Job satisfaction in developing countries: An evidence from a matched employer–employee survey in Vietnam
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this literature on developing countries by investigating the determinants of job satisfaction in Vietnam where the economics literature on this issue is virtually non-existent. The authors also contribute to the literature on income comparison by extending beyond the within-firm co-worker income comparison.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors estimate a generalized order logit model for job satisfaction as statistical tests suggest that the parallel-lines assumption, which is often invoked in previous studies using the standard logit model, does not hold.
Findings
For Vietnam, the authors find that absolute and relative incomes as well as human resource practices such as efficiency wage and training policy have an impact on workers’ satisfaction. Workers in the foreign direct investment (FDI) sectors behave a bit differently from their peers in the domestic sector.
Originality/value
Taking advantage of a unique matched employer–employee data set collected in 2008 by the North-South Institute (Canada) and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, the authors are able to investigate the impact of a number of important job characteristics on job satisfaction such as absolute and reference incomes, wage policy, training plan for workers, union membership and job position, and, at the same time, to disentangle the possible differences in job satisfaction of workers in domestic vs FDI firms.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Financial support from International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada, through the Mekong Economic Research Network is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would like to thank Dr Thang Nguyen at Center for Analysis and Forecasting (CAF) at Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences for making the data available to us for this research. Previous versions of the paper were presented at Mekong Economic Research Network meetings in Hanoi (2012), Vientiane (2013) and Phnom Penh (2014); the authors would like to thank participants of this network meeting for helpful comments. Excellent research assistance is provided by Trang Ha Nguyen (DEPOCEN). The usual disclaimer applies. The authors of this paper have not made their research data set openly available. Any enquiries regarding the data set can be directed to the corresponding author.
Citation
Anh, N., Nguyen, N.-M.T., Tuong Anh, N.T. and Nguyen, P.M.T. (2019), "Job satisfaction in developing countries: An evidence from a matched employer–employee survey in Vietnam", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 192-210. https://doi.org/10.1108/JES-04-2017-0096
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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