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UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business

Doan Duc Minh
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ID: 60340102
MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)
SUPERVISOR: Dr. LE NGUYEN HAU
Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2012
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Beginning of my thesis, I would like to express all my sincere thanks to those
people who made this thesis possible and an unforgettable experience for me.
First of all, I would like to show my deepest sense to my supervisor Dr. Le
Nguyen Hau, who offered his continuous advice and encouragement throughout
the course of this thesis. Dr. Hau has offered me the systematic guidance and
great inspiration in putting into me toward the scientific field.
Then, I am thankful to all my colleagues and Board of Management in Shinhan
Bank Vietnam, United Overseas Bank, Hong Leong Bank, Vietnam Commercial
Bank, Asia Commercial Bank, Saigon Commercial Bank, Dong A Commercial
Bank for the consultation, orientation and support during my research process.
Last but not least, this is a great time for a son of family, husband of wife to take
this opportunity to express the profound gratitude from my deep heart to my
beloved family for their love and continuous support both spiritually and
materially.
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS ii
ABSTRACT

have been discussed and recommendations are provided to improve the retention
rate of the banking industry in Ho Chi Minh City.
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
ABSTRACT ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF TABLES vi
LIST OF FIGURES vii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………….………… 1
1.1Background…………………………………………………….….… …1
1.2 Problem statements……………………………………………… ….… 2
1.3 Research objectives……………………………………………….…… 3
1.4 Scope of study…………………………………………………….…… 3
1.5 Thesis structure…………………………………………….…….….……3
CHAPTER 2: LITERATUE REVIEW………………………………….….…… 4
2.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs…………………………………… ………4
2.2 Retention………………………………………………………….…… 5
2.3 Job satisfaction and antecedent factors………………………… …… 7
2.4 Moderating factors……………………………………………… …….12
2.5 Research model ……………………………………………….……… 13
2.6 Summary of hypotheses…………………….………………… … … 13
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD…………………………….……….……15
3.1 Research procedure…………………………………………….….……15
3.2 Measurement scales……………………………………………….……15
3.3 Method of data collection…………………………………………… 19
3.4 Method of analysis…………………………………………….…….….19
3.4.1 Assessment of measurement of scale……………………….….…20
3.4.2 Multiple regression………………………………………….… …21
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH RESULT……………………………………… 22

Table 4.6: Assessment for job satisfaction scale 28
Table 4.7: Multiple regression result of antecedent factors to job satisfaction 29
Table 4.8: R square value 29
Table 4.9: F and Sig. value 30
Table 4.10: Regression result between job satisfaction and retention 30
Table 4.11: R square value 30
Table 4.12: F and Sig. value 30
Table 4.13: Means values of different factors 31
Table 4.14: Differences of impact of antecedent factors by gender 32
Table 4.15: Differences of impact of antecedent factors by age 33
Table 4.16: Differences of impact of antecedent factors by ownership 33
Table 4.17: Differences of impact of antecedent factors by size 34
Table 4.18: Regression coefficients 35
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: The research model 13
Figure 3.1: Research procedure 15
Figure 4.1: Regression coefficients model 38
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter is an introduction and intended to provide background information
on the nature of the present study and its objectives and purpose. It is divided into
four sections. The first section presents background of the research, the second
part presents the problem statement, the third part presents the objective, and the
final section presents the scope of study.
1.1 Background
The retention of bankers has been shown to be significant to the development and
the accomplishment of the organization’s goals and objectives. In recent years,
the system of financial institutions and banks in Vietnam has been developed in

offering more opportunities for career promotion and incentive abroad trips for
high performance bankers. However, the high turnover rate still exceeds their
expectations in spite of bank efforts. Why is turnover still high after those
efforts? What are bankers’ demands? How much percent are the bankers satisfied
with their current job? Is there relationship between job satisfaction and
employee retention?
Literature on human resource management provides some general hints in coping
with this managerial problem of employee retention (e.g. Maslow, 1943, 1954;
Bame, 1993; Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Hom & Griffieth, 1995). Nevertheless, the
right solution under the current social-economic context, organization leaders
need to understand in more details as higher salary, promotion opportunities, and
related other factors as motivation, recognition, working environment, good
relationships with the manager and colleagues, corporate culture. What are the
affected important factors?
Due to answer these questions, management board not only has an insight into
the issue of HRM in Vietnam, but also provides specific formation for managers
in the fields to solve the problem of retaining their talent bankers.
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 3
1.3 Research objectives
In response to the above stated problems, this research is conducted with below
aims:
 Determine quantitatively antecedent factors and their relative contributions to
the overall satisfaction of bankers in the local commercial banks.
 Estimate the impact of job satisfaction on the retention (intent to stay) of
bankers in the field.
1.4 Scope of study
 Given the limited resources and time, the empirical data for the research were
collected from the commercial banks in Ho Chi Minh City.
 Examinees on this study include senior-officers, supervisors and managers and
who achieved bachelor, master degree and higher degree.

