Tài liệu Strengthening the partnership of university and enterprises in ha noi, viet nam the case of ulsa

STRENGTHENING THE PARTNERSHIP OF UNIVERSITY AND ENTERPRISES IN HA NOI, VIET NAM: THE CASE OF ULSA A RESEARCH PAPER PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL SOUTHERN LUZON STATE UNIVERSITY, LUCBAN, QUEZON, PHILIPPINES IN COLLABORATION WITH THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY, SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DOCTORAL DEGREE IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION By NGUYEN XUAN HUONG - RICARDO July, 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In order to complete this dissertation, I need helps from many people. Their helps provided the very great contribution to my work. I am deeply indebted to all of them. First of all, I wish to thank DR. Cecilia N. Gascon, my advisor. Without her very useful helps and advices I would not be able to finish my work. Her very high requirements have encouraged me to try my best. I also want to thank all my professors and staffs of SOUTHERN LUZON STATE UNIVERSITY and THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY for their interesting lectures and helps which provided me necessary knowledge to write this dissertation, as well as to work in my future. In order to have a good dissertation with scientific quality and practical significance, I need to collect some information from employers and graduated students. Without their very useful ideas and information, my dissertation can not be completed. I want to give my sincere thanks to them for their valuable cooperation and kind help I would like to thank all commentators. Their comments help me to make my dissertation better. I need to express my special thanks from bottom of my heart to my passedaway parents who brought me into the world and brought me up. Also, I am indebted to all members of my family, who kept encouraging and providing me favorable conditions when I am taking this course. I am grateful to all my classmates and my friends who help me to collect materials in the preparation of the dissertation. Their assistance helped me to save my limited time to focus on writing. i Last but not all, I am indebted to many other people. They are writers of useful materials in books, internet, and newspapers. Hanoi, 2013. ii CONTENT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.......................................................................................... i CONTENT............................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT............................................................................................................. vi ABBREVIATION ................................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGRURES .................................................................... viii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY....................................................................... 3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM...................................................................... 8 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................... 9 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES ................................................................................ 10 HYPOTHESES ................................................................................................... 10 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ..................................................................... 11 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY................................................. 12 DEFINITION OF TERMS .................................................................................. 13 CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE......................................... 16 1. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH OF UNIVERSITY – ENTERPRISE RELATIONSHIP ................................................................................................ 16 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK................................................................... 28 3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK.................................................................... 33 CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................... 39 1. RESEARCH DESIGN.................................................................................... 39 2. POPULATION AND SAMPLING DESIGN .................................................. 40 3. RESEARCH INSTRUMENT ......................................................................... 42 iii 4. DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE ............................................................. 44 5. DATA PROCESSING METHOD .................................................................. 45 CHAPTER IV. PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA ..................................................................................................................... 46 1. PROFILE OF ULSA....................................................................................... 46 2. POLICIES RELATING TO UNIVERSITY - ENTERPRISE PARTNERSHIP 48 3. DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION ............................................. 49 3.1. Basic characteristics of respondents .................................................... 49 3.2. Job history of graduated students......................................................... 51 3.3. Experiences of enterprises with relation to ULSA ............................... 53 3.4. Working weaknesses of students ......................................................... 55 3.5. Ability and experiences of enterprises in cooperation with universities 59 3.6. Potential opportunities for ULSA in cooperation with enterprises........ 64 3.7. Solutions for strengthening the cooperation between ULSA and enterprises ................................................................................................... 67 3.7.1. Ensure harmonious benefits for enterprises................................... 67 3.7.2. Acknowledge the contribution by enterprises................................ 71 3.7.3. Supplementary solutions............................................................... 