Keywords

1 Introduction

Job satisfaction is one of the most important factors for all organizations no matter whether in public or private organizations or working in advanced or underdeveloped countries. If employees are satisfied with the organization’s policies including salary, working conditions, relationships at the workplace, etc., then they will stay for a long time with the organization. So, the organizational commitment and job satisfaction are key contributors in any organization and the extent of success of the organization depends on these two factors.

Job satisfaction is a positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics (Robbins, 1998). There are a variety of factors that can influence a person’s level of job satisfaction. Some of these factors include the level of pay or salary, the quality of the working conditions, leadership, and relationships. The happier people are within their job, the more satisfied they are said to be and they will stay along with the organization. With the development of advanced technology, people easily access a lot of information sources and can search the work vacancies on the Internet, which means employees can find new jobs anytime and anywhere if they are no longer satisfied with their current job. That leads to a high rate of employee turnover. To avoid the bad effects caused by employee turnover, organizations need to maintain their current employee’s commitment. In other words, the employees should be satisfied their needs and requirements so that the managers should pay attention to their satisfaction. Hence, the more incentive on factors related to employee satisfaction at work, the more company can reduce the turnover rate and retain employees. The main purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of selected factors: independent variables including salary, leadership, relationship, working environment, and the mediator variable job satisfaction on the dependent variable organizational commitment. This study could be helpful for organizations that are still concerned with the strategy to keep their talented employees. With the research findings, we can know which factors play important roles in a successful organizational commitment strategy.

Following the research background, the research questions of this study are: (1) How do salary, leadership, relationship, working environment impact job satisfaction? (2) What is the degree of job satisfaction contributed to the level of organizational commitment?

The key research objectives of this study are to: (1) Find out factors that impact job satisfaction that leads to organizational commitment, and quantify the impact of these factors: salary, leadership, relationship, working environment. (2) Investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Job Satisfaction

In the current modern era, keeping the workers in the organization is very hard, and different researchers have demonstrated that job dissatisfaction induces people to give up on leaving their job; the dissatisfied employees want to quit their job. Because of this reason, many previous studies set the important point to express the special interest in the aspects of job satisfaction. The other reason for the popularity of job satisfaction over the recent decades is its impact on employee’s productivity. In the literature, studies have demonstrated the positive relationship between job satisfaction and productivity. Job satisfaction has an important role in enhancing productivity. Additionally, satisfied employees contribute to enhancing long-term success and organizational effectiveness.

Job satisfaction is a crucial issue for all organizations regardless of whether public or private organization (Locke, 1976). One of the reasons is that satisfied staff are accounted for as conferred laborers and responsibility is a sign for organizational output and useful operations have been characterized in a wide range of ways. Job satisfaction is related to the degree to which people like or dislike aspects of their work, such as work for themselves, pay, promotion of opportunities, control, and cooperation (Spector, 1997).

Skaalvik and Skaalvik (2011) defined job satisfaction as the feeling an employee holds toward the job. They argued that when the expectation from the job matches with the real outcome, job satisfaction occurs. Togia et al. (2004) defined job satisfaction as feelings and thoughts of employees about their work and place of work. According to Armstrong (2006), job satisfaction is the attitude and feeling people have about their work. Similarly, Kim et al. (2005) defined job satisfaction as the feeling or a general attitude of the employees in relation with their jobs and the job components such as the working environment, working conditions, equitable rewards, and communication with the colleagues. Other scholars measured job satisfaction in terms of need fulfillment, discrepancies, value attainment, equity, and dispositional or genetic components models (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2007).

2.2 Organizational Commitment

The organization must have the full commitment from the employee for long-term development (Mouhamadou, 2015). So increasing the organizational commitment will improve the productivity of the employees, and it is the main reason for organizational success. Nowadays, there is no organization that can perform at the top level without the employee who focuses on the organization’s goal. And employee productivity is usually improved whenever employees are more satisfied with their work. In today’s competitive world, each organization is confronting new difficulties in regards to maintaining efficiency and creating a committed workforce (Andavar et al., 2020).

Muthuveloo and Rose (2005) defined employee commitment as the ability of employees to be loyal and identify with the organization in relation to the duties and responsibilities. According to Aghdasi et al. (2011), individuals with strong attachment to the organization will feel cohesive with it and get pleasure from being a member of organization.

