UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business Pham Thi Khanh Ngoc IMPACT FACTORS OF SALES EMPLOYEES’ CREATIVITY AND INNOVATIVE WORK BEHAVIOR IN BANKING INDUSTRY: EVIDENCE FROM VIETNAM ID: 22140030 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr Pham Ngoc Thuy Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016 Acknowledgement I would like to express my sincere acknowledge to my supervisor, Dr Pham Ngoc Thuy for her insightful guidelines, valuable recommendations, and feedbacks during my research time This research could not be possible without her evaluation in each stage which I spent My next appreciation also sends to participants of the survey They are colleagues, friends in many banks in HCM city They shared their time to assist me to answer the questionnaire All their contributions have helped me to have the successful study Abstract This study focuses on the impact of empowering leadership and challenge work environment on both sale employee’s creativity and innovative work behavior in Vietnamese banking industry An empirical test with a sample of 370 sale employees in 15 banks in Ho Chi Minh City by means of structural equation modeling indicates a strong relationship between sale employees’ creativity and innovative work behavior Moreover, the findings indicate that both empowering leadership and a challenge work environment are able to trigger sale employees’ creativity Among this, sale employees’ creativity plays as a mediating variable in the relationship between empowering leadership, a challenge work behavior, and the employees’ innovative work behavior In general, this study contributes some suggestions for bank managers in finding out the appropriate methods to stimulate employees’ creativity and innovative work behavior in order to aim at a strong and sustainable business performance Key words Empowering leadership, challenge work environment, creativity, innovative work behavior, banking industry, Vietnam TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TABLES INTRODUCTION LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS 2.1 Sale employee’s creativity and innovative work behavior 12 2.2 Empowering leadership and employee’s creativity 15 2.3 Challenge work environment and creativity 16 METHODOLOGY 18 3.1 Procedure and Sample 18 3.2 Measurement scale 21 DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULT 24 4.1 Measure validation 24 4.2 Confirmatory Factory Analysis (CFA) 27 4.3 Structural result 31 4.4 Hypothesis testing 32 DISCUSSION 34 5.1 Implications for managers 37 5.2 Conclusion 39 5.3 Limitations and directions for future research 40 SUPPORT INFORMATION 40 6.1 Findings of preliminary research 40 6.2 Questionnaire in English 44 6.3 Questionnaire in Vietnamese 47 REFERENCES LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Borrowed research model 11 Figure 2: Proposed research model 11 Figure 3: CFA result 28 Figure 4: SEM result 32 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of Sample 21 Table 2: Measurement scale 23 Table 3: Means, standard deviations, and standardized CFA loadings of items 30 Table 4: Structural paths in the model 33 Table 5: Findings of preliminary research 41 Table 6: Number of banks, and number of participated sale employees 43 Introduction According to Drucker (1989), any organization pretemits to innovate that will become the ultimate reason for the decline and demise of existing organizations Innovation is critical for all organizational long-term prosperity, particularly in dynamic business environment (Patterson, Kerrin & Gatto-Roissard, 2009) Lin and Liu (2012) concluded that innovation is a crucial factor that brings the sustainable competitive advantages which organizations can use to deal with such a rapid-change business environment So, what does the business start to innovate from? All innovations both arise from creative ideas of employees – a vital component of organization creativity that is the confirmation from many scholars (Woodman, Sawyer & Griffin, 1993) Therefore, stimulating the creative ability of employees is one of the decisive factors bring the succeed to an organization (Walton, 2003) Wong and Ladkin (2008) suggested that managers in service organizations should encourage their employees to be more creative Once organization can enhance their employees’ creativity, it can contribute to innovation and assist to the strong organizational survival and competitive advantage West (2002) stated that creativity can be regarded as an important component of innovative work behavior Although innovative work behavior is conducted by many scholars all over the world, research for this topic is also limited in Vietnam Innovative work behavior in service jobs is the most important component to positively contribute to service organizations’ performance; bank industry is regarded as an example It is accepted that procedural innovation contributes to economic development (Schumpeter, 1934) To reach to innovative work behavior in an organization, it is necessary for organizations to encourage creativity among employees As the matter of fact, due to the specific characteristics of banking job, employees