Unproductive project management process in ITC-HCM

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business

------------------------------

NGUYEN THANH TUNG

UNPRODUCTIVE PROJECT
MANAGEMENT PROCESS IN ITC-HCM

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018


UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business

------------------------------

NGUYEN THANH TUNG

UNPRODUCTIVE PROJECT
MANAGEMENT PROCESS IN ITC-HCM

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: PhD. TRAN HA MINH QUAN

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

TABLE OF CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

4

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

5

I. COMPANY INTRODUCTION

6

1.1 General information about ITC-HCM

6

1.2 Company organization

6

1.3 Business activities

7

II. PROBLEM ANALYSIS

9

2.1 Business symptoms

9

2.2 Interview with Admin head officer

12

2.3 Interview with departing engineers

13

2.4 Interview with current working employees

14

2.5 Initial cause-effect diagram

15

III. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

16

3.1 Updated cause-effect diagram

18

3.2 Cause justification and problem of interest

23

3.3 Importance of interested problem

24

3.4 Cause validation for focused problem

25

IV. PROPOSED SOLUTIONS AND ACTION PLAN

28

4.1 Proposed solutions

28

4.2 Action plan and requirements

29

4.3 Budget

30

4.4 Additional actions

31

V. CONCLUSION

31

VI. SUPPORTING INFORMATION

33

1


LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Organization chart of ITC-HCM

6

Figure 2: General workflow for a typical research project and personnel

8

assignment
Figure 3: Recruitment/Departure of employees in ITC-HCM since 2010

10

Figure 4: Consequences of the business symptoms

11

Figure 5: Possible causes leading to turnover actions acquired from interview

12

with Admin head officer
Figure 6: Summary of causes leading to turnover actions acquired from

13

interviews with departing engineers
Figure 7: Summary of potential causes of dissatisfaction acquired from

14

interviews with current employees
Figure 8: General initial cause-effect diagram for turnover situation in ITC-

15

HCM
Figure 9: Simplified initial cause-effect diagram for turnover situation in ITC-

16

HCM
Figure 10: Updated cause-effect diagram with key determinants

18

Figure 11: Possible advantages from Productive project management

25

Figure 12: Updated cause-effect diagram with focus into interested issue

25

Figure 13: S-curve diagram for Alpha project

26

Figure 14: Final cause-effect diagram

28

Figure 15: Main tasks with time schedule for adapting ProjectManager platform

29

Figure 16: Gantt chart for adapting ProjectManager platform

29

Figure 17: Result of quantitative findings

54

2

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Combined revenues of ITC-HCM from 2015 to 2017

9

Table 2: List of budget for one-year-use of ProjectManager

30

Table 3: Budget for consultancy services to construct a clear work process for

31

project management in ITC-HCM
Table 4: Interview guide with Mr. Bac NT, Admin head officer who is in charge 33
of HR activities
Table 5: Summary of findings of interview with Mr. Bac NT

34

Table 6: Interview guide with departing engineers

38

Table 7: Summary of findings of interviews with departing engineers

39

Table 8: Interview guide with current working employees

44

Table 9: Summary of findings of interviews with current employees

45

Table 10: Interview guide with senior project leader

52

Table 11: Summary of findings of interviews with senior project leader

53

Table 12: Questionnaire for quantitative research to evaluate the importance of 54
each determinant

3


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all, I would like to express my warmest thanks to my supervisor Dr.
Tran Ha Minh Quan for his patience, encouragement, and professionalism. His clear
guidance and candid evaluation for my thesis have helped me complete all qualitative
and quantitative researches on time with satisfactory results as well as led me to finish
my Master thesis.
I also would like to thank all lecturers in International School of Business (ISB)
for courses and subjects that they had taught me and my classmates. The knowledge

that I gained from the courses has widened my knowledge as well as provided me with
valuable experience in practical businesses.
Additionally, I would like to thank all members in thesis defense committees,
for their insightful comments and evaluation. I also want to thank all ITC-HCM
employees and officers who had cooperated with me during data gathering, interviews
and surveys.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank all my classmates in MBUS 7
program for their cooperation, support, discussion and unforgettable moments that I
have been with them in the last two years

