Solutions to improve ineffective supervision at FPT digital retail joint stock company

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SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE INEFFECTIVE SUPERVISION AT FPT DIGITAL
RETAIL JOINT STOCK COMPANY

TRUONG THUY QUANG

MBA THESIS

INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que
Feb 6, 2017


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Table of Contents
Acknowledgement .......................................................................................................... 4
Executive summary ........................................................................................................ 5
CHAPTER I PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION ............................................................ 7
1.1 Company background .............................................................................................. 7
1.1.1 Industry overview .................................................................................................. 7
1.1.2 Market share and competitors .............................................................................. 8
1.1.3 Company history and structure ............................................................................ 9
1.2.Background of problem ......................................................................................... 11
1.3 Problem Justification .............................................................................................. 17
1.3.1 Potential central problem.................................................................................... 17
1.3.2 Justify the existence of problem .......................................................................... 19
1.3.3Jusify the importance of problem ........................................................................ 21
1.4 Identification of potential causes: .......................................................................... 23
CHAPTER II ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS ........................................................... 27
2.1.Causes validation .................................................................................................... 27
2.2.Solution design........................................................................................................ 30

CHAPTER III SELECTED SOLUTION AND CHANGE PLAN ........................... 37
3.1.Introduction to selected solution............................................................................ 37
3.2.Details plan ............................................................................................................. 37
3.3.Change plan and counter measures: ..................................................................... 41
CHAPTER IV SUPPORTING INFORMATION ..................................................... 42
4.1.Questionnaire development to justify central problem ........................................ 43
4.2 Questionnaire development to justify causes ........................................................ 44
4.3 Transcript of all interviews .................................................................................... 46
REFERENCE ............................................................................................................... 77


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List of Tables
Table 1: Asia retails sales volume growth from Economist Intelligence Unit, 2016 ..........7
Table 2: Electrical appliances and housewares: Market demand growth from Economist
Intelligence Unit, 2016 ..................................................................................................... 8

List of Figures
Figure 1: FPT Corporation structure from FPT Retail Human Resources, 2016............. 10
Figure 2: Staff growth at FPT Retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources, 2016
....................................................................................................................................... 11
Figure 3: Turnover rate at FPT retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources, 2014
to 2016 ........................................................................................................................... 11
Figure 4: Initial cause and effect map ............................................................................ 16
Figure 5: Final cause and effect map .............................................................................. 26


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Acknowledgement

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi
Nguyet Que, who always stands by me and motivates me to complete this. Without her
full support, this master thesis cannot be fulfilled. Needless to say, her guidance helped
me in all the time of writing this thesis. In addition to that, I want to show my sincere
gratitude to Prof. Nguyen Dinh Tho, who are always dedicated and patient to us in every
single moment.
Besides my advisors, I would like to thank my family and friends for encouraging
me spiritually throughout writing this thesis.


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Executive summary
This thesis of “Solutions to improve ineffective supervision” had been composed
and completed in four main chapters: problem identification, alternative solutions,
selected solution and change plan, supporting information.
Chapter I included company introduction which is FPT Digital Retail JSC, main
features about FPT as well as some recent issues that illustrated from a wide variety of
secondary data. To make it clearer and convincing, in depth interviews were conducted to
explore problems further to see what was really going on in this company. A problem
mess had been created to show out all symptoms, organization outcomes and problems as
a general picture. Specifically, a central problem of ineffective supervision was selected
to be solved as a core problem of company with the justification of its existence and
importance.
After validating and selecting the central problem of organization, three causes of
central problem listed as supervisory relationship, soft-skill training, gender-related
leadership were investigated to verify and determine so as to give out alternative
solutions which were presented in chapter II.
In this thesis, there were two solutions proposed for short-term and long-term to
tackle problem with evaluation and comparison between these two solutions to best out
the most relevant and suitable for organization which were discussed in chapter III.