often comply with available regulated procedures, principles of government and internal banking without promoting their active ability and creativity in their job Moreover, the policy that stimulates the innovation among banks has not applied popularly and strictly yet Apparently, a majority employee also passive in working, just only the delegated tasks and make a change if any requests from supervisors Consequently, employees have not made breakthroughs in their daily job and this influence seriously to banks’ performances Therefore, finding the factors that improve the innovative work behavior of each employee to improve the quality of human resources is considered as a key solution for the banking sector to meet the requirements of new development in recent years Subsequently, Edvardsson, Gustafsson, Johnson and Sanden (2000) recommended that the managers should make an environment and practices that are able to trigger creativity and innovation at the individual level Among this, sales employees are considered as a key labor force of banks in creating revenue The main decisive human resource of the banking industry is the sales person or credit employees who deal with directly customers to bring the revenue to bank However, workforce meets the development of the banking sector in recent years, but objectively recognized, quality of human resources is still low The vast majority of bank employees still have "gaps" in terms of skills (attitude to work, team work skills, proficiency in English, ability to communicate) and knowledge (the knowledge of the financial sector, banks in general), as well as the flexibility in daily activities Therefore, this paper aims to indicate that the sale employee’s creativity is as the vital precondition for innovative work behavior in banking service organizations In order to understand which factors can lead to sales employee’s creativity and innovative work behavior in banking environment This study will be conducted to examine two factors: empowering leadership and challenge work environment This study concentrates on examining creativity and innovation from banking sales employees’ perspective This study is limited to and examines the impact of two factors that are able to trigger sales employees’ creativity and innovation at the individual level, namely: (1) The impact of empowering leadership; and (2) The impact of a challenge work environment In order to solve the research problem mentioned previously, this research has the following objectives: examine whether empowering leadership and challenge work environment are linked to sale employee’s creativity, which is turn is linked to sale employees’ innovative work behavior in Vietnamese banking industry The objective is therefore to describe and explain the relationships between: empowering leadership and challenge work environment; and sale employees’ creativity and innovative work behavior in Vietnamese banking industry This paper was conducted in some banks in Ho Chi Minh City The result of the research will be able to use for Viet Nam in general and for further references since Ho Chi Minh City is one of the biggest economic centers of Viet Nam The interviewees will be sales employees who work in credit department and contact directly with customers In general, this paper will assist human resource managers who are working in banks in decision making, as well as in finding out the appropriate and effective activities or strategies to maximize employee’s innovation This paper has contributed to evaluation system of innovative work behavior level in banking industry in Vietnam, especially in dynamic city like Ho Chi Minh City Moreover, the result of this research would be reference source for researchers in banking human resource management Literature review and hypotheses Although the literature on innovation in banking service is sparse, there seems to some agreement among researchers that using and implementing theories of innovation developed only on the basis of industry observations are inadequate for studying innovations in service organizations in general and in banking industry in specifically (Gadrey et al., 1994) Dejer (2004) employed the same concepts and tools that are used for innovation in manufacturing organizations for service innovation Coombs and Miles (2000) suggest three ways of studying service innovation: “an assimilation approach”; “a demarcation approach”; and “a synthesis approach” The first way treats services as being similar to manufacturing; the second one states that service innovation is clearly various from innovation in manufacturing; and the third one  financial analysis, and problem solving Finding new and potential customers Empowering leadership Phạm Thị I am empowered Khánh Vân – to solve customer Relationship problems Manager of BIDV – 34 years old Challenge work environment Mai Thi NgocSale employee of Vietinbank – 26 years old Creativity Phan Thi Thanh Thuy – Sale employee of Vietinbank – 28 years old Suggests new ways to achieve goals or objectives Innovative work behavior Nguyen Thi Hai Yên – Relationship Manager of Vietinbank – 45 years old   problem solving Finding new