4


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Employee turnover places a lot of difficulties towards organizations in terms of
new recruitment, training, organization, costs and so on. Voluntary turnover behaviors
can be initiated by low job satisfaction, especially in state-own organizations. ITC-HCM
is one of state-owned organizations located in Ho Chi Minh city and facing abnormally
high turnover rate among skilled engineers. To investigate the situation as well as the
main causes for engineer turnover, a number of in-depth interviews were conducted with
departing employees and relevant co-workers. The results of these interviews reveal the
main causes for their departure, which involves leadership style, project management,
work environment, compensation and benefits, work morale. To have broad views of
the turnover situation in state-owned petroleum firms, a number of previous academic
theories have been applied to make a cause-effect diagram for the turnover issue. By
evaluating and verifying each cause, researcher could locate the core problems leading
to the high turnover rate. Though the reasons for employees are diverse and varied from
employees to employees, for the company, the most critical problems of the state-owned
company is “Unproductive project management process” which involves loose
management, unclear task assignments and too much reporting system. The suggentio

for improvement are 1) to apply project management technology for the company, which
also enables team communication and progress tracking, and 2) to hire consultancy
service to help construct more productive work process with clear measures and key
performance indicators. Action plan and budget are proposed accordingly. The
suggestions from researcher are expected to improve the company’s performance in
order to help reduce the turnover intention accordingly.

5


I. COMPANY INTRODUCTION
1.1 General information about ITC-HCM
Integrated Technical Center (ITC) is a subsidiary of PetroVietnam Exploration
and Production Corporation (PVEP). The company was established in September 2010
and works as main research unit for PVEP to supervise and optimize oil & gas activities
for most oil fields on Vietnamese continental shelf. ITC consists of 02 offices: head
office in Ho Chi Minh city and representative office in Ha Noi city. The research will
focus into the Ho Chi Minh head office, which is named as ITC-HCM.
Since the mother company PVEP is fully owned by the Vietnamese government,
ITC-HCM, as its subsidiary, is also considered a state-owned enterprise (SOE).
1.2 Company organization
Before 2017, ITC-HCM had a total number of 41 personnel. However, since mid2017, 5 engineers departed from company, making the total number of current personnel
36. The company consists of 02 main departments: Technical and General
Administration. The board of directors includes 01 director and 02 vice directors, each
in-charge of one department. The organization of ITC-HCM, until September 2018, is
illustrated in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Organization chart of ITC-HCM

6



Technical department:
The Technical department includes 3 sectors: Exploration, Reservoir and

Production. Each sector is supervised by head officer and vice officers. This is the main
revenue-earning department for company, which focuses into researching and
optimizing oil & gas activities as well as conducting outsourcing researches. The
department includes 19 skilled engineers with oil-gas engineering background. Most of
engineers are over 30 years old with more than 5 years working for ITC-HCM.


General Administration department:
The General Administration department only supports for technical departments

and board of directors with paperwork, accounting, reception activities and so on. There
are 03 sectors within this department: Admin, Accounting and Commerce. Admin sector
is in charge of logistics, paperwork, reception as well as other human resource activities.
Commerce sector is in charge of preparing contracts and account management while
Accounting sector is in charge of typical accounting activities. The accounting sector is
supervised directly by a vice director.
In ITC-HCM, there are Union Division, Women Association and Ho Chi Minh
Communist Youth Union like other SOEs. These organizations help to increase the
engagement of employees and to protect the rights of employees.
1.3 Business activities


Main function

As a research subsidiary of PVEP, ITC-HCM is in charge of supervising oil and

gas activities of assigned oil-fields on Vietnamese shelf, such as block 01-02, block
02/97, block 42, and so on. Each engineer in Technical Departments is assigned to
supervise specific activities in certain field(s) and annually reports to supervisors and
directors about the status of those activities.
Exploration engineers are in charge of Geology & Geophysics activities, such as
exploring new hydrocarbon prospects, interpreting time & depth horizons of those
prospects, identifying sedimentary paleo-environments. The results from Exploration
engineers will become input data for static and dynamic models of Reservoir engineers.
Reservoir engineers use the input data provided from Exploration engineers to
generate structural models (or static models) and dynamic models in order to calculate
7


potential hydrocarbon volume of certain oil- fields and forecast the future production
volume of existing fields.
Production engineers use the forecasted models from Reservoir engineers to
propose detailed plans for field development and/or cost optimization for existing field
operations.