The last chapter was named as the supporting chapter to support all information
and information source for the above three chapters. It composed three sections of


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questionnaire development to justify central problem, questionnaire development to
justify causes and transcript of all interviews.
In-depth interviews were widely used at different levels from staff to manager to
collect data and to diagnose various aspects of the problem with the methodology of
design-oriented and theory-informed from a wide variety of fields such as retails, service
industry, management etc.
After collecting data and information to analyze, it was believed that employee
satisfaction had been greatly affected by lots of factors such as nature of work, pay and
benefit, motivation etc. However, this research illustrated that factor of supervision had
been mostly influenced which led to the very alarming consequences such as high
turnover, low job performance and employee satisfaction.


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CHAPTER I: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
1.1 Company background
1.1.1 Industry overview
In this constantly changing world, Vietnam is one of the most actively emerging
markets. Particularly, despite the world economic slowdown, retail sector of Vietnam is
highly considered as high level of attractiveness.
As being illustrated in Table 1, over the past 4 year, Vietnam had a pretty low
growth rate in comparison with other developing countries such as China, Hong Kong.
However, recently from 2016, it is predicted that the second-highest growing country
belongs to Vietnam though these figures varied slightly.

Table 1: Asia retails sales volume growth from Economist Intelligence Unit,
2016
Needless to say, retail competition of electric device market is getting gradually
aggressive and expansive. Follow the very similar pattern with the growth rate in the first


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table, this second table illustrates the rapidly growth of Vietnam in term of electrical
appliances and housewares. Since 2014, Vietnam won the second-highest place in market
demand growth just after China as presented in table 2 below:

Table 2: Electrical appliances and housewares: Market demand growth from
Economist Intelligence Unit, 2016
1.1.2 Market share and competitors
Several biggest mobile phone retailer listed must be Thegioididong Joint Stock
Company, FPT Digital Retail Joint Stock Company, Vienthong A etc. During the past 5
years from 2010 to 2014, Thegioididong drives the position of one of 500 leading retail
companies in Asia Pacific area and won the first place of mobile retail business
(according to doanhnhansaigon.vn). “The Vietnam mobile phone retail market is heating
up with an enormous expansion of the largest retailers such as Thegioididong, FPT and
VienthongA. Therefore, smaller retailers in the mobile phone business need to adapt in
order to survive in this competitive market.


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Vietnam’s largest mobile phone retailer, Thegioididong has accounted for 40%
share of mobile retail market in Vietnam and its revenue in 2015 was reported to increase
60% compared to the previous year from 15,800 billion VND to 25,250 billion VND.
“The market share of Thegioididong is up to 40% and not stoppable; It is really not easy
for anyone who wants to penetrate into this market to compete with Thegioididong”

Nguyen Duc Tai, the CEO of Thegioididong, said.”
The strongest rival of FPT Shop must be Thegioigidong, the first comer in this
playground with more than 688 stores, 16.969 employees in all regions of Vietnam. It
accounts for 30% market share followed by FPT Shop 10%, Vienthong A Viettel 20%
and the remaining belongs to small and medium sized shops.
Nevertheless, due to this strong competition, it is confronting with one another
giant competitor named FPT Shop whose number of shops sharply rocket in all around
Vietnam. To reach out this target, retail staff has made great contribution though this
company is under threat of high turnover rate which is the result of low job satisfaction,
working time, competition between staff etc.
1.1.3 Company history and structure
On August 28, 2007 FPT Digital Retail JSC was established with the store chain
named [IN]Store nationwide. After that, in 2008, [IN]Store changed its name to FPT
Shop. And since 2009, FPT brand name has become popular with customers. Three years
later, FPT Retail JSC changed its name to FPR Digital Retail JSC and this name has been
widely used until now.


