RESEARCH PROJECT
(BMBR5103)
FACTORS AFFECTING ON - THE - JOB
BEHAVIOR AT THERMTROL CORPORATION

STUDENT’S FULL NAME
STUDENT ID
INTAKE
ADVISOR’S NAME & TITLE

: HOANG CHI SY
: CGS00018260
: MAY 2014
: NGUYEN THE KHAI (DBA)

August, 2015


ADVISOR’S ASSESSMENT
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................... 5
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1. Thermtrol Corporation Introduction .............................................................. 7
2. Executive Summary ....................................................................................... 7
3. Products and Services .................................................................................... 8
4. Thermtrol Vision ............................................................................................ 9
5. Thermmtrol Mission ....................................................................................... 9
6. Thermtrol Technology ................................................................................. 10
7. Thermtrol Organization Chart ...................................................................... 12
8. Research Introduction .................................................................................. 12
9. Goal of the Research .................................................................................... 13
10. Objective of the Research ........................................................................... 13
11. Limitations of the Research ....................................................................... 13
12. Research Questions .................................................................................... 13
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Organizational Commitment ........................................................................ 14
2. Work Control ............................................................................................... 14
3. Goal and Process Clarity .............................................................................. 16
4. Fairness Perceptions of an Organization Policy .......................................... 16
5. On the Job Behaviors ................................................................................... 17
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES
1. Research Model ............................................................................................ 19
2. Hypotheses ................................................................................................... 20
2.1. Organizational Commitment ..................................................................... 20
2.2. Work Control ............................................................................................ 22
2.3. Goal and Process Clarity ........................................................................... 26

Thermtrol Corporation is currently facing challenges is in recently some employees
have intention to leave Thermtrol Corporation after being a long time in service.
Accordingly, identifying the factors affecting the levels of organization
commitment to attract employee’s cooperation and contributions in the long time is
critical. Being able to tackle this mission will bring about a desirable success for
Thermtrol Corporation in the human resource management.
The theoretical framework of this study will be tested by collecting data from 300
Thermtrol Corporation employees in the Head Office and Workshop. They are
provided their ideas in the trial and official surveying processes. The reliability
analysis, descriptive analysis, and hypothesis testing were employed to analyze the
data.
The purpose of the study is to explore factors affecting to the organizational
commitment of employees in Thermtrol Corporation through a questionnaire.
Following the analysis process, factors collected are Organizational Commitment,
Work Control, Goal and Process Clarity, Fairness Perceptions on an Organization
Policy and On the Job Behaviors
The interpretation of collected data will be followed by the researcher’s strategic
recommendations related to organizational commitment. In spite of unavoidable
limitations, the research outcomes are expected to be a possibly constructive source
for Thermtrol Corporation to refer in planning and developing the strategies to
enhance the organizational commitment of the employees.
Key words: Organizational Commitment, Work Control, Goal and Process Clarity,
Fairness Perceptions on an Organization Policy and On the Job Behaviors

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$60M per year but Sales value from the new factory in 2014 is only $20M.
Therefore, their goal is increasing sales value from $20M to $50M within next 5
years. Thermtrol determines new marketing segment is focusing on world class
customers with Automotive and Medical.
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3. Products and services
With over 25 years of serving manufacturers of all sizes covering a broad
range of industries, Thermtrol can solve your wiring harness and custom electrical
assembly needs. As a leading producer of wire harness and over molded products
and possess the broad capabilities to mold virtually anything and engineer the
harness solutions that our customers’ require.
Thermtrol is the expert in custom wire harness and plastic injection
insert/over-molding, with customers in commercial vehicle manufacturing,
automotive supply, industrial equipment, agricultural equipment and sensors and
controls.
Thermtrol is Flexible manufacturing facilities with the ability to handle both
high production programs and short run orders. Quick turn-around time on our
USA-based short run lines to fulfill prototype, samples to support program
development and production launches and Engineering support through all phases
of design and engineering. As a leader in the Wire Harness & Thermal Control
industries, Thermtrol strives to deliver quality products & services to a high global
standard. Knowing the competitive marketplace, Thermtrol endeavor to be your
supplier of choice through not only quality products, but exceptional customer
service as well as want to be your “Go To” supplier.
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NO. Machine Name

Manufacturer/ Description

1

Wire-Cutting

Compustrip97/Carpenter

2

Terminating machine

USA/Tyco

3

Automatic Wire Cutting & Terminating Machine

Komax 255/ others

4

Molding machine

Sumitomo/ China

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7. Thermtrol Organization Chart

