Understanding The Vietnam University Teachers’ Work Motivation: The Importance Of Perceived Justice In The Workplace

Nowadays,teachers play a vital role in helping students become good human beings and citizens of the country.The importance of the teaching profession for society cannot be denied.However,"It is not fair,or It is injustice" is a common remark we hear from academic staff worldwide.Looking back for decades,justice has become an important research topic in the field of organizational behaviour.In the last few years,justice for teachers continuously gained attention among education scholars.A small but increasingly growing literature has found the relationship between a lack of justice,a decline in teachers’ work motivation and job satisfaction indicated by lower quality of teaching,and the expanding phenomenon of academics switching occupations.Despite the increasing attention to justice issues for academic staff,the existing literature has not yet proposed or established a framework to link justice in the workplace,teachers’ perceptions,and teachers’ work motivation and job satisfaction.The fundamental purpose of this study is to identify the underlying structure of justice in the workplace and examines the impact of teachers’ perceptions of justice as encompassed by eight specific forms of justice: justice in income results,justice in the income distribution process,justice in recognition,justice in opportunities for promotion,justice in the attitudes and treatments of colleagues,leadership,justice in the students’ evaluation of teachers,and justice in the evaluation of society toward a teaching career,on teachers’ work motivation.Based on the literature review of previous research,this study hypothesized that teachers’ perception of justice is positively associated with the level of work motivation.By investigating the direct relationship between the components of organizational justice and work motivation in the career development context in the workplace,this study helps school leaders and principals,or the human resource management in school to understand the teachers’ needs so that they have relevant mechanisms and policies to improve the performance of education staff.A total of 416 education staff in 13 universities(including 8 Public and five nonPublic Universities)in Hanoi participated in this research.Based on the mixed method approach,survey questionnaires and an in-depth interview were used to obtain the teachers’ perceptions.A total of 59(6 items for the level of work motivation and 53 items for organizational justice)were prepared for use in a quantitative questionnaire survey.Additionally,a list of questions to understand and evaluate the impact of teachers’ perceptions of justice on their work motivation was also prepared for the purpose of in-depth interviews in a qualitative research approach.The quantitative data analysis process of this study is followed three steps:(1)The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin(KMO)test and Cronbach’s Alpha examined the construct validity and reliability of each measurement model.(2)Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were reported.(3)Hierarchical multiple regression was applied to measure the impact of teachers’ perception of justice on their work motivation.Regarding the correlation analysis results,findings indicated that all aspects of justice had positive and moderate to strong relations with the teachers’ work motivation.Multiple regression revealed a significant impact of justice and the eight specific components of justice on teachers’ work motivation,in which justice in an opportunity for promotion and justice in income results was found that are the two factors that have the most influence on teachers’ work motivation.Besides,the results of the in-depth interview also supported the results of the quantitative phase,which showed that all the justice aspects directly affect the teachers’ work motivation and performance,leading to their intention of contributing to the school’s success,staying or leaving it.The findings implied that justice in the workplace plays a vital role in understanding university teachers’ needs and demands and in enhancing teachers’ work motivation and job satisfaction.In addition,another finding of this study indicated differences in the level of work motivation and perceptions of justice in the workplace among university teachers through demographic characteristics.In particular,multiple regression showed that gender,job title,and type of university significantly impact the level of work motivation among university teachers in Hanoi.Regarding the effect of demographic characteristics on teachers’ perception of justice in the workplace,the results showed a significant correlation between gender,type of university,and teachers’ perception of justice.This study suggests that managers and human resource practitioners might design and establish the assessment and evaluation considering the differences in needs of the academic staff of different characteristics.The findings of this study were also discussed in detail and compared with the previous research.The suggestions of this research in the field of Educational Leadership & Management were also mentioned.Finally,the limitations of this research and recommendations for future study are discussed.