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Regarding the structure, FPT Digital Retail JSC (FPT Retail) operates under FPT
Corporation as one of its subsidiary. People in Vietnam witness this familiar name FPT
Shop. Until now, there are approximately 300 stores in around Vietnam mainly in Ho Chi
Minh City, Ha Noi, Hai Phong, Can Tho, Da Nang and Hue. Predictably, Year 2016
witness a sharp increase up to 400 shops.
FPT
CORPORATION

FE

FIS

FOC

FRT

FTEL

FTG

FS

Figure 1: FPT Corporation structure from FPT Retail Human Resources, 2016
FPT Shop provides huge ranges of products from Mobile phone, Laptop,
Accessories to Service, used mobile phones.
For staff, there is a dramatically increase in staff growth with career path from
newbies to Regional Shop manager. In 2015, the number of staff reached 4500 people
and increase to around 5000 staff in 2016.

5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0

Staff growth

2007 2010 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

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Figure 2: Staff growth at FPT Retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources,
2016
Even the significant development in staff growth and turnover go up very
noticeably, symptoms of high turnover rate and products return, customer complaints are
“real and urgent threat” to the sustainable long-lasting development FPT retail.
1.2 Background of problem
There is no doubt that retail industry has witnessed a high turnover rate from some
sources of secondary data. According to a survey in 2016 of Mercer and Talentnet(1), big
companies in Human Resources consulting, the top three industries with a high turnover
rate were retail (39%), life science (17%) and technology (16.2%) and staff turnover rate
in 2015 was slightly lower than 2014. In particular, FPT retail JSC held a high turnover
rate from 2014 to 2016 as being seen in figure 3 follow:
Turnover rate
70.0%

65.5%

60.0%

55.0%

50.0%
40.0%
26.9%

30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%

2014

2015

First 6 months 2016

Figure 3: Turnover rate at FPT retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources,
2014 to 2016


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From the external sources of information as secondary data, In the Corporation,
FPT Retail is still the growth-leading company in profit before tax and revenue

(2)

.FPT

Retail is now calling for big investors to invest into this area of retail. With the rapid
expansion of shops in 63/63 cities and provinces, this company put a very high pressure
on their staff especially for sales group to be more competitive and stronger. To explore
this problem further, interview has been conducted with 8 people who are from 3 groups
mentioned below:
The first group of 3 people including those who are currently
working at FPT Retail JSC: Ms. Le Thi Ngoc Hoa – currently a staff in HR
department of FPT Retail ; Mr. Huynh Quang Long – Head of Training
Department of FPT Retail ; Ms. Le Thi Bich Ngoc – Shop Manager of 344 Le Van
Khuong, Dist 12, HCMC.
The second group has 03 participants who used to work at FPT and
then left for another organization : Mr. Vu Thanh Tung , he is currently working

as Shop Manager in Vinpro+ and used to work at FPT Retail for more than 4 years
with various positions; Ms. Nguyen Ngoc Thanh Hieu 24 years old, she used to be
a salesman at FPT Shop and now working for Hoa Thien Phu Company; Mr. Ly
Quoc Tien who used to work at FPT at 3 different positions : salesman, technical
staff, taskforce member.
The last group of 2 customers: Mr. Ho Nhut Khuong – 25 years old,
a regular customer of FPT Shop; Mr. Le Dinh Qui (33 years old), rarely buy
product at FPT Shop.


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Conducting these initial interviews with all group members listed above; there are
different features for each group. The key reason for choosing these people to interview
is that, various perceptions and perspectives have been marked and collected. With the
first group, they are all currently working at FPT Retail JSC but different department and
level from staff to shop manager and training manager. The second group is exemployees at FPT retail, who used to engage with company and left for different reasons,
they understood what was going on inside the company. The final group is various kinds
of customer with different aspects and gives out different viewpoints with their real
experience.
Most of people in the first and second group all emphasized that there was a high
turnover rate recently which create crucial impact to company productivity, customer
satisfaction and affect product returns.
“The average working time of 1 salesman in FPT Shop is only from 4-6 months.
Overall, the rate of turnover in 2015 is high (around 50%)’’ sayings from Ms. Le Thi
Ngoc Hoa. Alongside with the same perspectives, Mr. Huynh Quang Long shared FPT
Retail JSC was facing the fact that huge number of key persons left FPT with different
reasons. From the view point of Ms. Le Thi Bich Ngoc, salesmen came to work without
energy, they did not want to work which could lead to lower productivity of Shop, they
did not want to work anymore. With high turnover and turnover intention, a number of
new and inexperienced salesman has been recruited, a new salesman surely don’t know

