Current situation of working attitude of young officers at research institutes in Hanoi city

86 HNUE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE Social Sciences, 2020, Volume 64, Issue 4D, pp. 86-95 This paper is available online at CURRENT SITUATION OF WORKING ATTITUDE OF YOUNG OFFICERS AT RESEARCH INSTITUTES IN HANOI CITY Tran Thi Ha1 và Le Thi Ngoc Thuy1 1Faculty of Primary Education, Hanoi National University of Education 2Institute of Psychology, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences Abstract. Working attitude is one of the factors that makes work performance of people in general, and of young staff in particular. Survey results on 191 cadres with less than 10 years of experience in Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology and Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences showed that they have certain efforts in their current job. There was relative satisfaction with the current job. There was no difference in attitude working among young cadres according to gender and workplace, but there was a difference in degree of satisfaction with management by seniority, that differences was statistically significant. At the same time, job satisfaction will create positive changes in the work of young staff. Keywords: working attitude, young staff, job satisfaction, job performance. 1. Introduction To become a good employee, besides having professional knowledge, a positive-working attitude is indispensable. Changing positive attitude has a great impact on work efficiency (Richard E. Petty et al. (2014), William D. Crano and Radmila Prislin (2010). A positive attitude requires each individual to constantly look back at himself, to experience by himself in order to learn how to view and solve problems in a positive and professional manner. There is a consistency between attitude and behavior (William D. Crano, Radmila Prislin (2010). In Dolores's research also showed that the formation and change of human attitude in each context has different manifestations. Firstly, attitudes change with regard to values, common goals, language, emotions and human development. The second context is social relationships, changing attitudes makes relationships among people more empathetic, persuative and easier to achieve common goals (Dolores Albarracin and Sharon Shavitt (2018) 1, 2, 3. Young cadres are considered a core workforce of a nation, greatly contributing to the building and enrichment of each country's economy. Therefore, studying the working attitude of young cadres in general and young cadres at research institutes in Hanoi city in particular is especially essential to help readers have a general view of the current situation of their working attitude, identifying the objective and subjective factors that affect their working attitudes, from which it is enable to take measures to improve the positive working attitudes of young cadres. Received April 13, 2020. Revised April 23, 2020. Accepted May 11, 2020. Contact Tran Thi Ha, e-mail address: maihoangha1986@gmail.com Current situation of working attitude of young officers at research institutes in Hanoi city 87 2. Content 2.1. Research overview and principal concepts In psychology, attitude issues attract concern of many scientists and they have given different points of view about these. The tendency to regard attitudes consists of following elements: cognitive, emotional, behavioral or supportive or anti-objective reactions stemming from beliefs, emotional expressions and behavioral orientation, mentioned by Norbert Schwarz, Gerd Bohner (2001), Myers DG (2010). Some authors have considered that attitudes include evaluating, liking or disliking any object or phenomenon (Timothy A. Judge and John D. Kammeyer - Mueller (2012). Others argued that the attitude is “a positive or negative opinions of an object” (Knud Larsen and Le Van Hao (2010), Malhotra (2005)) 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. First of all, it must be asserted that young cadres are people who engage in specific occupational activities. Being people who participate in occupational labor, especially in professional activities, young cadres are those with educational attainment who have graduated from upper secondary schools and from vocational training levels from intermediate level upwards. They have professional knowledge in ocupational fields. Secondly, mentioning about young staff, we can talk about age and / or seniority. They can be understood as young cadres in terms of age or terms of working age (not many seniority in working). Therefore, when discussing the concept of young staffs, we need to consider their age and / or seniority. Within scope of this article, the research objects are young cadres who are mainly working at a number of research institutes. Researchers are research staffs or they may be referred to as scientific