Organizational culture, job satisfaction and firm performance - A comparative study between local companies and foreign companies in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to analyze the influence of culture in local company and foreign company. The globalization of the world economy has intensified international relationships, increasing the importance of cultural dimension. Literature has emphasized various variables that have influence over the culture of a population or a region. Many times these elements are invisible to the eyes of foreigners that travel around the world searching for new business opportunities, resulting in conflicts, problems and failures. Usually managers, who take over the prevailing norms in their country, may find difficulties in the performance of their companies. In order to be successful it is necessary to read the cultural context and seek the required adjustments to avoid problems may arise and affect the performance of the business. The data were collected through questionnaires distributed to companies located in Ho Chi Minh City. This was done to investigate the relationships between and the impact of these elements on each other. The scale used was the organizational culture, the survey of job satisfaction and company performance. The collected data were statistically analyzed with SPSS. Reviewing the literature, relevant theory and previous research suggests different scale to measure organizational culture based on the performance of the organization. A survey was designed with the individual items of the scale model of the organization. The pilot test was conducted to adjust the items in the questionnaire to be consistent with the context of the foreign and local companies in this study and used for data collecting stage. The study used a model consists of 500 actual employees of companies in Ho Chi Minh City to examine the relationship of the proposed model. The findings of this study support the three dimensions of organizational culture, which are Bureaucratic culture, Innovative culture and Supportive culture. Further research in this article should try to test organizational performance through many different cities in Vietnam with a diverse 3 population, not only the employees and customers. This will provide the opportunity to make a general assessment. Moreover, the relationship of the internal components on job satisfaction based organizational culture as well as the relationship between firm performance and other elements need to be investigated. Multiple regressions were applied according to the step of Kenny and Baron (1986) who gave the technical details of the regression analysis procedure when an intermediate variable is involved. Some survey results according to expectations after examining the theory, but others surprisingly contradictive. Cultural organizations had 3 predicted direct impacts 1 was specific meaning one with bureaucracy. This effect was insignificant instead of negative as was hypothesized. Innovative culture and Supportive culture had a significant direct impact on Firm performance Based on the result of this research it is recommended that organizational culture should be considered in foreign companies as well as local companies located in Ho Chi Minh City to gain satisfied and committed employees. Managers need to state their views clearly; they need to consider employee capabilities and needs. This could ultimately lead to a better performance and a competitive advantage for the organization.