Perception of Organizational Support to Lecturers' Research Motivation: The Case of Vietnam

Abstract

The aim of this study is to test the direct relationship and the indirect relationship of the perceived organizational support to lecturers' research motivation through "expectation" factor (belief in ability). The subject of the study is lecturers who are teaching and researching in the fields of economic, management and business administration at universities in Vietnam. The questionnaires were directly sent to lecturers at scientific conferences, sent out via e-mail and Facebook, the questionnaires were designed on google docs and directly sent to the lecturers. The detailed sample includes 475 respondents. The results of a quantitative analysis with a research sample of 475 lecturers in economics universities in Vietnam show that it is impossible to separate between lecturers' research ability and motivation. Lecturers with increased expectation (in terms of capability) also have increased research motivation, and vice versa. At the same time, the research also affirms the role of perceived organizational support, which not only has a direct positive impact on research motivation, but also increases expectation, thus, indirectly influence research motivation. This suggests that the solution for managers who want to improve research motivation by having measures to increase the expectation for the lecturers through various forms of organizational support.

1. Introduction

Higher education has long been a place of human resource development in any country. Lecturers play an important role in improving the quality of higher education (Hung and Tuan, 2020). According to Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam (2019), the country has 73,312 lecturers; of which only 21,106 are PhDs, and 44,705 are Masters. The number of lecturers with PhD degrees only accounts for 28.8% of the total number of lecturers. Obviously, the common ground of Vietnamese lecturers is still lower than that of lecturers in universities in developed countries around the world, where they must be PhDs from the beginning. This indicates the downside of Vietnamese lecturers’ research capabilities. In order to review and improve the quality of the Vietnamese higher education system, with a particular focus on the lecturers’ research activities, the Government implemented a higher education reform program in 2005. The Prime Minister of Vietnam issued Decision No. 145/2006/QD-TOT on key policies and directions for the establishment of a number of international standard universities in Vietnam, of which a number of universities are selected to be developed into a research university (Prime Minister, 2006). These policies are in place to support the transformation of a number of key universities from teaching institutions to research institutions by 2020, but this goal has yet to be achieved.

In terms of the specific context in a number of Vietnamese universities in recent years, the distribution of the workload of lecturers includes teaching, researching, learning and other duties at the university. Research hours are the number of hours that lecturers have to complete for researching activities to produce research results, especially publications. The heads of higher education institutions base on the development goals and strategies of the organizations as well as specific characteristics of subjects, majors and specific conditions of the organizations to determine the appropriate standard of teaching and researching hours for lecturers in a school year. A number of universities in Vietnam are fully autonomous and many are on a path of partial autonomy towards full autonomy, therefore, these universities have the right to make their own specific policies based on the general regulations of the Ministry to achieve their goals. But the reality shows that many universities are still struggling to come up with the best and most effective policies in the implementation of lecturers’ tasks including teaching, researching and other activities. Vietnam’s international publications in 2019, according to Scopus’s statistics, is 11,461, which increased 1.3 times in comparison to 2018 and each author publishing prestigious international scientific publications, equivalent yet up to 0.2 paper/year on average. This reflects very low productivity compared to other universities in the Asian region, where it is normal for a scientist to publish 2–3 papers/ year on an average. This result is clear that in the economic field, the number of international publications are still limited compared to other fields such as natural science and engineering.

The above figures show that science and technology in general and research in particular in Vietnamese universities, although it tends to increase over time, when comparing to other countries in the region, this has left behind and shown limitation of lecturers’ research capabilities. Some previous studies demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between research productivity and research motivation (Duc et al., 2020; Chandra et al. 2011; Chen et al., 2006; Tien, 2000). Specifically, those express a higher level of total motivation achieving better research performance. Therefore, the limitation of research activities is due to the lack of research motivation of lecturers and many universities in Vietnam are facing challenges in the process towards the research based university, integration, and internationalization.