how to sell products, which can lose customers and lower productivity. Moreover,
product returns can be increased due to new less experienced salesman “this happened for


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many reasons, but one of them come from new salesman’ consultancy related to
knowledge” confirmed by Ms. Le Thi Ngoc Hoa.
Behind the symptoms of high turnover rate and alarming consequences, there are a
wide range of causes. Employee satisfaction is the core element that heighten turnover
rate up. Employee are not happy and satisfied due to a plenty of reasons listed like lack of
promotion opportunity, ineffective supervision, poor pay and benefit, lack of motivation,
competition between co-workers, stress and pressure, lack of motivation or burnout.
Ms. Le Thi Ngoc Hoa stated that regarding sales force, due to selling policy in
FPT with low base salary and quite attractive incentives, it can stimulate selling
productivity but tough competition between salesmen happened which has led to stress or
unfair competition between co-workers. With some other salesman cannot sell products
well will be very much under high competitive pressure and quit the job.
Sharing the same perspectives, Ms. Le Thi Bich Ngoc confirmed that she and her
staff had to work overtime like road show, leaflets sending…very often and without any
extra payment from company. After work, she had other things to do at home as well. As
far as she’s concerned, there is no satisfaction regarding pay and benefit. From the
sayings of Ms. Le Thi Bich Ngoc who is currently Shop Manager of FPT, she confirmed
that she can see the current situation of increasing turnover rate, some salesmen are not
happy to come to work and feel like energy loss status, then they quit the job. And she
also shares the same view points with others that there is a high rate of turnover in FPT
Shop which can impact on company productivity. On the other hand, when being asked
about current status of FPT retail, Mr. Huynh Quang Long – Head of Training


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Department of FPT Retail showed his opinion that what he can observe recently is higher
turnover of salesman especially key persons such as ASM, SM leave company and move
to another similar company called Vingroup. Because of the market competition, FPT
shop is trying to build the best image to be more attractive. FPT Shop push stronger and
higher target for each shop, which make sales person here stressed. From the opinion of
Ms. Nguyen Ngoc Thanh Hieu “there is a high and tough competition among salesmen
which makes me really stressed”
During the time doing the interviews with the first group and the second group,
they mentioned that the employee satisfaction greatly cause high turnover rate which
indirectly lead to customer dissatisfaction. That is the reason why the third group of 2
customers is also involved to be interviewed to explore problem further. The result after
interviewing two customers are regarded as similar
To sum up, initial cause and effect map has been showed as below


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Nature of
Work

Competition
between coworkers

Work
pressure

Failure to reach
target

Lack of

promotion
opportunity

Burnout

High turnover
Strict selling
policy

Job
Stress

Lack of
motivation

Supervisory
relationship

New and less
experienced
salesmen
increase

Products
return
increase

Low employee
satisfaction

Ineffective
supervision

Soft-skill
training

Poor pay
and benefit

Low job performance

Customer
dissatisfaction

Gender-related
leadership
Figure 4: Initial cause and effect map


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The success of one company doesn’t only mean this company makes money or
not, that’s how they make their employees drive passion and desire towards their current
job. As well, effective supervision is considered as very important element from the
prospective of maintaining and retaining appropriate employees. For a company, greater
level of job satisfaction can result in greater level of job performance and meaningfully
reduces turnover rate.
1.3 Problem Justification
1.3.1 Potential central problem
As being showed in Figure 4 initial cause and effect map, a plenty of
consequences have been found out from various source of data which are high turnover