and potential customers Others She suggested adding the detailed customer problems to help the readers understand easily I am empowered to solve customer problems (such as take care, follow up the demand, complaint of customers.) She suggest more items to test this construct I see the working environment in bank X always change My work at bank X is required to update the knowledge The interviwee said that the meaning is not clear, they suggested add the detailed goal of creadit department in I often suggest new ways to achieve proposed revenue’s goals She suggest should use the bank X In the bank X… 42 With the participation of over 390 sale employee from 15 banks in Ho Chi Minh City, the study reflected the relationship between variables After choosing the suitable answer, the number of satisfied collected feedbacks are 370 Table shows the number of sale employees who participated to answer the survey in 15 banks in Ho Chi Min city in specifically as belows : Table Number of banks, and number of sale employees participated Name of bank ACB Agribank ANZ BIDV Citibank Eximbank HSBC Nam A Number of participated employees 23 22 25 20 24 30 20 28 43 Name of bank OCB Oceanbank Sacombank Techcombank VIB Vietcombank Vietinbank Number of participated employees 35 26 27 22 28 20 20 6.2 Questionnaire in English The following part shows the survey which is used to ask sale employees in many banks in Ho Chi Minh city The content shows as belows : Dear participants, My name is Pham Thi Khanh Ngoc, a student of Master of Business class in University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City Currently, I have been doing a research to indentify some factors that impact on innovative work behavior of sales employees in banking industry Please kindly share your own thinking on the issues given in this questionnaire All your ideas will help for the success of my research I SCREENING QUESTIONS: Please answer the screening questions as belows: Name of the bank you are working for? Call “X” is the above bank’s name to answer the following questions What is your position? □ Sales employees □ Relationship Manager Have you had the innovative ideas in bank “X” yet? □ Yes Please go to the next question □ No Please stop here Thanks for your cooperation! What kinds of work you often innovate in your daily working activities? □ Customer services □ Bank policy procedures: documents, financial analysis, and problem solving □ Finding new and potential customers □ Others II QUESTIONNAIRE CONTENT: Please express the degree of your agreement with statements given below 44 7 7 Strongly agree Agree Slightly agree Undecided Disagree Slightly Disagree Strongly disagre Please express the degree of your agreement with statements given below by ticking (√) to the suitable number with: Number 1: Strongly disagree Number 7: Strongly agree Other degree in number 2, 3, 4, and Empowering leadership In bank X, I am empowered to solve customer problems (such as take care, follow up the demand, complaint of customers) I am encouraged to handle customer problems by myself (such as solving the document, following up the speed, meet customers) I not have to get management’s approval before I handle customer problems (in the authorized scope such as money exchange, fast document approval with lack of document or signatures) I am allowed to almost anything to solve customer problems I have control over how I solve customer problems (meet customers, add document) Challenge work environment Challenge is characteristic of banking environment 7 I use challenge as a part of my motivation to create new things in my working place I see the working environment in bank X always change My work at bank X is required to update the knowledge 7 1 2 4 5 6 7 7 7 1 2 4 5 6 7 7 Creativity 10 11 12 13 I often suggest new ways to achieve proposed revenue’s goals I often come up with new and practical ideas to improve performance 15 I often suggest new ways to increase quality I often promote and champion ideas to others I often develop adequate plans and schedules for the implementation of new ideas I often come up with creative solutions to problems 16 I often suggest new ways of performing work tasks 14 Innovative work behavior 17 18 19 20 I often look for opportunities to improve things I often wonder how things can be improved I often find new approaches to execute tasks I often mobilize support for innovative ideas 45 21 22 23 In bank X, I am an important organizational member enthusiastic for innovative ideas In bank X, I often attempt to convince people to support an innovative idea In bank X, I often transform innovative ideas into useful applications 7 7 25 In bank X, I often systematically introduce innovative ideas into work practices In bank X, I often contribute to the implementation of new ideas 26 In bank X, I often put effort in the development of new things III PERSONAL INFORMATION: 24 Please kindly provide some information about yourself and your career by ticking “x” in suitable answers: Your gender: □ Male □ Female How old are you? □ 22 – 25 □ 26 - 30 □ 31 - 35 □ >35 How many is your experience in bank X? □ 35 Thâm niên làm việc ngành ngân hàng Anh/Chị: