I will clarify further how I collect the data and how to improve the data response rate in the “Data collection” part.
Measurement
Since we need data to test hypotheses, the concepts which are mentioned in the hypotheses need to be measurable. Here in my research, I have to main concepts need to be measured: Employee incentives and employee’s organizational commitment. I have looked at a number of literatures relevant to those concepts and I found possible methods to classify and measure them.
Regarding employees’ incentive, and academic work by Codly et al. (2003) suggest that although there are potentially a very large number of incentives could be utilized, there is a useful distinction is between the material and the non- material. Additionally, material (or tangible) incentives could be broken down further into monetary and non-monetary. Thus, three incentive types were identified: (1) monetary (cash); (2) non-monetary tangible (rewards such as restaurant coupons for meals or vacation trips); and (3) non-monetary intangible (“employee of the week” recognition, positive performance reviews, and public praise from management). In our company, we use all of these three types of incentives but according to different positions and activities we give employee different type of incentives. I will use these three types of incentives as three choices for employees to decide what type of incentive they have been given.
Concerning employee’s organizational commitment, the importance of it has been reflected in ongoing research in the management area. Organizational commitment reveals complex employee attitudes, including: affective commitment involving emotional attachment to the organization, continuance commitment emphasizing the perceived investments vs. costs, and normative commitment concerning obligation-based considerations (Allen & Meyer,1990). The multiple types of commitment consist of an employee’s belief in the organization, willingness to work hard for it, and the desire to continue to work for it (Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979). Aligned with this literature, Organizational commitment was measured via the 9-item Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) version of Mowday, Steers and Porter (1979). This format employs a five point Likert scale and the results were summed and divided by 9 to arrive at an overall average score for organizational commitment for each respondent. The instrument is widely used as a mean to measure the degree of commitment an individual feels toward his/her organization. Generally, higher or lower levels of commitment have been shown to be a major driver of employees staying with or leaving an organization (Shaw et al., 1998). Mathieu and Zajac (1990) have found that the measure has demonstrated an average reliability of .88 in over 90 samples.
Data collection
For this research, the data collection will be based from the data I receive from the questionnaire I designed for the research. As stated before, the population of the objects of the research is the entire number of full time employees working at FPT Corporation. I will make an online survey and send it by email to those employees by the company’s intranet email. The questionnaire is designed with two main parts, the first part is asking for basic information such as age, gender, marital status, currently department that employee is working at and the second part is asking for the type of incentive received and followed by the nine – item - OCQ questionnaire with likert scaling choices from 1-5 (1: strongly disagree, 2: disagree, 3: undecided, 4: agree, 5: strongly agree)
To improve the response rate for this online survey, I will upload it to a free online survey website, such as: . With the questionnaire uploaded, I can attach the link of the survey to the emails I sent to those employees, so that they can access to it with just a click. The questionnaire is designed as almost of the questions are multiple choice ones and it should take less than five minutes to complete, and I will state it clearly in the cover email goes along with the online questionnaire link that this survey is for the purpose of giving the best HR practices that meet the need of employees. By all of these efforts, I hope that the response rate will be high.
Estimation Method
Concerning the variables, in this research the independent variable is employee’s organizational commitment and the dependent variable is the employee incentive type. Because in this research question, we are testing that whether the outcome – employee’s commitment to company is affected by the factor of employee incentive type – monetary, non – monetary tangible or non – monetary intangible. Moreover, in this research, there are some other moderated variables such as gender, age, marital status and working department as asked in questionnaire may also have some effects on final result of a student.
Four types of analysis are proposed for this study. First, in order to provide a description of the sample from which data will be collected, descriptive information on age, gender, and working department will be described, as well as the means, modes, range, and standard deviations for the employee’s incentive and employee’s organizational commitment. Second, to determine the relationship between employee’s incentive and employee’s commitment, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient will be determined. Third, to determine any differences in employees’ incentive and their organizational commitment according to the moderating effects of age, gender, and department setting, chi-square, t-tests, and analysis of variance will be used to examine for any significant differences among the relationship and moderator variables.
The specific hypotheses to be tested are shown below in null form:
1. There is no significant relationship between employee’s incentive type and employee’s organizational commitment. This will be tested with the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.
2. There is no significant difference in employee’s incentive type and employee’s organizational commitment according to gender. Each will be tested by chi-square.
3. There is no significant difference in employee’s incentive type and employee’s organizational commitment according to age. Each will be tested by t-test and, collectively, by analysis of variance.
The same to do with testing moderate variables such as marital status and working department.
All hypotheses will be tested at a minimum of the .05 level of significance. If the significance level is less than 0.05 then the null hypothesis should be rejected. The relationship between the two variables is significant.
All the data testing will be done automatically through SPSS - Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.
References
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Allen N.J. and Meyer J.P (1990). The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. Journal of Occupational Psychology (1990), 63, 1-18
- Bryman A. and Bell E., (2007) Business Research Methods. Oxford University Press
- Condly S.J., Clark R.E., Stolovitch, H.D. (2003) The Effects of Incentives on Workplace Performance: A Meta-analytic Review of Research Studies. Performance Improvement Quarterly, Volume 16, mumber 3 16(3) pp. 46-63
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Mathieu J.E. and Zajac D.M.(1990). A Review and Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences of Organizational Commitment. , September 1990, Pages 171-194
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Mowday R.T., Steers R.M. and Porter L.M. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. , , April 1979, Pages 224-247