and turnover intention, low level of job performance, customer dissatisfaction, product
return increase. These organization outcomes have been led by many issues, one direct
problem of them is low employee satisfaction. In addition to that, whereas, the factor of
low employee satisfaction is contributed by a wide range of issues collected from
interviews and other secondary data as well. Among all, in terms of factor nature of work,
high sales target, competition between co-workers, poor pay and benefit, in the current
situation of the company that FPT Retail JSC have to build up their images and make
effort to attract big investors, so if one of them has been chosen as central problem, it
cannot be changed or improved. Regarding the promotion opportunity and factor of
motivation, not so many people find them the main problems that impact on organization
outcomes . Moreover, if job stress or burnout are selected as the central problem, it will


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take too much time and effort, resources to solve which is impossible in the limited scope
of work.
More importantly, when being interviewed, people mostly mentioned the problem
of ineffective supervision which is the most influential factor to consequences which is
regarded as a solvable central problem in this context. Most of interviewees mentioned
and emphasized problem of supervision, they are not satisfied with their supervisor;
leavers also decided to leave company due to their supervisor’s behaviors and the way
they supervised.
Mr. Ly Quoc Tien – one of the interviewee joining the initial interview shared that
he left FPT because of his supervisors, he believed that they were really selfish and
thought for their benefit only, he and his supervisor did not have a good relationship, they
did not listen and accept constructive opinions from him. Agreed with Mr. Ly Quoc Tien,
Mr. Vu Thanh Tung who was also an interviewee in the first interview shared that, there
was a plenty of reasons that made him leave company, but among all of them, problem of
supervision is the key cause to this issue. From his perspective, employees did not leave
their company, they left their supervisors or managers. From perspective of Ms. Le Thi

Ngoc Hoa, she had 2 managers . She was not happy with the way her managers
supervised, they did not understand staff’s feelings and she didn’t receive any good
support from her managers.
To conclude, after collecting information and analyzing all the factors, problem of
ineffective supervision is highly considered as root cause or central problem that needs to
be tackled in the scope of this thesis.


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Definition of ineffective supervision
According to Morgan, Michael M(3),supervision seems to involve a structured
relationship between a supervisor and supervisee with the goal to help the supervisee gain
the attitudes, skills, and knowledge needed; but simply to point out that for many people;
supervision is concerned with a variety of objectives. Pell, Arthur R

(4)

showed that a

good supervisor knows the strengths and limitations of each team member. In planning
how to present information to the team it is important to keep this in mind. By building
this knowledge into the approach used, the supervisor can tailor the manner in which the
instructions will be given to what is best for the person involved. Watkins(5) suggested
that ineffective supervisors are intolerant, non-empathic, discouraging, defensive, and
uninterested in training or consultation to improve their supervisory skills. “Any sales
supervisors are ineffective because they don't know how to be managers” said
McSparran, Kent(6)
1.3.2Justify the existence of problem
This section aims to validate whether ineffective supervision is a real central
problem in FPT Digital Retail JSC.

There is a variety of theories that gives out the dimensions of ineffective
supervision. Various dimensions of ineffective supervision have been discussed in lots of
research previously. McSparran, Kent(7) stated many sales supervisors are ineffective
because they don't know how to be managers. These fellows generally fall into two
groups. The first type of ineffective supervisors are the worker-bees who feel guilty and
unproductive if they are not moving cases, hanging signs or making emergency