Project outsourcing
Besides main function as research unit for PVEP, ITC-HCM also works as

research outsourcer for other oil-producing operators in Vietnam such as Cuu Long JOC,
Bien Dong POC, Hoang Long - Hoan Vu JOC, etc. The typical workflow of a research
project is illustrated in Figure 2

Figure 2: General workflow for a typical research project and personnel assignment



Competition
In this industry, ITC-HCM does not have many competing opponents. In fact,

there are two other companies with similar functions, Vietnam Petroleum Institute (VPI)
and NIPI. However, VPI is located in Ha Noi while NIPI in Vung Tau; both companies
only conduct service projects for local companies. Therefore, the competition from VPI
and NIPI against ITC-HCM is considered relatively low and ITC-HCM is the only oil gas research unit in Ho Chi Minh City.

8




Revenues
ITC-HCM receives yearly financial funding from mother company PVEP as well

as revenues from outsourcing research contracts. The financial data of company is not
officially announced but from interview with Admin officer of the company, total
combined revenues of company from 2015 to 2017 (2018 data is not yet available) are
shown in following Table 1:
Table 1: Combined revenues of ITC-HCM from 2015 to 2017
Year
Revenue
(billion VND)

2015

2016

2017

60

47

36

II. PROBLEM ANALYSIS
2.1 Business symptoms
From its establishment in September 2010 to year 2016, ITC-HCM has been
developing and increasing its human resources as well as its revenues. There were no
employees leaving the company and the employee turnover rate had been 0% for many
years. However, since mid-2017, the company has encountered unprecedentedly high
voluntary employee turnover as a total of 5 engineers of total 24 engineers, which takes
about 21%, voluntarily left the company: three at the end of year 2017 and the other two
after March 2018. All 5 engineers voluntarily asked to terminate their Indefinite
Duration Contracts with the company. After the departure of those 5 engineers, the
company did not hire any other replacements.

9


Figure 3: Recruitment/Departure of employees in ITC-HCM since 2010

All of 5 departing employees were highly skilled engineers who used to work for
Technical Department, which included 02 exploration engineers, 02 reservoir engineers
and 01 production engineers. Demographically, 5 engineers, 04 males and 01 female,
were from 30-40 years old, married and had 1-2 children. They all lived in Ho Chi Minh

City and near ITC-HCM’s head office in Phu My Hung, District 7.
In terms of experience and skills, all of departing engineers were experienced and
skilled technical engineers with more than 5 professional years working for the
company; some had more than 10 years of experience in oil & gas industry. Moreover,
02 of them used to be project leaders, who led team of 2-3 members. These employees
were key members of their technical teams and played important role in company’s
projects. Furthermore, all of 5 departing employees were voluntary to terminate their
Indefinite Duration Contracts with the company.
The departure of those engineers had placed a lot of difficulties to the company.
The difficulties were emphasized by Mr. Bac NT, the Admin head officer who is also in
charge of HR activities of the company. According to the interview results with Mr. Bac
NT, 04 main difficulties had been revealed as shown in Figure 4