staff. In some documents of our Party and State, young scientists are usually determined by age criteria; they are scientific staff at youth age. Article 1 of the Youth Law determines that the youth age is from 16 to 30 years old. However, the Ninth National Congress (2007) and the Tenth Congress (2010) of Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union amended the charter and stipulated that the age of union members is from 16 to 30 years old, while in the Charter of the Vietnam Youth Union, young people are aged between 15 and 35 years old. The inconsistency of the texts in determining youth age can make it difficult to assess the position, role and characteristics of young people, and also when making policies for them (La Thi Thu Thuy, 2012) 9, 10. In some scientific studies, some of the concepts equivalent to the concept of young scientific cadres have been mentioned, including young intellectuals or intellectual youth and the age is one of the criteria to define these concepts. Ngo Thi Minh Phuong said that young intellectuals, who are between the ages of 22 and 39, must be trained through tertiary education (cited by La Thi Thu Thuy, 2012, p. 28). In the intellectual youth’s study, La Thi Thu Thuy et al. (2012) identified: Young intellectuals are understood as intellectual workers, educated from university or equivalent levels, whose age from 23 to 35 years old, with professional knowledge in their careers. Their activities are creative and meaningful to society. These studies comprise the youth span wider than the Government's Decree No. 140/2017 / ND-CP of December 5, 2017, but in accordance with the Politburo's Conclusion No. 86 / KL-TW. In these studies, the concept of youth not only determines the age but also the seniorits of intellectuals 10, 11. Our research is conducted on the subjects who are working at the research institutes. This specific job requires not only knowledge and skills at work, but also psychological experience of himself on daily livings. Therefore, according to opinions of the research team, the time for a young researcher to mature and be stable at work is about 10 years. Based on the above analysis of characteristics of age and working experience, we believe that young employees are Tran Thi Ha and Le Thi Ngoc Thuy 88 understood as specific occupational workers who have professional training qualifications from intermediate level or higher, with a working period of 10 years or less. In this study, the working attitude of young cadres is considered as the effort at work, the attachment to the job, the agency and their satisfaction with the job. 2.2. Methods In order to find out the actual situation of young cadres’ working attitudes at research institutes in Hanoi, the research team conducted surveys to 191 officers with working experiences of less than 10 years and currently working at Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (accounting for 52.1%) and Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (around 47.9%). In this study, working attitude of young employees' is measured by their effort at work, their commitment to work and their agency; their satisfaction with the job. Efforts at work are assessed on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 points means that having no effort at work while 10 points is regarding for much efforts to work). The scale for job satisfaction consists of 3 parts: satisfaction with job characteristics (5 clauses), satisfaction with colleagues’ relationship at work (2 clauses) and satisfaction with the management and administration of leadership at work (4 clauses). Each proposition has 4 answers with 4 points: 1 point - completely wrong, 2 points - mostly incorrect, 3 points - mostly correct, 4 points - completely correct. The higher average score of each clause is, the higher agreement of the respondent with the content of the clause are. That means individual is highly satisfied with the job Data collected from the questionnaire is processed by mathematical statistical methods via SPSS software. After calculating the reliability, the scale of job satisfaction has Alpha reliability is 0.989. 2.3. Results of searching situation 2.3.1. Actual situation of working attitude of young cadres at research institutes The results of youth’s self-assessment about the efforts in their own work according to 10- point scale are: 100% of surveyed young staff rated their efforts in work at an average level and above (from 5 to 10 points), focusing mostly on point 8 (37.2%) and point 7 (32.5%). This means that young staff in research institutes all considered themselves to have relatively positive efforts at work. Although young staff at research institutes all assessed themselves to have a quite positive effort, when being asked “If you selected again, would you still choose your current career?”, up to 53 , 4% of them answered “yes”, 