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deliveries. Though wonderful employees, these guys make poor supervisors because they
fail to recognize that they can accomplish more by increasing the output of eight
subordinates than they can by their own hard work. The second type of ineffective
supervisors are those with the "I've-paid-my-dues" attitude. These people interpret a
promotion to management as meaning that they have done their time on the streets and
have earned the right to coast for a while. Situated on the easy side of the inverted
accountability equation, these supervisors fail to see that their paycheck is justified only
by the effect they have on the productivity of their crew. According to Nicholas Ladany1,
Yoko Mori2, and Kristin E. Mehr3(8), the effective and ineffective supervisions were
differentiated based on the supervisory working alliance, supervisor style, supervisor selfdisclosure, supervisee nondisclosure and supervisee evaluation using supervisee
evaluation of supervisor form, working alliance inventory/supervision-short form,
supervisory styles inventory, supervisor self-disclosure index, trainee disclosure scale,
evaluation process within supervision inventory.
Besides that, semi-structured interviews with closed-ended questionnaires were
designed to collect data. Details and content of questionnaire will be displayed in section
4.1 chapter IV based on characteristics of ineffective supervision that are supervisory
working alliance, supervisory style, supervisor self-disclosure, supervisee nondisclosure
and supervisor evaluation.
Three respondents out of eight people in the first interview attended the interview
to help validate the existence of ineffective supervision at company. Having deeper talks
with Mr. Ly Quoc Tien, he stated that he was not satisfied with his supervisor’s skills and

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techniques or behaviors which couldn’t help him grow up. He learned by himself. There
was no agreement on the goals of supervision between his supervisor and he. Supervisor
asked and assigned to him, and he just followed. About the emotional bond between
supervisor and he, his manager also created high pressure on him, everything was
imposed by his managers.
Result of this justification process illustrated that ineffective supervision does exist
in this organization which had been supported by both theories and data.
1.3.3 Justify the importance of problem
As validated above, the problem of ineffective supervision really exists in FPT
Digital Retail JSC, this section aims to justify whether and how this central problem
important to make big impacts to organization outcomes by determining the cause-effect
relationship of ineffective supervision to employee satisfaction, turnover rate, and job
performance directly or indirectly.
Definition of employee satisfaction, turnover and job performance
Ambreen, Uzma(9) stated that employee satisfaction is the terminology used to
describe whether employees are happy and contented and fulfilling their desires and
needs at work or not. Employee satisfaction is a factor in employee motivation, employee
goal achievement and positive employee morale in the workplace. According to Saif-udDin*, Khair-uz-Zaman** & Allah Nawaz,(10) job satisfaction of academicians is well
documented across the literature where certain leading factors of satisfaction have been
researched over and over indicating that work, pay, supervision, promotion, co workers
and environment collectively determines the total satisfaction of a worker/officer.


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The term “turnover” is defined by Price

(11)

as: the ratio of the number of

organizational members who have left during the period being considered divided by the
average number of people in that organization during the period. Chou, Rita Jing-Ann
Author Information(12) stated the fact that when turnover is high, there are not enough
workers to perform tasks, causing a situation that affects quality of outcomes.
Furthermore, high turnover also creates a constant inflow of new workers, who tend to be
less experienced.
Yang, Cheng-Liang; Hwang, Mark(13) stated that job performance measures an
individual against his or her goal, with an emphasis on whether outcomes match the
expected goal or is how an employee performs his or her tasks using time, techniques and
interactions with others
Ineffective supervision to employee satisfaction as a direct impact by theory
Thacker, Rebecca A(14)showed significant, positive correlations for satisfaction
with quality of supervision, and with company/agency as an employer, which means an
ineffective way of supervision and results in low employee satisfaction.
Employee satisfaction and turnover rate, job performance by theory
According to Becker and Huselid(16), when discuss about the potential impact of
job satisfaction, it is said that job satisfaction is seen as a potential route to high
performance. Yang, Cheng-Liang; Hwang, Mark(13)showed that if job satisfaction
influences job performance, then attention should be given to factors that contribute to
high job satisfaction, which, if present, can then lead to high job performance