10


Figure 4: Consequences of the business symptoms

- Difficulty to find replacement: in Vietnamese oil & gas industry, the training of
a skilled engineers is very difficult according to the interview results. Therefore, as the
skilled employees left ITC-HCM, the board of directors got difficult to find
replacements. Moreover, voluntary employee turnover directly involves cost of hiring
and training new employees, cost of lost time until new employees achieve full
productivity and cost of unused production capacity during the period of adjustment of
new employees (as proposed by Buzeti1). According to Discenza and Gardner, as cited
in Fitch et al2, the financial costs of replacing leaving employees have been roughly
estimated at “two to five times their monthly salaries”.
- Overwhelming task assignment: As it takes long time to find new replacement,
the workload of departing employees were transferred to current employees. According
to Hauck3, “the stress construct itself has been positively related to high levels of

workload”. As a result, depending of the amount of transferred workload, the employees
will suffer from varying levels of job stress caused by task overwhelm.
- Lower other employees’ morale: Price4 proposed that increased turnover would
lower employee satisfaction and, in turn, increased more turnover. Larwood5 found that
overall job satisfaction also negatively correlated with intention to leave, while
Bluedorn6 concluded that there was “a significant positive relationship between leaving
intentions and actual leaving behavior”. Therefore, the lowered employees’ morale (or

11


satisfaction) is a critical issue that need to be considered by the director if they want to
retain their talented employees.
- Changes in overall operational planning: the disruption in human resources will
eventually change the operation of the company as well as planning for next period
because the board of directors will have to adjust their planning on revenues, budgets
and other activities.
Moreover, according to the interview with Mr. Bac NT (see Table 5), the
turnover rate among the engineer segment of the ITC-HCM was about 21%, which was
much higher than that in the mother company (which was about 15%). The abnormally
high turnover rate, especially within the skilled engineers, had made the ITC-HCM’s
board of directors start to investigate the reasons why those engineers left and whether
the symptoms would get worse. The aims of this study are:
 to investigate the causes leading to employee turnover actions
 to propose the solutions to help retain current employees.
2.2 Interview with Admin head officer
The purpose of interview with Admin head officer, who is also in charge of HR
activities of the company, is to investigate the causes for turnover situation within ITCHCM from the perspective of HR person. However, the interview with the officer did
not reveal the causes for the engineers’ departure because the former engineers did not
share with him honestly. The given reasons were “serious individual issues”, which were

vague and unconvincing. The Admin officer also assumed that the departing engineers
were not satisfied with the company’ monetary benefits due to lowered revenues (as
shown in Table 1). Moreover, the interview gave researcher some benchmarking
information as well as relevant recruitment information. The possible findings for causes
of turnover action acquired from the interview is proposed as below:

Figure 5: Possible causes leading to turnover actions acquired from interview with
Admin head officer
12


2.3 Interview with departing engineers
The interview with 2 available former engineers first revealed their reasons to
leave, which could be interpreted as following factors: leadership style, project
management process, work morale, income, knowledge sharing and relationship with
co-workers. When researcher proceeded to ask more question related to other possible
factors, it showed that both of they were not satisfied with many aspects of the ITCHCM, which could have raised their intention to leave and eventually led to actual
turnover action. The findings are combined and summarized in the following diagram:

Figure 6: Summary of causes leading to turnover actions acquired from interviews
with departing engineers
After having gathered all information from depth-interviews, there found 5 main
groups of causes leading to turnover action of former engineers: 1) Compensation and
benefits, 2) Leadership style, 3) Work morale, 4) Work environment, 5) Project
management process. All of those causes led to the dissatisfaction at work towards
13


former engineers, leading to their intention to leave and eventually voluntary turnover
actions as they found suitable alternative opportunity

2.4 Interview with current working employees
The purpose of these interviews are to verify whether the groups of causes found
from interviews with former engineers still exist and affect the current working
employees in the company. In this phase, the interviews are expanded to both technical
engineers and non-technical employees. The findings of the interviews are summarized
in the following diagram:

Figure 7: Summary of potential causes of dissatisfaction acquired from interviews
with current employees

14


From the interviews with current employees, more causes leading to
dissatisfaction have been revealed. The interviewees showed dissatisfactory feeling
towards many aspects in the 5 groups: 1) Decreased compensation and benefits, 2)
Leadership style, 3) Lowered work morale, 4) Work environment, 5) Unproductive
project management process. However, most of them currently do not have intention to
leave immediately since they find good trade-offs such as salary, work-life benefits or
job security. The interviews also show the possible intention to leave from the technical
department members while the non-technical members do not. However, as they are not
satisfied with the company, it is probable that they could leave the company as they have
more attractive opportunities.
2.5 Initial cause-effect diagram
The initial cause-effect diagram is combined from the findings acquired from all
depth interviews. Some items are grouped and clarified as shown in Figure 8:

Figure 8: General initial cause-effect diagram for turnover situation in ITC-HCM

15

III. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
The initial cause-effect diagram for turnover situation in ITC-HCM is simplified
with key determinants:

Figure 9: Simplified initial cause-effect diagram for turnover situation in ITC-HCM
According to Hall and Price7, turnover is “the movement of members across the
boundary of organization”. There are typically two types of turnover occurred within
organization: voluntary turnover -an employee's decision to terminate the employment
relationship- and involuntary turnover -an employer's decision to terminate the
employment relationship, as described by Shaw et al8. It seemed that “voluntary
turnover would be explained by different determinants than involuntary turnover” and
“the attention was concentrated on the members voluntarily leaving the organization”,
as proposed by Price9. The models used to explain for voluntary turnover action vary
from Met-expectations model10, Turnover process model11, Job embeddedness model12,
Unfolding model of voluntary turnover13, Concept of job satisfaction14.
In the context of ITC-HCM, the concept of job satisfaction is more preferable to
understand the hidden reasons leading to turnover action and to propose solutions for
better employee retention. In fact, not only leaving engineers but current working
employees show various levels of dissatisfaction to many aspects within the company.
Therefore, by lowering the dissatisfaction towards employees, it is believed that
employees are more likely to stay, as suggested by Selznick et al15. From the interviews
16


with former and current employees, 05 groups of determinants accounted for the job
dissatisfaction and possible turnover action have been defined: Decreased compensation
and benefits, Bureaucratic leadership style, Lowered work morale, Toxic work
environment and Unproductive project management process. From literature research,

6 more determinants are added to the cause-effect diagram to broaden the possible
causes leading to employee turnover within state-owned petroleum companies. The
additional determinants are listed as below:
-

Job security16

-

Flexible work-family arrangement16 & 17

-

Lack of training and development17 & 18

-

Performance appraisal and feedback19

-

Lack of professional advancement opportunity16, 17 & 19

-

Lack of organizational commitment20

17

3.1 Updated cause-effect diagram
The cause-effect diagram is updated with key determinants. The “Alternative
opportunity search” is considered an external factor and removed from the diagram.

Figure 10: Updated cause-effect diagram with key determinants


Inappropriate performance and feedback system
According to Poon21, performance appraisal represents “a central function of

human resource management”. However, the author also points out “there is some
evidence that managers deliberately distort subordinates’ performance ratings for
political reasons”22, cited in 21. As received performance appraisal ratings are not based on
performance factors, employees are likely to experience reduced job satisfaction and
tend to “view work place politics as undesirable”. As a result, they may “withdraw from
the organization as a mean of avoiding political activities”, leading to voluntary
employee turnover. Igbal19 also mentioned that dishonest and evasive performance
18


reviews might damage “the self-esteem of the employees”. Especially in Saudi Arabia’s
collective culture, which are quite similar to Vietnam, “the pay-for-performance system
that recognized individuals is undermined” and is viewed as “unfriendly and hostile” by
employees. Poon21 concludes that “manipulations of performance ratings arising from
personal bias and punishment motives have negative effects on job satisfaction and
turnover intention”. In ITC-HCM, there is no HR department with specific HR activities
within the organization; the performance appraisal system is adapted from mother
company.


Lack of professional advancement opportunity
Kim17 explains that “lack of promotion opportunities had a significant effect on

the decreasing job satisfaction of the federal, white-collar workforce”. The author also
proposes that “fair opportunity for advancement and promotion will lower turnover
intentions to the employees”. Igbal19, from his research in Saudi culture, also provides
that lack of advancement (or promotion) opportunity “is one of the prime reasons why
employees

leave

organizations”.