35.6% were still “confused”, only 11% of respondents gave “no” answer. Clearly, the majority of interviewed young staff expressed their commitment to their current occupation. There are many reasons given by young cadres to explain why they wouldn’t choose the current job again, such as: the job is not correspongding with their professional (3 selected participants), the income does not guarantee for their daily life (14 choosen people), the current job does not promote their forte (4 options), not being interested in career (2 options), having chosen the wrong job (4 options). Although the number of respondents choosing the current job is more than half, the number of people who are wondering and do not really want to choose the current job with different reasons is also not small. It can be seen that, the adherence to the career of young people nowadays is generally relative because of open society, job opportunities leading to job shifts are also the trend of society. This was also confirmed when up to 45 respondents (23.8%) wanted to change the workplace and 72 people confused (37.7%). The reasons for wanting to change the workplace most are that salary is not guaranteed for their life (35 people choose); working environment Current situation of working attitude of young officers at research institutes in Hanoi city 89 does not facilitate development (9 options), like to explore in other new workplace (8 options); working environment does not allow them to express their own ideas (6 options). Thus, the survey results about young staff’s commitment to occupation and working places at research institutes in Hanoi city showed that many of them do not have a deep adherence to the profession as well as their workplace. One of the factors which expresses working attitude of young cadres is their satisfaction with their job. The results are presented in Table 1 below Table 1. Degree of satisfaction with job characteristics of young cadres No Job characteristics Mean Std Completely incorrect Mostly incorrect Mostly correct Completely correct 1 You are satisfied with the nature of the current job 2.62 0.76 8.9 28.4 54.7 7.9 2 You are satisfied with the current working intensity 2.71 0.71 5.8 26.8 58.4 8.9 3 You are satisfied with your current performance 2.57 0.73 6.8 36.3 49.5 7.4 4 You are satisfied with the income from your current profesional work 2.16 0.78 19.5 48.4 28.4 3.7 5 You are satisfied with the conditions and means of work 2.62 0.81 9.0 31.7 47.1 12.2 Total 2.54 0.54 The data in Table 1 shows that the degree of satisfaction of job characteristics is moderate (ĐTB = 2.54 / 4), that means, young staff are relatively satisfied with the current job characteristics. As follows: Young cadres expressed the most satisfaction with their current work intensity (Mean = 2.71 / 4) with 58.4% of respondents rated the proposition as mostly true and the same with the average of 2.62 / 4 showed the satisfaction of the subjects with the nature and conditions, means of work, less satisfied was with the income from professional work (2.16 / 4) with 48,8% of respondents rated this clause as largely incorrect. NTH, 30 year-old researcher said: “In fact, the current working conditions and facilities have been improved day by day, the work intensity is also suitable for us; however, the salary issue is the great problem that makes us most dissatisfied. Although we know this is policy of the Party and the State, we still have to arrange extra work to increase income. “ The data in Table 2 shows the degree of satisfaction of young cadres with the relationship among colleagues. In general, they are quite satisfied with this relationship (Mean= 2.65 / 4). In terms of two specific expressions, namely “satisfaction with the support and cooperation of colleagues at work” and “satisfaction with sharing and encouragement of colleagues on non- Tran Thi Ha and Le Thi Ngoc Thuy 90 work issues”, there are nearly the same average (2.65 and 2.65). It can be said that the relationship between young staff and co-workers is relatively good in both mentioned terms. This is the basis for working people to have a good working attitude because positive working relationships are considered the path to success (www / cleverjobs.vn /). Table 2. Young cadres' satisfaction in relationships with colleagues No Relationship with colleagues at work Mean Std Completely incorrect Mostly incorrect Mostly correct Completely correct 1 You are satisfied with the support and cooperation of colleagues at work 2.64 0.76 7.9 29.6 52.9 9.5 2 You are satisfied with the sharing and encouragement of colleagues on non-work issues 2.65 0.73 6.3 30.7 54.5 8.5 Total 2.65 0.70 In addition to being satisfied with their co-worker relationship, the authors also explored the degree of satisfaction of young staff with the management and administration of their executives. The results are shown