72 4. SUMMARY ................................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER V. SUMMARY, FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS......................................................................................... 74 1. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS .......................................................................... 74 2. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................. 77 3. RECOMMENDATION .................................................................................. 78 3.1. Proposed cooperating framework ........................................................ 79 iv 3.2. Improving training curricula and changing teaching methods .............. 80 3.3. Devoting more resources to create and maintain the partnership with enterprises ................................................................................................... 82 3.4. Ensuring harmonious cooperating benefits for enterprises ................... 83 3.5. Acknowledge the contribution by enterprises ...................................... 84 3.6. Create “formal” partnership with enterprises ....................................... 84 3.7. Cooperate with other universities for strengthening university-enterprise cooperation.................................................................................................. 85 4. LIMITATION AND FURTHER STUDY....................................................... 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... ix APPENDICES ........................................................................................................xiv 1. LETTER OF INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SURVEY...................xiv 2. QUESTIONNAIRE FOR LEADER OF ENTERPRISE........................................xv 3. QUESTIONNAIRE FOR GRADUATED STUDENTS OF ULSA ......................xxi 4. SURVEYED RESULTS OF LEADERS OF ENTERPRISES............................xxvi 5. SURVEYED RESULTS OF GRADUATED STUDENTS ..............................xxxvi 6. CURRICULUM VITAE.................................................................................... xlvi v ABSTRACT Creating and strengthening university – enterprise partnership is a very important solution for universities to archive the goal “raising the training quality to meet labour demands for the socio-economic development…”. This paper presented potential opportunities as well as solutions for University of Labour and Social affairs (ULSA) to strengthen its long-term partnership with enterprises. It can be said that universities in the economic and social field can maintain partnership with enterprises in many activities if having appropriate cooperating policies. Of all proposed solutions for strengthening the partnership with enterprises, the most important one is that universities should ensure harmonious cooperating benefits for enterprises. vi ABBREVIATION ULSA: University of Labour and Social affairs CEO: Chief Executive Officer CRM: Customer relationship management EUE-Net: European Programme of Entrepreneur’s mobility within Universities MOET: Ministry of Education and Training MOLISA: Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social affairs vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGRURES Table 1. Kinds of enterprises ................................................................................... 14 Table 2. Types of CRM ........................................................................................... 29 Table 3. Population and sample of the study............................................................ 41 Table 4. Contents in the questionnaire for CEOs...................................................... 42 Table 5. Contents in the questionnaire for graduated students .................................. 43 Table 6. General information of surveyed leaders and enterprises............................ 49 Table 7. General information of graduated students ................................................. 50 Table 8. Reasons for not-employing bachelors graduated from ULSA ..................... 54 Table 9. Activities that enterprises have ever cooperated with universities............... 61 Table 10. Activities that enterprises will be willing to cooperate with ULSA........... 64 Table 11. Solutions to ensure harmonious benefits for enterprises ........................... 67 Figure 1. QCi model of CRM .................................................................................. 30 Figure 2. The CRM value chain............................................................................... 31 Figure 3. The Payne’s five-process model of CRM.................................................. 31 Figure 4. The Gartner competency model of CRM .................................................. 33 Figure 5. University-enterprise relationship ............................................................. 35 Figure 6. Conceptual framework.............................................................................. 37 Figure 7. Job characteristics of graduated students................................................... 52 Figure 8. Working weaknesses of bachelors graduated from ULSA......................... 56 Figure 9. Solutions to acknowledge the contribution by enterprises (Unit: %).......... 71 Figure 10. Cooperating framework for ULSA.......................................................... 79 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the Strategy for Education development of Vietnam in 2011-2020, the Government exposed seven limitations in the current educational system of Vietnam. This showed that Vietnamese educational quality is low, contents are heavily theoretical, and universities have not changed much into training based on demands of the society (Vietnamese Government, 2012, pp. 4-5). In this Strategy, developmental goal for vocational and university training is that “raising the training quality to meet labour demands for the socio-economic development…” (Vietnamese Government, 2012, p. 9). To achieve this goal, Vietnamese universities need to fulfill many activities for improving their training programs, of which, creating and maintaining a close partnership with employers is an important one. Employers are regarded as “indirect” customers of universities because they do not “buy” training services (main products of universities) provided by universities but they “buy” working ability of graduates. That means they will buy the “outcomes” of training services. Thus, if employers do not hire graduates because they have inappropriate working ability, it may be worthless for students to take training courses provided by universities. For this reason, universities should create and maintain relationship with employers to collect information about labour markets, such as which skills and knowledge employers want employees to be trained, future. Basing on the collected information, universities can change their contents of training programs, teaching methods, and so on, in such a way that provide knowledge and skills that are most-needed for students. By doing so, it will be easy for their graduated students to find jobs in which they can apply what they have been trained. 