2.3 Salary

Pay is vital, but the awareness of individual about salary is more vital. People with positive attention seem to be much satisfied with pay relative to people with negative affectivity. Organ (1994) claimed that both positive and negative affectivity stands as key factors of job satisfaction. But the individuals who have extraordinary negative affectivity are nervous and worried (the emotional state that may designate an anxious personality), but that does not suggest across-the-board displeasure. High-negative affectivity persons may be discontented with characteristics of their jobs, but that does not essentially mean that they would be more disappointed with their salary. Organizational possession is also an imperative reason in determining pay satisfaction and contentment of employees. Solomon (1986) suggested that public sector executives experience lower intensities of job and pay satisfaction. Low performance of employees may be a consequence of low levels of satisfaction with their salary. A pay motivation scheme is a different measurement of pay satisfaction. In modern ages, there remained a cumulative trend for public and private administrations to implement additional inspired and creative procedures of wage enticement such as group incentives and profit distribution schemes. Carrell and Dittrich (1978) also stated that motivation plans that used many distribution rules would move toward different magnitudes of pay satisfaction. So, it is anticipated that distributive justice will affect satisfaction with motivational incentive plans.

For making pay satisfaction and job satisfaction, organizations have to encourage a strategy of perception of pay-for-performance. Insight of pay-for-performance is a positive stimulus on pay satisfaction. Omar and Ogenyi (2006) observed that perceived associations between pay and performance account for additional changes in pay increase satisfaction than entire demographic variables put together. Consequently, launching a pay-for-performance salary system may be the greatest effective technique to encourage salary level satisfaction.

Employees enjoying high salaries are more likely to observe enticement recompenses as supportive. According to Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs, additional income may assistance in the contentment of esteem needs for the reason that high salary suggests high capability and overall individual value. So, even after satisfaction of basic physiological and security needs are not an issue, a number of people drive value high salary as an indicator of proficiency and individual value (Malka & Chatman, 2003). Performance salary is assessed because it is problematic to measure quantitatively, that it can encourage individuals to emphasis too barely, that it can weaken intrinsic interest, which monetary rewards only work for selected people, that it is harmful to teamwork and cooperation and that general pay costs can upsurge earlier if not strongly measured (Armstrong & Murlis, 2005).

2.4 Leadership

The literature reveals that leadership is the process involving the influences that occurs within group which motivates the employees toward goal attainment. When a leader transfers his/her emotions and thoughts to employees in a strong way, it affects employees’ emotions, performance (Goleman, 2002), and job satisfaction of the employees. This is because leaders have an effect not only on employees’ emotions and thoughts but on also their motivations-values, needs demands, and desires-expectations, which are instrumental in their actions toward identified objectives (Burns, 2007).

Sparrowe (1994) has explored the antecedents and outcomes of empowering leadership style in the hospitality industry, and his findings reveal that psychological empowerment among hospitality employees is worthwhile which will increase job satisfaction among employees and job turnover will decrease. The researcher has explored employee empowerment in the hospitality industry with a study on antecedents and outcomes. The results reveal that employees feel more satisfied with their empowerment and also their intention of leaving their job will also decrease (Sparrowe, 1994).

Stogdill and Shartle (1948) have researched methods for determining patterns for leadership behavior in relation to organization structure and objectives. The results show that the persons working in group-oriented work in an organization tend to follow a pattern of the consultative or participative style of leadership.

Leadership is one of factors of job satisfaction so this research focuses on what level of leadership affects the job satisfaction that leads to organizational commitment.

2.5 Relationship

In general, the success of an organization is the way of connecting people in a team for a special goal, implementing the work, then getting the result. In that way, the relationship among team members is very important, especially between managers and their subordinates. The relationship is built up in trust and pleasure will enhance the internal strengthening of the organization. In a trusted environment or trust spirit among organizations, the people will feel the working station is like home then it increases their commitment with the organization.

Awais et al. (2015) classified interpersonal relationships in the workplace into relationships with superiors and colleagues. The level of support obtained from the supervisor and the way of work control by the supervisor creates relations with superiors. In contrast, the relations between colleagues arise through the interaction of cooperation and conflict.