These needs are:
 Physiological needs: related to essential factors to survival, such as food, water,
and shelter. In organization, these needs are mainly presented as monthly salary.
 Safety needs: related to security, safety in workplace and life. At this level, the
individual strives to look for or form the safe environment from external dangers.
In organization, these needs are presented via hygiene factors, long-term
contribution, social and medical insurance policies…
 Social needs: related to relationship with people, being member of teamwork,
being loved. In organization, these needs are identified by colleague relationship,
leader relationship….
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 5
 Esteem: the drives for feelings of self-worth and individual importance, need of
respect in workplace and daily life are took place at this level. Organizations
often pay incentives through rewards, bonus, promotions…
 Self-actualization: at the top of the hierarchy, the motivator is a sense of
fulfillment that allows individual to maximize their own growth and contribute.
In organization, these needs are satisfied by opportunities of training,
development and innovation.
Once each of these needs is satisfied, the individual moves up to the higher level
of the hierarchy.
Table 2.1: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Source: Mendenhall et al., (1995)
2.2 Retention
Over the past decade, the way in which people were managed and developed at
work has come to be recognized as one of the primary factors in achieving
improvement in organizational performance (BQF, 1998; Marchington and
Wilkinson, 1997; Phillips, 1997). This aspect was reflected by popular idioms
such as ‘people are our most important asset’ (Accenture, 2001). From the review
of extant literature, it was acknowledged that the employees of successful
Implemented

Physiology
Basic wage, temperature,
air
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 6
organizations were shared a fundamental philosophy of valuing and investing
(Anand, 1997; Maguire, 1995). In fact, several studies have described human
resource management as a means of achieving competitive advantage (Delery,
1998; Walker, 2001). Consistent with this perspective, the retention of their
critical (core) employees is an equally important issue for organizations.
Retention is about developing strategies that reduce the number of people who
leave the organization for avoidable reasons. Organizations need to retain
employees with the required balance of skills and experience to ensure that
business can be maintained (Stucberry, 2003). Solutions to retain employees are
really not simple. There are many factors that affect the employee's reasons for
staying with the organizations, as well as how important those factors are to
employees. In order to retain employees, the organization must understand these
factors, which drives people to perform their jobs and monitor the job satisfaction
of bankers.
Most organizations today continue to struggle with retention hardly because they
are only relying on salary increases and bonuses to prevent turnover (Accenture,
2001; Gumbus and Johnson, 2003). Managing core employees effectively means
identifying their needs. Employees bring their needs, aspirations, and hopes to
their jobs and working environment where their abilities can be utilized and their
basic needs can be satisfied.
At the centre of some turnover models have been variables of job satisfaction and
organizational commitment (Steele, 2002) but tendency were mainly developed
from the vast amount of researches on job satisfaction (Porters and Steers, 1973).
In this research, job satisfaction is considered as antecedents as they have strong
direct influence to retention. Job satisfaction is a subjective emotional evaluation
made consciously or unconsciously by the employee and is defined as a

satisfaction (JDI-index). It was also used in more than 600 researches among 20
years, however, JDI also had defects. Some of researches, which are even in
Western development countries, criticized that it was complex, imperfect
(Buffum and Konick, 1982). Some researchers had modified the scale to fit
specific contexts (Crossman and Bassem, 2003; Tr
ần T
h
ị
Kim Dung, 2005).
Considering the above, seven factors are proposed in this study as antecedents of
job satisfaction. They are: work challenge, training and promotion opportunities,
leadership support, colleague relationship, salary, benefit, work environment.
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 8
Additionally, organizational and individual characteristics are included into the
model as moderating factors (age, gender, organization ownership and
organization size).
 Work challenge: related to work nature, chances to use personal skills and
capacities, exciting feeling in work. Employees need to be stimulated with
creative challenges or they will go where the excitement is. It is very important to
provide employees challenging assignments with well-defined performance
measures and feedback on the high performance environment because of that,
they can achieve their personal objectives (Furnham, 2002) and reaching job
satisfaction. The necessity of mastering new skills keeps employees satisfied and
innovative (Ferguson, 1990; Walker, 2001). Employees want a job with broad
duties and a lot of variety tasks. In part, it is because they want to have more job
skills on their resume when they are forced to get another job (Jardine and Amig,
2001). Organizations which did not give employees with challenging and
interesting work, freedom to be creative, opportunities to develop new skills,
were usually received express negativity and lack of loyalty from their
employees. In such organization, employees are more likely to report negative