When

employees

observe

limited

opportunities for professional or personal advancement in their current jobs, they “prefer
to join other companies which may provide good career growth and good pay packages”.
Unfair promotion policies perceived by employees may negatively impact their
organizational commitment, according to (19). In ITC-HCM, the promotion opportunity
might be limited unless employees join the Communist Party. The Party will nominate
its members for managerial position within the organization and the members have to
strictly follow the party’s guidelines and policies.


Lack of job security
Meltz23 defines job security broadly as “an individual remains employed with the

same organization with no diminution of seniority, pay, pension rights, etc.” Similarly,
Triandis and Herzberg24 defines job security as “the extent to which an organization
provides stable employment for employees”. Yousef25, from his researches in UAE
organizations, proposes that “there is a significant positive correlation, although not very
strong, between satisfaction with job security and organizational commitment”. Author
(16) also provides that for an employee who is the primary earner in a family with
children, job security will be highly valued. Therefore, the benefits of long public sector
19


tenure in terms of wages, job security, and pension rights is negatively associated with
turnover and decreases turnover intention. In ITC-HCM, most employees, including
engineers and non-engineers, have signed Indefinite Duration Contract with the
company, which guarantee a stable, long tenure job for employees. Also, the company
pays full Social Insurance for employees to guarantee for future pension.


Inflexible work-family arrangement
Moynihan and Landuyt26, as cited in (16), proposes that “work-family policies

offered by public sector organizations are generally more generous than those found in
the private sector which could be an incentive not to leave the public sector”, especially
for women employees. Durst27, as cited in (17), finds that “approximately 52
percent of local, state, and federal agencies surveyed agreed or strongly agreed
that family-friendly programs decreased turnover”. Many researches also reports that
family-friendly program promote job satisfaction, loyalty among employees and
enhance employee retention, as mentioned in (17).



Lack of training and development
Continuous training of the workforce is necessary to ensure that employees are

updating their skills. Stovel and Bontis28 suggests that training will “increase the
employee loyalty, as many employees recognize that company is working to help them
their career goals”. According to the author, employee training can be conducted
through either “on-the-job or off-the-job training practices”. On-the-job training “allows
employees to work within the firm, while learning about their job and the company”.
Off-the-job training can include “technology-driven e-learning programs, formal
classroom training, and external training conducted by suppliers or formal educational
institution”. However, according to the interview results with Mr. Bac NT (see Table 5),
the training and development is not prioritized in ITC-HCM because there are no HR
department or specialist in the company. All training and development programs are
provided from the mother company. If one person would like to be trained or funded for
their higher education, they have to ask for permission from ITC-HCM’s directors. Then
the company will send a form to mother company’s HR department for acceptance. The
process is time-consuming and the employees are not keen on asking for supports of
training from the company. Instead, they tend to do on-the-job training. However, due
20


to the lack of employee cooperation, as many employees do not want to share their
knowledge, it is difficult for effective on-the-job training, especially for junior
employees.


Decreased compensation and benefits:
Since the oil recession in year 2014-2015, the company had to encounter sharp

decrease in revenues (see Table 1). As a result, in order to balance the financial budget,
the company had to change the pre-existing compensation and benefit policy allowed
for employees. Even though the wages have been unchanged due to the government’s
policy, the decrease in work benefits have significantly affected the total financial
income of every employee. For example, the bonuses and health insurance plan was
decreased, travel and fitness support was removed. According to 2007 Job Satisfaction29
report by Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), compensation and
benefits were ranked among top five aspects towards employee satisfaction. As the
compensation and benefits decreased, the employees in ITC-HCM somehow lost their
satisfaction with pay, thus leading to turnover intention.


Bureaucratic leadership style:
Dimarco and Norton, as cited in Nguyen30, described bureaucratic structure as “a

detailed list of rules, policies and regulations” and concluded that “a low bureaucratic
environment would be an ideal place to increase employee satisfaction”. Rainey et al31
pointed that the bureaucratic business environment was “influenced by external factors
such as laws, rules and oversight activities that the government imposed on the public
sector to maintain their control power”. Additionally, Hickson et al32 stated that “there
were sign of uneven and political decision-making in public organizations”. ITC-HCM,
as a state-owned organization, shows similar characteristics as described by the authors.
In this organization, the board of directors are dependent on rules, policies and
regulations to manage the employees. They are less likely to apply new changes unless
there are new policies accepted by the mother company. Also, the leaders show lowtask leadership as they are less competitive in modern market. The highly bureaucratic
environment like ITC-HCM will result in high employee dissatisfaction eventually.