Figure 1: Thermtrol corporate structure
8. Research Introduction
Significant of Research
As introduced above, to serve for world class customers with products that
are required absolute safety for users such automotive and medical parts, Thermtrol
has invested billions of dollars for the good factory, machines, equipment and
supported management systems. However, to operate the newest modern machines,

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equipment and own the advanced technologies as mentioned above, company need
to have talent staffs, high skills operators and loyalty.
In the fact, even if Thermtrol is a one of top companies in the area in paying
salary for staffs and also invest much for training but the annual employee turnover
rate is not low if compared with other companies and it showed a negative trend in
recent years.
The high employee turnover rate is negative impacted most company KPIs
such as quality performance (PPM), delivery performance (delivery on time),
customer complaints, operation costs…..
9. Goal of the Research

 Goal and Process Clarity
 Fairness Perceptions of an Organization Policy
 On the Job Behavior
1. Organization Commitment
Multiple definitions of organizational commitment are found in the literature.
Bateman and Strasser state that organizational commitment has been operationally
defined as “multidimensional in nature, involving an employee’s loyalty to the
organization, willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organization, degree of
goal and value congruency with the organization, and desire to maintain
membership” (p.95). Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979) identified commitmentrelated attitudes and commitment-related behaviors. Porter et al. (1974) Schultz,
discuss three major components of organizational commitment as being “a strong
belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals, a willingness to exert
considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and a definite desire to maintain
organizational membership”. Sheldon (1971) defines commitments as being a
positive evaluation of the organization and the organizations goals. According to
Buchanan (1974) most scholars define commitment as being a bond between an
individual (the employee) and the organization (the employer), though his own
definition of commitment.
Organizational commitment has an important place in the study of
organizational behavior. This is in part due to the vast number of works that have
found relationships between organizational commitment and attitudes and behaviors
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in the workplace (Porter et al., 1974, 1976; Koch and Steers, 1978; Angle and
Perry, 1981). Furthermore, Batemen and Strasser (1984) state that the reasons for
studying organizational commitment are related to “(a) employee behaviors and


showed,

using

a

longitudinal,

quasiexperimental design, that a work re-organisation intervention could improve
absenteeism levels, and self-rated performance, by increasing their job control.
Emma J. Donaldson-Feilder & Frank W. Bond

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We believe that it is important to account for job control in the present study,
as it is one of the most heavily researched work and organisational characteristics
examined in studies of occupational health (e.g. Parker & Wall, 1998). Therefore, it
is not possible to begin gauging the incremental validity, and hence the importance,
of acceptance and EI to organisational behaviour and occupational health
psychology, unless we know the degree to which they can predict well-being, over
and above this work design characteristic.
3. Goal and Process Clarity
Researches show that task performance is affected positively in organization
with specific goal clarity than in organization with no goal clarity at all. Goal clarity
influence organization commitment by affecting task performance of employees.

social

responsibility (CSR). Organizational justice generally refers to perceptions of
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fairness in treatment of individuals internal to that organization while corporate
social responsibility focuses on the fairness of treatment of entities external to the
organization. Corporate social responsibility refers to a mechanism by which
businesses monitor and regulate their performance in line with moral and societal
standards such that it has positive influences on all of its stakeholders (Carroll,
1999). Thus, CSR involves organizations going above and beyond what is moral or
ethical and behaving in ways that benefit members of society in general. It has been
proposed that an employee’s perceptions of their organization’s level of corporate
social responsibility can impact that individual’s own attitudes and perceptions of
justice even if they are not the victim of unfair acts (Rupp et al., 2006).
The idea of organizational justice stems from equity theory (Adams, 1963, 1965),
which posits that judgments of equity and inequity are derived from comparisons
between one’s self and others based on inputs and outcomes. Inputs refer to what a
person perceives to contribute (e.g., knowledge and effort) while outcomes are what
an individual perceives to get out of an exchange relationship (e.g., pay and
recognition). Comparison points against which these inputs and outcomes are
judged may be internal (one’s self at an earlier time) or external (other individuals).
5. On the Job Behaviors
Even though various definitions of job search behavior exist, most of them
have recognized its multidimensional nature. For instance, Schwab, Rynes, and
Aldag (1987) proposed that job search behavior consists of the sources used to

behaviors and sources that have been studied in the literature (see Table 1 for a
(non-exhaustive) overview). Whereas previous research has mainly focused on the
effort-intensity dimension, research on the other two dimensions (i.e., the content
and dynamics of job search behavior) is relatively scarce but equally or even more
important.

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CHAPTER III: RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESEs
1. Research Model
As mentioned above, from four independent constructs (Organization
commitment, Work control, Goal and Process clarity and Fairness Perceptions of an
Organizational policy) and the dependent construct (On – the - Job Behaviors). To
investigate impacting of independent constructs on the dependent construct, I
propose a research model as below.

Figure 2: Hypothesized Research Model

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2. Hypotheses
2.1. Organizational Commitment

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Chatman, 1986). Compliance occurs when attitudes and behaviors are adopted not
because of shared beliefs but simply to gain specific rewards. In this case, public
and private attitudes may differ. Identification occurs when an individual accepts
influence to establish and maintain a relationship; that is, an individual may respect
a group’s values without adopting them. On the other hand, internationalization
occurs when influence is accepted because the induced attitude and beliefs are
congruent with one’s own value (Caldwell, 28 Chatman & O’Reilly, 1990; Meyer
& Allen, 1997; O’Reilly & Chatman, 1986; O’Reilly, Chatman & Caldwell, 1991).
Clearly, not all of these views are in agreement. For example, some researchers
have questioned whether compliance should be viewed as a component of
commitment because it is distinct form other common definitions and can be
viewed as the antithesis of commitment. That is, compliance has been found to
correlate positively with employee turnover (O’Reilly & Chatman, 1986), whereas
commitment generally reduces turnover (Mowday et al., 1982). The studies I
reviewed from the 1990s suggest there is a growing consensus that commitment is a
multidimensional construct that certainly includes an effective dimension and many
include components that reflect normative pressures as well as practical
considerations such as the costs of leaving an organization and locating another job
with similar pay and benefits.
Hypothesis 1: Organizational Commitment is positively related to On – the - Job
Behaviors
b. Measures of construct of Organizational commitment
This measure, developed by Cook and Wall (1980), describes an employee’s
overall organizational commitment. The measure uses nine items. The items can be
grouped to form subscales for organizational identification, organizational
involvement, and organizational Loyalty. Each subscale contains three items.
Coefficient alpha values ranged from .71 to .87 (Furnham, Brewin, &

2.2. Work Control
a. Definition
The demand for valid measures of job characteristics is driven by continuing
efforts in organizations to determine the features of jobs that induce employees to
work harder and perform better. One of the most widely used perspectives of how
aspects of jobs affect employee Willingness to consistently perform better is the job
characteristics model (JCM) developed by Hackman and Oldham (1980). This
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model predicts that if a job is well designed, it leads to higher levels of three critical
Psychological states. These are experienced meaningfulness of the work, such as
results from the job that are meaningful within the employee’s system of values;
experienced responsibility for the outcomes of the work, or belief that the employee
has personal accountability for the outcomes; and knowledge of the results of the
work activities, including judgments of others about the quality or quantity of the
work performed (Hackman & Oldham, 1980).
The JCM predicts that jobs that are well designed have live key
characteristics:
1. Skill variety, which is the extent to a job requires the use of different skills and
talents
2. Task identity, which describes the extent to which a job involves completing a
whole identifiable outcome
3. Task significance, which is the degree to which a job has impact on the lives of
people in an organization or society in general
4. Autonomy, which describes the extent to which a job provides the employee
with discretion to choose how the work is done and to set the schedule for

autonomy, and feedback in their jobs (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchinson, &
Sowa, 1986; Gagne. Senecal, & Koestner, 1997; Spreitzer. 1995).
Hypothesis 2: Work control is positively related to On – the - Job Behaviors
b. Measures of construct of Work Control
This measure, developed by Dwyer and Ganster (1991), describes the extent
to which workers perceive they have control over numerous aspects of the work
environment. These aspects include control over the variety of tasks performed, the
order of task performance, the pace of tasks, task scheduling task procedures, and
arrangement of the physical layout/environment. In Dwyer and Ganster (1991),
coefficient alpha was .87.Control over aspects of a job correlated positively with
sick days taken, ji workload, and work satisfaction. In multivariate analysis, control
modérait the relationship of workload with work satisfaction (Dwyer &
Ganster1991). Instructions and items: Below are listed a number of .statements
which could be used to describe a job. Please read each statement carefully and
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