A different approach to the relationship can be found in the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, which assumes that managers build bilateral case by case basis relations with subordinates (Graham & Van, 2010; Ilies et al., 2007), and they do not treat the subordinates with the same deference (Turek et al., 2014). The quality of interpersonal relationships with colleagues and managers with subordinates has a positive impact on the commitment to work (Kulikowski, 2015).

An important element in building positive relationships with employees is trust, which is an essential element of management. According to Królik (2015), the trust that employees have toward managerial staff can provide the company the prevalence over rivals. Undoubtedly, this situation has a positive effect on the development of the company.

According to Moczydłowska (2013), making mistakes in building relationships with employees can be a source of internal crises in the enterprise, which indicates the importance of this management area. The researcher discusses the concept of employee relationship management (ERM) and indicates the source of the crisis around customer relationships management with employees. The manifestation of this may be a loss of valuable employees. One of the factors that affect the retention of employees in an organization is a good supervisor–subordinate relation. The author concludes by pointing out that good employee relations can become the foundation of a rapid overcoming of the difficulties, and even using the crisis to the further development of the company.

2.6 Working Environment

Comfortable people are more productive for a better working environment. However, comfort is one of those words that are easy to use and difficult to define. People feel comfortable when they feel comfortable. It is a state of mind that depends on physical feelings and emotional states. Creating an effective personal environment should take into account these two elements as well as cost and technology constraints.

In the coming years, companies will successfully or unsuccessfully depend on their ability to hire and retain highly skilled workers, said Hoskins and his employees. Companies have realized the importance of comfort in the workplace by improving ergonomic functional parts to maintain quality personnel, increase productivity and maintain a competitive edge. The quality of the employees’ working environment has the greatest impact on the level of motivation and subsequent productivity. The way they relate to the organization, especially in the immediate environment, has a major impact on their error rate, level of innovation and collaboration with other employees, and is not involved and, ultimately, how long they work.

Tio (2014) has examined and analyzed the influence of the working environment condition toward employee job satisfaction and to provide insight on how to increase employee job satisfaction through the work environment. The result is that there are significant influences of work environment toward the job satisfaction of the employees. Therefore, it can be concluded that in order to improve the company employee job satisfaction, the company needs to pay attention to the work environment they provide for the employees.

3 Methodology

3.1 Conceptual Model

Based on the literature review, the conceptual model is formulated for the independent variables and the dependent variables as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
A model diagram explains the 4 factors responsible for providing job satisfaction to employees which include salary, leadership, relationship, and the work environment, which finally impacts organizational commitment.

Conceptual model

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Based on the conceptual model, the following hypotheses are proposed.

H1: Salary has positively related to job satisfaction.

H2: Leadership has positively related to job satisfaction.

H3: Relationship has positively related to job satisfaction.

H4: Working environment has positively related to job satisfaction.

H5: Job satisfaction has positively related to organizational commitment.

3.2 Data Collection

The survey is chosen as the main method with a questionnaire to collect primary data. The questionnaire is divided into two sections: Perceived relationship among the factors and demographic details. The questionnaires were sent to participants through the Internet using Google Forms via email and social media such as Facebook. There are 173 respondents who participated in the survey, spreading from 18 to over 50 years old.

The measurement is employed based on the previous study (Tatar, 2020), using the 5-point Likert scales (Table 1).

Table 1 Scales of independent and dependent variables
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4 Results

4.1 Descriptive Statistics

Figure 2 below describes the number of respondents (N = 173) and the percentage of gender and income.

Fig. 2
A set of two pie charts divides the number of respondents based on gender and income. The percentage of females who attended the survey is more than that of men. In terms of income, 34.68% of the respondents earn more than 9 to 15 million V N D, 32.37% earn between 4 to 9 million V N D, 17.92% earn more than 15 to 25 million V N D, 10.40% earn more than 25 million and 4.62% earn less than 4 million V N D.

Gender and income

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In terms of gender, it could represent a slight bias in responses, as the greater part of employees who took the surveys is female (64.16%). It is nearly double in comparison to the number of males who took part in the surveys (34.10%). Nevertheless, it has been found women are more likely to participate in online surveys than men (Curtin et al., 2000), which may therefore explain this imbalance.