Vietnam is a country with an undeveloped science background, an emerging economy and especially the education sector has gone through a period of many changes. The background has many differences with research in this field from authors all over the world, which changes the lecturers’ beliefs about self-effort. Zhang (2014) asserted that when studying human dynamics, they need to be considered in different contexts, they are not isolated but located in and connected with the culture of the organizations. Culture creates the context in which employees complete their work. When people are naturally motivated, it means that the organization has provided the working environment and atmosphere to enhance their motivation (Duc et al., 2020; Baron, 1983). Numerous studies have confirmed the role of perceived organizational support to employees’ commitment and emotion to the organization and productivity (Isthofaina & Udin, 2020; Hoa et al., 2020.). Nguyen et al. (2016) also explored the Vietnamese context, in particular, organizational support and research cooperation are factors motivating lecturers in research. However, the study only showed qualitative conclusions but did not have statistical tests.

Furthermore, in the context of Vietnam, the lecturers’ beliefs will increase when they realize that the organization is always ready to help and support them in research. So, the aim of this study will not only test the direct relationship but also test the indirect relationship of the perceived organizational support to lecturers’ research motivation through “expectation” factor (belief in ability).

2. Literature Review

Any scholarly research produced by lecturers contributes to the creation of new knowledge of laws and phenomena that are regarded as lecturers’ research results (Creswell, 1986; Lertputtarak, 2008). The lecturers’ research activity is defined by Lertputtarak (2008) as any scholarly activity that lecturers perform when conducting research such as identifying research problems, conducting document searches, collecting data, analyzing data or writing scientific reports.

The theories of human motivation have been investigated from the perspective of psychological and behavioral science. Different researchers and psychologists have provided very different definitions of motivation. Motivation as an internal state causes a person to behave in order to achieve set goals (James, 2011), which is what motivates people to act, is the reason for behavior. Lockwood (2005) defines motivation as the overall force impacts outside or inside a person which makes him perform various activities. Mitchell (1997) defines work motivation as the orientation, intensity, and persistence of work-related behaviors that the organization wants.

With specific and difficult tasks such as scientific research of lecturers, it requires lecturers to have faith in their own capability to persistently overcome challenges in the research process. Bailey (1999) emphasized that in addition to the internal and external motivating factors, confidence is a necessary factor to consider when studying lecturers’ research motivation. Bandura (1982) also noted that people with low self-confidence may find it difficult to get things done, people with high self-confidence are able to do it with ease. Individuals who feel confident will work harder and be more persistent when they have difficulty rather than those who doubt their capabilities. On the other hand, an individual will have more confidence in his or her capability to complete a task if the environment is favorable for such activity to take place. However, in fact, studies often separate the capability with motivation as Chen et al. (2006) and Tien (2010) argue that “expectation” does not have the effect of predicting research motivation. Zhang (2014) indicated that confidence does not affect research productivity. According to the expectation theory of Vroom (1964), the factor “expectation” is one of three factors (expectation, valency, instrumentality) and simultaneously affects the motivation related to the behavior. Thus, theoretically, there is a lack of clarity in the interaction between the “expectation” (in terms of capability) and research motivation.

Perception of “expectation” includes perceptions of personal efficiency, work complexity, and social control variables. The expectation of someone’s effort to fulfill a set goal depends on experiences, personal confidence and the perception of job goal difficulty (Chiang & Jang, 2008). So, people act on their own beliefs about how well they can perform the needed behaviors to be successful. Therefore, it is impossible to fully predict without taking into account self-confidence (Bailey, 1999). For example, a lecturer with a high sense of personal confidence can help sustain efforts even under adverse conditions and uncertain results and vice versa if he or she has low self-confidence then under disadvantage conditions, they will have reduced motivation or even no motivation to perform.

The social exchange theory highlights the mutual exchange of resources among individuals and society. Social exchange and reciprocity have been studied in many contexts such as “support” (Ozono et al., 2016). Furthermore, social and reciprocal exchange is widely studied in an organizational context including employers, leaders, and relationships with subordinates. If an organization provides support to its employees (e.g., a flexible schedule), it will result in employees’ positive responses such as satisfaction and commitment to the organization (Ahmad and Yekta, 2010). Eisenberger defined this support as “perceived organizational support” (POS- perceived organizational support), and POS was clarified as the degree to which employees believe that their organizations value their contributions and feelings, and satisfies their social needs. When being aware of this, employees will tend to have an increase in their motivation to work for the organization. Based on principles of the social exchange, the organizational support theory states that employees with a high perceived organizational support will seek to respond with a more positive work attitude, and greater work effort.