in Table 3. Table 3. The degree of satisfaction of young staff with the leadership management at their office No Leadership management at work Mean Std Completely incorrect Mostly incorrect Mostly correct Completely correct 1 You are satisfied with the way of assigment of the leaders at work 2.66 0.73 7.4 27.5 57.1 7.9 2 You aren satisfied with the way of assessment of the agency leaders to employees’ performance 2.66 0.72 6.9 28.0 57.1 7.9 3 You are satisfied with the way appointing personnel at your office 2.63 0.76 8.5 28.0 55.0 8.5 4 You are satisfied 2.66 0.78 6.3 34.4 46.6 12.7 Current situation of working attitude of young officers at research institutes in Hanoi city 91 with the penalty and reward regime at your institution Total 2.65 0.64 The average score of the degree satisfaction with the management of the leadership is quite good (2.65 / 4, standard deviation (std) = 0.64). This shows that young employees are satisfied with the leaders’ management. More than half of the respondents answered the propositions: the way of assigning jobs, evaluating job performance, and appointing personnel are mostly correct. However, nearly 30% of them rated mostly incorrect. The satisfaction with the regime on how to appoint personnel at the agency is somewhat less (Mean = 2.63 / 4). Mentioning about satisfaction with the way of administration and management of the leaders, Mr. Tr. T. D (33 years old) said: “In general, the leaders currently know how to show democracy and fairness at what they do, but it does not mean that we are totally satisfied with their ways of managent: we sometimes recognize that the manner of personnel appointment is not really reasonable or punishment regime at the agency is not really clear, etc. However, leaders and staff have been also looking for the most appropriate way to solve everything in order to obtain the sympathy and satisfaction of all officials at the agency”. The satisfaction related to job characteristics is somewhat less in young cadres (Mean= 2.54 / 4 and Std = 0.54); in which young staff expressed the most satisfaction with the current work intensity (Mean = 2.71), followed by satisfaction with the nature, conditions and means of work (Mean = 2 , 62). Among the job characteristics group, the least satisfied of young staff was the income from professional work (Mean = 2.16). This was also the point where they are most dissatisfied (the total proportion accounted for 67.9% at two scale including completely dissatisfied and most dissatisfied). This result is quite similar to a previous study by La Thi Thu Thuy and colleagues (2012) when evaluating job satisfaction of intellectual youth. A 30-year-old cadre considered : “In fact, the conditions and working facilities have been improved day by day, the work intensity is also suitable for us; however, salary issues are the ones that make us most dissatisfied. Although we know this is a mechanism and policy of the Party and the State, we still have to arrange extra work to increase income” (female researcher, 30 years old). In belief, the situation of working attitude of young cadres at research institutes in Hanoi shows that: they have made a certain effort in their current jobs, many subjects assessed their efforts at a high level. Many of them were not really attached to their current jobs and workplace because of various reasons. Satisfaction with the job is generallly assessed at a relative level, not many of them are really satisfied with the current job. 2.3.2. Actual state of working attitude of young cadres at research institutes in Hanoi compared with variables Comparing the average score of young staff’s working attitude in research institutes showed that: There was no difference in the working attitudes of young cadres by gender (male and female). It can be said that the male and female researchers participating in the study all had the same attitude towards their current job (Table 4). There was difference in satisfaction with the management and administration of leaders in workplace among groups of working years (sig. 0.047 <0.05) (table 5). In which, the group of cadres with less than 3 years of work illustrated the highest satisfaction (mean = 2.75), ranked second was the group of cadres over 6 years working (mean = 2.71), showing the least satisfied was the group with 3-6 years of work (mean = 2.49). Tran Thi Ha and Le Thi Ngoc Thuy 92 Table 4. Young staff's working attitude towards gender parameters Male Female p Mean Std Mean Std Working efforts 7.50 1.06 7.51 1.15 0,94 Satisfaction with the job characteristics 2.56 0.56 2.52 0.53 0,63 Satisfaction with co-workers’ relationship at work 2.61 0.74 2.67 0.69 0,57 Satisfaction with management and administration of leaders 2.69 0.65 2.63 0.63 0,58 General satisfaction with the job 2.62 0.59 2.61 0.54 0,90 Table 5. Working attitude of young cadres according to working years