In terms of income, most respondents earned more than 4 million VND. Specifically, employees earned 4–9 million VND (32.37%), more than 9 to 15 million VND (34.68%), more than 15 to 25 million VND (17.92%), and more than 25 million VND (10.40%).

Salary

The descriptive statistics in Table 2 show that at least one participant struggles with the salary of finding organizational commitment as the minimum is one. The mean is 3.85 which suggests that most participants struggle with salary. The standard deviation tells us how clustered or spreads the distribution is around the mean value (Malhotra, 2015). The low standard deviation of 0.876 indicates that the data is clustered closely around the mean, thus meaning we can trust that the data is reliable.

Table 2 Mean of factors
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Leadership

The descriptive statistics show that at least more than one participant struggles with the leadership of finding organizational commitment as the minimum is 1.14. The mean is 3.88 which suggests that most participants struggle with leadership. The standard deviation of 0.914 is relatively low, thus meaning we can trust the data is reliable.

Relationship

The descriptive statistics show that at least one and a half participants struggle with the relationship of finding organizational commitment as the minimum is 1.5. The mean is 3.96 which suggests that most participants struggle with relationship. The standard deviation tells us how clustered or spreads the distribution is around the mean value (Malhotra, 2015). The low standard deviation of 0.689 suggests that the majority of responses sit closely to the mean, thus meaning we can trust that the data is reliable.

Working environment

The descriptive statistics show that at least two participants struggle with the working environment of finding organizational commitment as the minimum is two. The mean for working environment was the highest at 4.13, followed by relationship at 3.96. Thus, meaning participants pay their attention to this factor the most, a favorable sign for companies to attract employees’ commitment. The low standard deviation of 0.695 indicates that the data is clustered closely around the mean, thus meaning we can trust that the data is reliable.

Job satisfaction

The descriptive statistics show that at least more than one participant struggles with the job satisfaction of finding organizational commitment as the minimum is 1.2. The mean is 3.79 which indicates that the majority of participants are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the current works. However, as this value is over three, it suggests that participants are leaned marginally toward satisfied. The low standard deviation of 0.834 indicates that the data is clustered closely around the mean, thus meaning we can trust that the data is reliable.

Organizational commitment

The descriptive statistics show that at least one and a half participants struggle with organizational commitment as the minimum is 1.5. The mean is 3.84 which suggests that most participants struggle with organizational commitment. The low standard deviation of 0.807 indicates that the data is clustered closely around the mean, thus meaning we can trust that the data is reliable.

4.2 Hypothesis Testing

According to results (Table 3), the correlations between the organizational commitment and the five other variables, which are the influential factors, are positive. There are existing relationships between the dependent variable and each independent variable (ps < 0.001), and the relationships are really strong due to the fact of Pearson’s correlation from 0.66 to 0.84.

Table 3 Correlations
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There is a correlation among 6 factors (all ps < 0.001). Especially, there is a very strong correlation between job satisfaction and organizational commitment (r = 0.843).

The test was found to be statistically significant as p < 0.001 is less than 0.05 at the 95% level of significance, indicating a significant relationship between these two variables including job satisfaction and organizational commitment. As shown on the result with r = 0.843, this relationship was found to be positive. Thus, H5 is accepted.

The test found the relationship between working environment and job satisfaction to be significant. This is confirmed by p < 0.001. With r = 0.731, this relationship was found to be positive. So, H4 is accepted.

The test found the relationship between relationship and job satisfaction to be significant. This is confirmed by p < 0.001. With r = 0.677, this relationship was found to be positive. Hence, H3 is accepted.

The test found the relationship between leadership and job satisfaction to be significant. This is confirmed by p < 0.001. With r = 0.725, this relationship was found to be positive. Therefore, H2 is accepted.

The test found the relationship between salary and job satisfaction to be significant. This is confirmed by p < 0.001. With r = 0.687, this relationship was found to be positive. Thus, H1 is accepted.

Quantitative research indicated a range of factors may have influenced job satisfaction. To analyze the effect of salary, leadership, relationship, and working environment on job satisfaction, a multiple linear regression was conducted.