3. Literature Review and Hypotheses

There are many theoretical frameworks that are applied to explain the lecturers’ research activity. While the theory of demand focused on explaining human outside and inside satisfaction, other remarkable studies as Chen et al. (2006); Tien (2000); Lertputtarak (2006) used Vroom’s expectation theory to explain the individual’s cognitive processes leading to behavioral decision-making. “Expectation” is defined by Victor Vroom (1964, 20) as “temporary belief related to the possibility that a particular action will be followed by a specific outcome”, with regard to individual perception that effort is positively correlated with work performance, if effort increases, work performance will increase or not. Chiang and Jang (2008) found that “expectation” has a positive influence to the motivation of hotel staff as well as the “expectation” factor. A number of other studies suggested that confidence (belief in the capability to succeed at work) positively affects productivity and motivation (Bailey, 1999; Schoen and Wincour, 1988; Vasil, 1993). According to Bailey (1999), with the more difficult and challenging jobs, high confidence will help individuals to be more patient and enduring at work. Vasil (1993) stated that confidence increases accordingly with the qualifications and experiences of the lecturers. Therefore, in the context of Vietnam, where research activities are not strong, especially in the economic field, the “expectation” factors will positively affect the lecturers’ research motivation.

Self-ability expectation leads to behavioral correspondence (Miller and Grush, 1988). Vroom’s theory of expectation (1964) stated that an individual believes that his or her efforts could lead to certain achievements. For example, the lecturer’s belief in calculating personal effort when conducting research (such as writing international articles) will have the desired results (manuscripts are accepted for publication), then that lecturer will be motivated to undertake research, writing and posting to international journals. Therefore, the hypothesis H1 is designed as:

H1: Expectation positively affects the lecturers’ research motivation

Perception of “expectation” includes perceptions of personal efficiency, work complexity, and social control variables. The expectation of someone’s effort to fulfill a set goal depends on the experiences, personal confidence and the perception of job goal difficulty (Chiang & Jang, 2008). So, people act on their own beliefs about how well they can perform the behaviors needed to be successful. It is therefore impossible to fully predict without taking into account self-confidence (Bailey, 1999). For example, a lecturer with a high sense of personal confidence can help sustain their efforts even under adverse conditions and vice versa, if they have low self-confidence then under adverse conditions they will be reduced motivation or not even motivation to perform. Especially, in adverse conditions such as when the goal is too difficult or there is a lack of work experience (such as international publication), in such a condition if they are aware that there is always support from colleagues, leaders, universities when they need, the belief in their capability of success will go up and vice versa. Therefore, we design the hypothesis as:

H2: Perception of organizational support positively influences expectation

Purvis et al. (2015) argued that the motivation of stakeholders is stronger when the stakeholders share perceptions of the psychological environment, when the organizational environment is thought to exist. That is employees have a lot of shared goals and values that will create a better relation between the manager and employees and that promotes participation (Schneider et al., 2011).

If an employee is aware of himself or herself of his or her worth and is supported by an organization, he or she may feel a greater connection to the organization and respond to actions that benefit the organization (Liu, 2004). Researchers demonstrated that a higher perceived organizational support could lead to a higher level of work participation (Eisenberger et al., 1990). On the other hand, Rhoades et al. (2001) proved that a higher perceived organizational support level leads to lower levels of absence. So, if an organization gives their employees with values, they will respond with specific behavior is participation. Due to the nature of research activities, lecturers’ research motivation faculty will change if they receive shared information from the universities (they understand the university’s goals), knowledge is shared through both internal and external training (publishing experiences sharing sessions: learning about journals to submit articles, how to write articles, how to respond to critics, research training courses, etc.), resources are shared in the empowerment to make decisions (the right to proactively decide information) and lecturers are well-compensated. According to the social exchange theory, all of the above creates help, share, and support each other in the organization and it promotes the participation of lecturers in research. Therefore, hypothesis H3 is as follows:

H3: Perception of organizational support positively affects lecturers’ research motivation

For those engaged in a research task, especially when there are other tasks such as teaching and managing, stimulation, direction, and maintenance sufficient personal resources to conduct research could be very difficult. This task is hard if an individual holds the belief that he or she is incapable of performing research. For this reason, self-confidence is an important additional dimension to improving researchers’ psychology (Bailey, 1999). However, the assessment of job requirements must be aware of a good environmental condition which understood as environmental expectation, one may expect that activity to be come true (Bailey, 1999). That environment supports, helps, and shares experiences for employees who complete work, will increase expectation of high abilities. Hence, hypothesis H4 is designed as:

H4: Perception of organizational support positively influences lecturers’ research motivation through expectation.

4. Research Methodology

4.1. Sample and Data Collection

The subject of the study is lecturers who are teaching and researching in the fields of economic, management and business administration at universities in Vietnam. The research applied the convenient sampling method. The questionnaires were directly sent to lecturers at scientific conferences, sent out via e-mail and Facebook, the questionnaires were designed on google docs and directly sent to the lecturers. The detailed sample includes 475 questionnaires as follows: 69.7% female lecturers and 30.3% male lecturers. Lecturers under 34 years old make up 33.9%; 61.1% are from 35-55 years old and 5.1% are over 55 years old; 39.6% are PhDs; 59.6% are Masters and 0.8% having Bachelor’s degrees; 9.7% of lecturers are Professors and Associate Professors. 

4.2. Scale and Questionnaire Development

The study used perceived organizational support scales by Eisenberger et al. (1986). Perceived organizational support is measured by seven observed variables on a scale from 1 to 5 points, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Perceived organizational support mentions to whether an employee feels they are concerned by their organization. It is included appreciating employees’ goals and contributions; considering and resolving employees’ opinions; caring about employees’ feelings; willing to support and help employees when they are facing difficulties or giving special support at work; being responsible in reviewing and solving employees’ errors. Some indicators in the original scale have been removed/ adjusted to be appropriate in the current context in Vietnam.

“Expectation” (EXPECT) is measured using four indicators of Chiang and Jang (2008). The content of indicators asked whether increasing research efforts will lead to improved results, increased productivity, quality and efficiency of research implementation.

The research used Wright’s six indicators (2004) to measure research motivation. Questions are designed for personal self-assessment of participation level, orientation, work intensity and patience at work.

To collect data for research, questionnaires are developed on the basis of indicators measuring concepts in the research model. Before designing the pilot questionnaire with a small sample, the study interviewed 11 lecturers to test the concepts of variables and the connotation of indicators. Indicators are translated into Vietnamese through forward-reverse translation. Then, the questionnaire was tested with a small sample of respondents to ensure there was no misunderstanding about the content of the question and to adjust the final form of the questionnaire. Finally, the indicators used for formal study are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Variables and Attributes

Before testing the hypotheses, the research conducted the scale reliability test by Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmation factor analysis (CFA) and used linear structural model (SEM) to test research hypotheses.

5. Research Results

5.1. Reliability Analysis

The results of analyzing the reliability of Cronbach’s Alpha of the scales for the first time after eliminating the observed variables POS3, EXPECT4, EXPECT5, MOT3, the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of the respective scales will increase. Table 2 shows the analysis results of Cronbach’s alpha reliability of the final scales. The total variable correlation coefficients of the observed variables in the scale are greater than 0.4 and there is no case of removing any observed variables that can make Cronbach’s Alpha of this scale increase. 

Table 2: Results of Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficients

5.2. Exploratory Factor Analysis

The initial research model includes three variables and 17 attributes (except demographic variables). After testing the scales with Cronbach’s Alpha, four observed attributes of POS3, EXPECT4, EXPECT5, MOT3 were removed and 13 observed variables were included in the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with oblique rotation using Promax, Principal Axis Factoring average variance extracted, KMO and Bartlett test method (Bartlett’s Test) to measure sample compatibility.

When analyzing the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) at the first time for the impact factors group, the results showed that the coefficient of KMO test, Bartlett test, average variance extracted were satisfactory, but the loading factor of the observations after EFA removed POS2 was increased and MOT4 < 0.5. Thus, it is necessary to remove these two variables and run EFA again. The results of the second run are presented in Table 3, showing that the test results are satisfied: KMO = 0.890, so factor analysis is completely appropriate; Sig. (Bartlett’s Test) = 0.000 < 0.05, proving that the observed variables are correlated in the whole; Eigenvalues = 1.07 > 1, representing a part of variation explained by a factor, the factors which were eliminated will mean the best summary of information; Total variance extracted = 68.246 > 50% shows that 68.246% variation of the data is explained by three new factors.

Table 3: Results of Factor Analysis​​​​​​​

5.3. Confirmatory Factor Analysis

The results reflect the relevance of the model such as Chi-square = 1317,803 (P = 0.000); Chi-square / df = 4.378 < 5; RMSEA = 0.06 < 0.08 and TLI = 0.90; CFI = 0.916; GFI = 0.904 are all greater than 0.9. Thus, the results are consistent with the collected data and unidirectional assurance.

In addition, the Standardized Regression Weights of all scales are satisfactory (> 0.5). Therefore, all scales reach convergence values. The correlation coefficient results of all pairs have P-value < 0.05, so the correlation coefficient of these conceptual pairs is different from 1.0 at the significance level of 5% or 95% confidence level. Thus, these conceptual pairs reach discriminant validity 

Table 4 shows that the combined reliability (CR) of all scales > 0.7 is ideal; Average Variance Extracted (AVE) > 0.5 (50%) so the value is good. Thus, this result shows that the scales of research concepts are satisfactory in terms of value (unidirectional, convergent value and discriminant value) and reliability.

Table 4: Results of Analyzing the Reliability of Variables by CFA Analysis

Note: N = 475; CR: Critical value; AVE: Average Variance Extracted.

5.4. Testing the Relationship of Variables in the Model

Table 5: Estimated results of research model

Note: Significance level (p) *** <0.001; SE: Standard deviation, CR: Critical value.​​​​​​​

The “expectation” has a direct and positive relationship to the research motivation (β = 0.142, p-value = 0.001 < 0.01). So, hypothesis H1 is supported.

The perceived organizational support has a direct and positive relationship to the research motivation (β = 0.644, p-value < 0.001). So, hypothesis H2 is supported.

The perceived organizational support has a direct and positive relationship to the “expectation” (β = 0.451, p-value < 0.001). So, hypothesis H3 is supported.

Testing H4: “Expectation” is the intermediate variable for positive influence from “perceived organizational support” to research motivation.

The intermediate variable is EXPECT. Parameters set for the path from POS to EXPECT A, from EXPECT to MOT and calculating indirect effect’s coefficient from two parameters which are the B and implementing bootstrap for testing this out.

Table 6 shows that the p-value for indirect effect is 0.003 < 0.01, which means that there exists an intermediate relationship from the perceived organizational support to lecturers’ research motivation through the intermediate variable is the “expectation”. In other words, the “expectation” plays a mediating role in the positive relationship from the perceived organizational support to the research motivation. The results of A x B test = 0.280 this is an indirect effect estimate.

Table 6: Results of the reliability of the intermediate variable​​​​​​​

Table 7 illustrates that there is no bias, the result of the difference (bias column) between the estimate value and the mean value column has a very small absolute value and the ritical value CR = 1 therefore, it is possible to consider a very small bias in the 95% confidence level or the estimated results from the original model and from the mean of 500 other estimates giving the same or the model is reliable.

Table 7: Result of model bias​​​​​​​

6. Discussion and Implications

6.1. Discussion

First, the ability and motivation to work are usually separated as in the study by Chen et al. (2006, 2013) and Tien (2010) this research results shows that these two factors exist a relationship which is the same direction and statistically significant. The more lecturers believe in their ability, the more research motivation they get. Whereas the less research motivation they get or even having no motivation.

Second, the existence of organizational support forms is significant in research motivation. This result also indicates the importance of which universities not only share information about the university’s goals, but lecturers are also interested in goals, desires, and helping each other in difficulties and appreciating lecturers’ efforts and achievements. These things have also been confirmed and highlighted in the study of Nguyen et al. (2016) on the school’s support network system in research. Babu and Singh (1998) also emphasized that funding is essential for improving research motivation and productivity research of scientists and this could explain the reason why the output of scientists in developed countries is higher than those in developing countries (Irvine and Martin, 1985). Webber (2011) emphasized that small changes in funding could lead to large changes in lecturers’ research productivity in terms of both the quantity and quality of publications. Another form of organizational support is the collaborative research, which involves building relationships in research issues, maintaining relationships with colleagues, and using it to achieve research goals. This has been proved to be a useful way to increase research participation. According to Wolff and Moser (2009) and White et al. (2012), collaboration among colleagues occurs in different ways, such as co-authoring a publication, or working together. This could easily take place in an environment where lecturers having similar research interests, knowledge, and common goals and values. Strong and regular collaboration will maintain research motivation among colleagues (Bland and Ruffin, 1992; Creswell, 1986).

Third, perceived organizational support impacts research motivation through the intermediate variable “expectation”. This indirect effect coefficient (β = 0.280). This demonstrates that perceived organizational support not only has a direct impact on lecturers’ research motivation, but also has a very strong indirect impact on increasing the confidence in the success of lecturers and resulting in a strong motivation for lecturers to actively participate in research. Collaboration between colleagues was emphasized by most of the interviewees. They are aware of the importance of support and collaboration in research, especially for young lecturers. Some people want to do research, but they are not confident in their abilities. Collaboration could help inexperienced young lecturers improve their research skills, then gradually strengthen their research abilities. This result is similar to the results from the qualitative research by Nguyen et al. (2016). Accordingly, some lecturers who were directly interviewed confirmed that they could not complete the PhD thesis alone without having the supervision and support of the instructors or are not ready to start writing and sending the manuscript to journals due to the fear of being rejected because of their poor writing skills while the university does not provide support services for this issue. More importantly, some lecturers point out the importance of collaboration between Vietnamese lecturers and international scholars, and their research abilities will be rapidly improved when participating in research projects and learning from international scholars.

6.2. Implications

Research has shown that enhancing the capability of research is extremely important, it should be ahead of bonuses or other incentives. Vietnamese lecturers are not confident enough in their capabilities, so expectation for success in research are weak and uneven. The managers may gradually increase the research requirements in the universities. For example, the international publication may initially be in the form of incentives but gradually become mandatory, which creates the opportunity for lecturers with more experiences and advanced research capabilities. In addition, the universities should also create the best conditions and environment for lecturers to improve their research capacity such as organizing fostering classes about research methods, enhancing experiences sharing sessions of researching and publishing internationally, creating the best research network at the university on fields of the deep research so lecturers are always aware of the supportive environmental conditions when needed so that they can maximize their potential research capability.

Awareness of the organizational support should not only be in the universities, but also in the whole system from the highest management position down to the departments. The Government should boldly change the investment mechanism for science and technology activities in the current “spread, ask for” mode into the mechanism of “focusing on one management focal point” and “key investment”, reduce intermediaries in management, bring practical effects. Regarding finance, implementing the whole contracting mechanism to collectives or individuals in charge of research. With the mechanism of autonomy being expanded, universities also have to actively establish regular and stable relationships with enterprises and large economic organizations to obtain sustainable funding. The universities also need to encourage and create conditions for faculties and departments to establish “strategic partnerships” with enterprises and economic organizations. Research groups should also be formed from departments and the departments should actually be built into the nucleus of science in the universities.

Although the results of previous studies of lecturers’ research motivation in Western universities have been partially replicated in this study, the paper shows a difference in research capability of lecturers in Vietnam, which is a country in a new midland with science and education background had many movements although has not developed yet. The findings could provide strategic solutions to improve lecturers’ research motivation in other countries having in common with Vietnam. However, the generality of these findings for all universities may be limited because of the different universities’ cultural contexts, resources and target orientation. In addition, since human motivation is a very complex psychological field, it is very different among each group.