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Wei (Amy) Tian-Foreman(16) showed that the most studied work/job-related
antecedent of turnover has been job satisfaction, which has typically been treated as an
intervening variable.
To justify that ineffective supervision and employee satisfaction, turnover rate, job

performance are in the cause-effect relationship, in-depth interviews again were used to
explore whether ineffective supervision directly or indirectly causes organization
outcomes.
With the same respondents as section 1.3.2, Mr. Vu Thanh Tung and Mr. Ly Quoc
Tien shared their opinions that they felt really disappointed, unhappy and dissatisfied
with their supervisor’ ways for different reasons. They made decision to leave FPT
Digital Retail JSC due to their supervisors, they found hardly contented with their job.
For Ms. Le Thi Ngoc Hoa, she confirmed that she used to think of leaving company
because she was uncomfortable working with her two supervisors. When she felt
unhappy, she did not want to go to work and couldn’t perform well at work.
Central problem of ineffective supervision is really important which can greatly
impact directly satisfaction and indirectly influence turnover rate and job performance.
Therefore, whenever there have been solutions to ineffective supervision, all the
remaining outcomes of employee satisfaction, high turnover rate, lower job performance
will be improved.
1.4 Identification of potential causes
It is said that a problem is always caused by different reasons, some factors are
seeable but some are not. When interviewing two persons from group 2 which was


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already introduced in the first part, Mr. Ly Quoc Tien and Mr. Vu Thanh Tung also
agreed with three main causes listed below which are supervisory relationship, soft-skill
training and factor of gender-related leadership. In addition to that, these primary data are
fully informed by theory.
Supervisory relationship
Bernard and Goodyear(17)broadly define the supervisory relationship as including
all interactions between a supervisor and supervisee and according to Bordin, the
supervisory relationship collaboration for change involving mutual agreement and
understanding of the goals and tasks of supervision as well as the bonds between the

supervisor and supervisee necessary to sustain the relationship
Next, we review the literature that substantiates what supervisees are asking of
supervisors and highlights that the relationship is an essential element in supervision
efficacy and effectiveness according to Patton & Kivlighan(18). We also explore what has
been written about ineffective supervision and participants find it meaningful that their
own experiences with ineffective supervision are congruent with this literature.
When being asked about supervisory relationship, Mr. Ly Quoc Tien and Mr. Vu
Thanh Tung all shared the same view points that they didn’t have good or strong
relationship with their supervisors. No or very limited rapport, trust or caring has been
created. Mr. Huynh Quang Long also stated the fact that there was no time for feedback,
listening, getting opinions from salesman or employees.
Soft-skill training


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Trainings are not only for new hires or low level employees. Even top
management also needs trainings (including technical and soft-skills training). According
to Santucci, Phillip J(19) traditionally, training lies within the realm of human resource
management. It seems logical to let the people ho hire, process, and orient new
employees also train them before turning them over to their supervisors. The supervisors
might or might not conduct further training, depending on what they feel is necessary or
comfortable. Make training the responsibility of supervisors (put it in their job
descriptions) and use the training staff to provide training support to the supervisors.
Sayings of Mr. Vu Thanh Tung, most of upper level managers in FPT recently lack of
interpersonal skills, they are not emotional, attractive in terms of their supervisory style.
Gender-related leadership
There is no doubt that 90% member from Board of Director of FPT Retail JSC are
female. Comer, Lucette B(24) revealed that women are relative newcomers to the
industrial sales force, which traditionally was staffed almost exclusively by men. The
study showed that Male sales force members were most responsive to leaders who

displayed individualized consideration and used a transaction style (contingent rewards or
management by exception). Saleswomen preferred charismatic leaders and those who
were capable of intellectually stimulating methods. Therefore, gender factor also make an
impact on supervision style. Doughty, Elizabeth A(20)pointed out that supervisees may
have different expectations of male and female supervisor. There is an expectation female
supervisors might be more nurturing or communicate a greater sense of caring than their
male counterparts. The expectation of male supervisors is they will rely less on