand the modulating effect of resilience. The demographic characteristics of the sample for empirical analysis of this study consisted of gender, age, marital status, academic background, number of years of service, position and airline type. A total of 515 samples used in this empirical analysis of this study are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Demographic Profiles of the Respondents

4.2. Hypothesis Verification

4.2.1. Hypothesis Verification of Personal Capacity and Job Satisfaction

Multiple return analysis was performed to verify H1 through empirical analysis that the personal capabilities of the cabin crew would have a significant meaning on job satisfaction. First, in order to verify the assumption that a person's skills, knowledge, and ability among the sub-components of task satisfaction will significantly affect the peer factors of a crew's personal capacity, the modified value .406 of the regression model's description of the peer factors as independent variables was found to be F=118.057 (p=.000). The results of the empirical analysis on the meaning of the personal capacity of the airline crew on job satisfaction are shown in Table 3.

Table 3: The Effect of Personal Capacity of Cabin Crew on Job Satisfaction

* p< 0.05; ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

T: Technical Capacity

K: Knowledge Capacity

A: Ability Capacity

4.2.2. Hypothesis Verification on the Modulating Effect of Resilient Elasticity

In this study, hierarchical regression analysis was performed to verify whether resilience plays a meaningful role in the relationship between cabin crew capacity and job satisfaction. For hierarchical regression, three phases of hierarchical regression were performed with three regression formulas.

Ŷ= b0+b1X(formula 1)

Ŷ= b0+b1X+ b2Z (formula 2)

Ŷ= b0+b1X+ b2Z +b3XZ (formula 3)

Dependent variables were used to verify H2-1, H2-2 and H2-3 about whether emotions play a meaningful role in the relationship between the cabin crew's ability and job satisfaction. Independent variable items included technical, knowledge, and capability capacity in phase 1, and modulating variables in the second-phase model. In the final three-step model, the interaction term (capacity × resilience) was applied. The analysis results of H2-1, H2-2, and H2-3 on whether resilience play a role in the relationship between the competence of the cabin crew and their co-worker factors, which is a sub-factor of task satisfaction, are as follows: Analysis results showed that the variation in the description of the co-factor increased due to the interaction term and the variation in F was statistically significant at the level of 5%. Therefore, it has been shown that resilience have a significant adjustment effect in relation to the ability of the cabin crew and to the relationship of fellow factors, which is a sub-factor of job satisfaction. The empirical analysis of the modulating effect between the crew's personal capacity on resilience is shown in Table 4.

Table 4: The Modulating Effect of Resilience between the Crew’s Capacity and Job Satisfaction

T: Technical Capacity 

K: Knowledge Capacity

A: Ability Capacity

The analysis results of H2-1, H2-2, and H2-3 on whether a resilience plays a meaningful role in the relationship between the ability of the cabin crew and job satisfaction. In other words, a group with a higher resilience was found to have a greater meaning on the lower group. In addition, the effects of resilience on peer factors in Step 2 appear to be statistically significant at the level of 5%, which can be determined that resilience acts as a similar control. In addition, the nature of the relationship between the capacity of the cabin crew and the superior factor, that is a sub-factor of job satisfaction, has been presented to have significant modulating effect. Among the interaction terms between the competence and the nature of the cabin crew, the interaction terms of the technical capacity, the ability capacity and the personality were presented to have a statistically significant effect about the job satisfaction factors.

5. Conclusions

5.1. Summary and Implications of Research Results

This study is intended to present empirical analysis results on the impact of the individual competence of Airlin's cabin crew on job satisfaction, and to present theoretical and empirical research results to establish an efficient human management strategy for Airline.

First, in this study, the capacity was modelled by comprehensively reviewing the individual capabilities of the cabin crew based on the prior study of the competence of the airline cabin crew. It is also meaningful to have a pioneering approach to the personal capacity of the airline cabin crew to define individual capabilities and establish components.

Second, the study on the relationship of effect with the various factors of job satisfaction, which is an intangible criterion of competence and performance, was significant, and the study made a theoretical contribution to broadening the scope of research by identifying the relation of individual capacity to job satisfaction.

Third, it is meaningful that the individual capacity of the airline cabin crew has been identified and approached to the positive and negative impact components of task satisfaction. Individual competencies are found to have the highest level of explanation for job satisfaction. This suggests that job satisfaction may be explained depending on the individual competence of the airline's cabin crew.

Fourth, as an indicator of the performance of Airline's cabin crew, we approached customer orientation, which is intangible performance, and as part of our recent tendency to analyze customer orientation motivation, propensity and attitude in the service industry, there are academic implications that we have expanded the scope of our research by dividing it into voluntary and business customer orientation.

Based on the empirical results of this study, we would like to present some practical suggestions to show the direction in which airlines develop human resources management programs based on the competence of cabin crew. First of all, the following measures are taken to enhance the job satisfaction of the airline flight attendant and to enhance the individual competency.

It was analyzed that individual competency had a significant effect about job satisfaction. It can be shown that cabin crews who are more likely to perform tasks well than are required in their responsibilities and are more self-confident, such as confidence and activism, are more satisfied with their duties. Recruitment criteria should be indexed to give priority to applicants with this capacity when recruiting new employees, and after recruitment, education should be strengthened to foster initiative and self-confidence in performing their duties through new or re-training.

Job satisfaction has been shown to be a factor that only affects work customer orientation. Strengthening the job satisfaction of cabin crew should be a priority, as overall satisfaction with the job and a pleasant mind increase the work customer orientation that seeks to give customers more useful and necessary information. This should be accompanied by education and training programs that can enhance a full understanding, acquisition, and self-esteem of the job. If a person receives excellent job performance or praise from a customer, he or she will be given significant recognition at the airline level, and the systematic connection with the reward and promotion system will also be a way to improve satisfaction with the job.

As such, the airline cabin crew responsible for leading customer service plays an important role in customer orientation as seen by the airline's performance, so it is important to secure, maintain and nurture human resources, which are essential elements for confirming competitive advantages in the rapidly changing competitive era

5.2. Limitations of Research

This study has the following limitations. This study has validated the impact of individual capacity of Airline's cabin crew on job satisfaction and has been carried out to provide various implications for future human resource management measures for domestic airlines, but has the following limitations:

The failure to obtain more samples and the limitations of the target's coverage to a variety of airlines and three factors of personal capacity were extracted in the process of deriving the capacity of the cabin crew, and the limited capacity factors did not secure objective reliability in the multidisciplinary capacity of the airline cabin crew. Finally, it is necessary for subsequent studies to explore the influence relationships among variables in empirical analysis to derive more effective implications in terms of capacity-oriented human resources development.