are many leadership definitions of researchers such as: leadership is
conceptualized in terms of four tasks that need to be accomplished in any
organization: providing orientation, assuring alignment, building commitment
and facing adaptive challenges (Risher and Stopper, 2002). Leaders are central to
the process of creating cultures, systems, and structures that foster knowledge
creation, sharing, and cultivation (Bryant, 2003). The impact of leaders have
been examined by numerous leadership studies in a wide variety of
organizations, and results show that leadership styles in a high-level of follower
motivation and commitment as well as well-above-average organizational
performance (Bryman, 1992; Elby et al., 1999; Podsakoff and Steyrer, 1998).
Several researchers have thought highly of the positive influence of leaders in
organizational outcomes, which resulted in lowered intention to leave and
increased organizational behavior (Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe, 2001;
Pillai, Shreissheim and Williams, 1999; Yammariono and Bass, 1990), leading to
stronger organizational commitment, higher intention to stay of employees
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 10
(Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe, 2001; Podsakoff et al., 1996). Therefore,
based on the literature review, the hypothesis is:
H4: There is a positive impact of leadership support on job satisfaction.
 Colleague relationship: related to behavior, relation to colleagues at work and
teamwork. It is defined as the behavior of an individual that results in unforced
influence when that person is directing and coordinating the activities of a group
toward the accomplishment of a common goal (Bryman, 1992). Colleague’s
supportiveness refers to the friendliness and the extent to which colleagues pay
attention to comments and concerns (Campion et al., 1993; Hart et al., 2003).
Interactions with colleagues may serve an affective psychological function by
providing emotional support against the stresses of the organization’s
socialization initiatives and uncertainties of the work setting (Jablin, 1987).
Employees stay when they have strong relationships with their work colleagues
(Clarke, 2001). Organizations today encourage team building, project

to employee performance (Byars and Rue, 2000). Employee’s benefit packages
increase worker commitment to the organization and reduce the tendency to think
about other job opportunities (Mitchell et al., 2001). A commitment model
developed by Rusbult and Farrell (1983), based partly on job bene
fits, shows the
absence of adequate bene
fits is one of the main factors contributing to low job
satisfaction and employee intent to leave. They also found that portable bene
fits,
such as contribution pensions, reduced anxiety involved in intent to leave and
gaining job satisfaction. Therefore, it is posited that:
H7: There is a positive impact of benefits on job satisfaction.
 Working environment: this factor refers to work equipments and resources
provided by the organization, work strain, work overload. Researchers have
shown that organizational obstacles in relation to inadequate equipment or
insufficient training may be important variables of employee motivation, attitude,
and performance, reducing job satisfaction. Research has also shown that work
overload contributes to employee strain, tension, job dissatisfaction, decreasing
organizational commitment and turnover (Spector and Jex, 1998). High
workloads have been shown to lead to negative outcomes, for example,
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 12
absenteeism, and low job satisfaction (Fox et al., 1993). According to Spector
and Jex (1998), a high workload may result in feelings of anxiety and frustration.
So, this research tests the hypothesis that:
H8: There is a positive impact of work environment on job satisfaction.
2.4 Moderating factors
This study examines the moderating affects of organization characteristics and
demographics on the impacts of job satisfaction on retention.
 Age: The older employees have limited opportunity for changing the jobs and
are more costly hired than younger ones. However, they are likely to be more

satisfaction.
H4: There is a positive impact of leadership support on job satisfaction.
H5: There is positive impact of colleague relationships on job satisfaction.
Retention
Work Challenge
Training &
Promotion
Opportunity
Leadership Support
Colleague
Relationship
Salary
Benefits
Working Environment
Job Satisfaction
H
1
H
2
H
3
H
4
H
5
H
6
H
7
H

Research method
Collecting data
Data analysis
Conclusion &
Recommendation
Secondary
data from
previous
study
Primary data from
questionnaires/
interviews
Result
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 16
leave surely, 2 equals leave, 3 equals unclear intention, 4 equals stay, 5 equals
stay surely. Age was divided into 4 groups and coded such those 1 equals under
30 years old, 2 equals 31to 40 years old, 3 equals 41 to 50 years old, 4 equals
over 50 years old. Gender was coded 1 equals male, 2 equals female. Codes of
ownership were 1 equals state ownership, 2 equals private ownership or other
types of ownership. Number of staff are divided into 4 groups and coded such
those 1 equals 20 to 50 staffs, 2 equals 51 to 100 staffs, 3 equals 101 to 200 staffs
4 equals over 200 staffs.
The scales for eight constructs in the model have been developed on the basis of
previously established studies, in conjunction with the adjustment for contextual
situation (i.e. banking industry in Vietnam). Multiple item scales were used in the
form of five point Likert type.
Accordingly, the items and sources of reference for each scale are presented in
Table 3.1.
RETENTION OF PROFESSIONAL BANKERS 17
Table 3.1: Summary of scales for 8 constructs in the model

Kim Dung, 2005
Mathis and Jackson, 2003
Parker and wright, 2001
Scale from 1(total disagree) to
5 (total degree)
Benefits
Ben1
Ben2
Ben3
Company has good policies of benefit
Company has good policies of health and medical
insurance
Company has subsidized policies to personnel’s difficult
situations
Kim Dung, 2005
Scale from 1(total disagree) to
5 (total degree)
Working
environment
Env1
Env2
Env3
Env4
Env5
Work strain is low
Part time working is very rare
Workplace is clean and comfortable
Long-term employment is stably secured
Working equipments are enough and safe
Kim Dung, 2005