According to the ANOVA statistics, it can be seen that p = 0.01 < 0.05, then we can make a conclusion that the built linear regression model fits the population. In other words, the independent variables are linearly related to the dependent variable, and the confidence is 95%. There are salary (beta = 0.187), leadership (beta = 0.474), relationship (beta = 0.141), and working environment (beta = 0.195) impacts on job satisfaction (ps < 0.01). Job satisfaction is explained by salary, leadership, relationship, and working environment about 74% (R2 = 0.74). The R2 value shows the variation of the job satisfaction variable which is explained 74% because of the affection of the independent variables in the conceptual framework. There is 26% which is explained be the other factors outside of the research model.

4.3 Further Analysis

A one-way ANOVA test requires an independent categorical variable and a dependent variable. This test was performed to see if income, gender have an impact on organizational commitment.

The ANOVA test found the relationship between income and organizational commitment to be significant (p < 0.05). The difference among income ranges regarding organizational commitment. Specifically, there is a significant difference in organizational commitment between income groups of < 4 million VND and 4–9 million VND (p < 0.001): M = 3.52 < M = 4.20, respectively.

The difference between males and females is no significant in organizational commitment (p > 0.05).

5 Conclusion and Policy Implications

5.1 Conclusion

The main purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of job satisfaction on organizational commitment through salary, leadership, relationship, and working environment in the companies in Vietnam. The results from the quantitative statistics identified that there was sufficient evidence to make affirmative answers for the questions of the research.

The quantitative method was used to survey 170 employees in various occupations, focusing on the impact of job satisfaction, salary, leadership, relationship, working environment. As a result, the statistical testing found all the variables were the predictors of organizational commitment (all ps < 0.001). Especially, there was a very strong correlation between job satisfaction and organizational commitment (r = 0.843) which was followed by the strong correlation between leadership and organizational commitment (r = 0.810).

Thus, the data collected from the analysis provides some managerial implications to increase organizational commitment.

5.2 Policy Implications

After a thorough analysis of the quantitative data that have been collected, it is recommended that the companies in Vietnam should create a campaign surrounding job satisfaction to recruit and maintain talented employees by keeping their organizational commitment. There are as follows.

Salary

Besides the maintenance of the current based base salary, companies should make a balance between internal and external competitiveness. Likewise, companies should pay attention to additional welfare measures for employees. The companies may allow employees to buy preferred shares of the companies, or housing purchase assistance, along with improving the efficiency of labor unions in companies to protect more interests of employees. In addition, the companies can diversity their benefits by offering preferential rates services to the companies’ employees.

Leadership

According to statistics, leadership is the strongest factor in improving employee job satisfaction. Hence, companies need to pay close attention to this one. This factor needs to be improved in order of priority: receiving suggestions/opinions of employees; politeness and gentleness in communication as well as in work; always instruct and support staff professionally; fair treatment with all of the staff.

Relationship

Companies need to always create conditions to promote employees’ coworker relationships to tighten the spirit of solidarity internally. To achieve that, companies need to regularly organize field activities, foreign affairs, sightseeing, travel, extra-curricular activities, and organization of communication contests ownership between departments. These activities are not only extremely meaningful important in bringing together members of the organization, but also in energy for employees to relieve pressure as well as an exercise both physically and mentally for the staff.

Working Environment

Companies need to improve a cleaner, cooler, and safer working environment. Besides, enterprises also need to create conditions for employees to study and improve their working knowledge and skills. Additionally, companies should structure a system to create promotion opportunities for qualified people as well as employees who are lower than overall job satisfaction.

Further, if the managers want to increase the job satisfaction level, research findings highlight certain features deemed important by respondents that there are differences in individuals’ interests. People with different incomes do not have the same desired job satisfaction. Likewise, no strategy fits all the organizations to improve their employees’ commitment. In order words, the companies and their managers should conduct further research on another factor, and then align it to their organizational structures and strategies.

Therefore, this research is a piece of good evidence for the companies and their executives to use in order to understand the importance of job satisfaction and its’ influencers including salary, leadership, relationship, and working environment. Moreover, the research also provides a framework for the managers to build up a suitable human resource plan for their companies to increase their organizational commitment.