Unproductive project management process:

21


In public sectors, since they are highly focused into formal system, they failed to
easily adapt new technology and personnel, and to allow for the growth and
development of mature personalities as stated by Bennis33. According to Kamoche34,
public organizations are unable to change working practices to fulfill the current demand
for efficiency due to weak management, loose monitoring, soft budget constraints and
limited organizational flexibility. In ITC-HCM, the loose management with outsourcing
projects leads to lack of task clarity as well as work confusion. The consequences
include the number of meetings with little clear results between employees with
managers. The managers keep asking redundant questions many time due to lack of
understanding of the current projects. As a results, managers ask for many weekly
reports as a proof that they are supervising the project carefully. However, the reports
are too time-consuming and waste a lot of working time of the employee.


Toxic work environment:
Harder35 proposes that an organization “can be considered toxic if it is ineffective

as well as destructive to employees”. In his study, he proposed 3 categories of elements
of workplace toxicity: organizational principles, work conditions and intra-office
relationship conflicts. In ITC-HCM, the intra-office relationship conflicts are quite clear
as there existed a number of unfriendly conversation and arguments among employees.
Moreover, many senior employees show rude behaviors and obscene words towards
other co-worker. Sometimes, when they get drunk, they have sexual-harassment-like
behaviors towards female employees. Moreover, information transparency within the
organization is poor as many employees are not willing to share their knowledge and
findings with junior ones, making project execution more difficult. According to Hsu36,

lack of information transparency can lead to “confusion, misinformation and distrust
within organizations”. To better manage the projects, clear task confusion, knowledge
development, and so on, the board of directors in ITC-HCM should promote information
transparency.


Lowered work morale:
Guba37 suggests that “high satisfaction must precede high morale in time if the

extra energy required for high morale is to be available”, which means low satisfaction
does not correspond to high morale. In ITC-HCM, the leadership, environment,
22


management, and compensation and benefit policy, and so on do not satisfy employees,
which eventually leads to low work morale. The employees feel unproductive at
workplace and find less opportunity to develop their skills and careers. Studies
conducted by many researchers, as cited in Michael et al38, support the hypothesis that
turnover is preceded by turnover intention, which are preceded by satisfaction. In the
Mobley et al39’s model, the job satisfaction gets low, the turnover intention is generated
and the action to leave will take place after having perceived alternative employment.
The departure of employees is consequences of long process initiated by job satisfaction.
Therefore, in order to retain employees, the board of directors should consider available
satisfaction elements and try to improve them.


Low organizational commitment
Organizational commitment is defined as “individuals' belief and trust in

organizational goals and values, and affections toward the organization”, mentioned in

Ting40. The author proposes that “individuals are likely to become psychologically
attached to the organization before they develop affectionate attitudes toward their jobs,
and employees often develop job satisfaction consistent with the level of organizational
commitment”. The author (20) proposes the relationship between commitment and
turnover intention in UAE oil industry. Meanwhile, the mother company PVEP is a
leading company in Vietnam’s oil and gas industry for many years. In year of 2017, the
company contributed about $6.14 billion to GDP of Vietnam, according to (41). The
mother company is in charge of supervising all oil& gas exploration and production
activities on Vietnamese continental shelf. Therefore, for petroleum engineers, PVEP is
great place for working in Vietnam. Moreover, due to the company’s security policy
(see Table 5), the employees, who are leaving the company, are not allowed to work for
any domestic competitors. This means they have to commit to the company unless they
tend to move to different industry.
3.2

Cause justification and problem of interest
To verify the existence of all determinants in updated cause-effect map as well

as their importance, a survey was carried out for 15 working employees in ITC-HCM,
consisting of engineers and non-engineers (see Table 11). The results of the survey (see
Figure 17) showed that respondents showed most “Disagree” responses toward work
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