1 Thus, we can say that it is very important for universities to manage a good partnership with employers, of which most are enterprises. However, very few Vietnamese universities have regular relationships with enterprises. It is not unknown that Vietnamese education in general and at university level in particular has many weaknesses. One of these weaknesses is that graduated students lack skills and knowledge required in labour markets. There are many reasons for this weakness. One of which is the old way of thinking. Many universities think that they can teach what they want and students must study what they provide. Moreover, most Vietnamese universities focus too much on the short-term goal that is to attract students taking their current training programs, but too little on the whether students can find job after graduation. As a result, universities do not often pay much attention on the relationship with employers because this needs time and money. With regard to Vietnamese enterprises, most of them are not interested in making relationship with university because they gain very few benefits from this relationship University of Labour and Social affairs (ULSA) is a state university under the control of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social affairs of Vietnam. It has for training programs at the bachelor level1. They are Human resource management, Accounting, Insurance, and Social work. Annually, about two thousand students graduate from the university. The statistical data of the university show that only about 70% of graduated students can find jobs within a year since the point they receive the bachelor degree, and of which, less than 50% can find jobs in the fields they studied. Most graduates, including those having jobs in their studying fields, gave the feedback that many topics they had studied were unuseful for their work and they needed to be retrained when starting their jobs. This shows that current training 1 The university will start the fifth program (business administration) in October, 2013. 2 programs of the university are somewhat inappropriate with demands of labour markets. There are some reasons for this problem but the main one is there is almost no participation of employers in designing training programs of ULSA. The university does not have any network of cooperating employers. When the university designing or adjusting training programs, normally, there were only one or two representatives of employers. Moreover, drafts of training programs were given to them just at the beginnings of meetings. In addition, these drafts consisted of only names of subjects in training programs without detailed description of contents in each subject. Hence, their ideas about training programs did not contain much value. The last survey undertaken by ULSA to collect information about labour demands and comments on its training programs was in 2005 with the participation of about three hundred employers. Since then, the university has adjusted its training programs several times without the involvement of employers. As we mentioned above, this is one (main) reason why its training programs are somewhat inappropriate, and, as a result, why its graduated students face some difficulties in finding jobs. Realizing the importance of the ULSA’s partnership with employers, I choose the topic “Strengthening the Partnership of University and Enterprises in Ha Noi, Viet Nam: The Case of ULSA” for my dissertation topic. I hope it can make some small contributions for the future development of the university. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY In modern business philosophy, the customer is regarded as the only boss of any organization. Producers should produce and sell products or services that are most appropriate to customers’ demands. All decisions of firms should be made in order to attain the ultimate goal. That is to meet customers’ needs. Or, in the other word, we 3 can say that firms should try their best to satisfy their customers’ desires. In order to achieve this goal, organizations should create and manage a good relationship with their customers. Although the term “customer relationship management” (CRM) has been used since the early 1990s, recently, it receives more and more attentions by not only firms but also many other kinds of organizations. CRM is an integrated approach to identifying, acquiring, and retaining customers. By enabling organizations to manage and coordinate customer interactions across multiple channels, departments, lines of business, and geographies, CRM helps organizations maximize the value of every customer interaction and drive superior corporate performance. (Buttle, 2009, p. 4). University can be thought as a “special” kind of business. For universities, there are two groups of customers. The first group consists of students who are immediate customers and directly contact and buy training services provided by universities. As we mentioned above, universities should provide those training services, namely knowledge and skills, that students most want to receive. However, students do not “consume” training services as “final goods” but as “intermediate goods”. That means they absorb training services provided by universities for creating their “working ability”, and then they will sell it to employers. Thus, universities can be regarded as intermediaries between students and employers. In reality, students are young and have very little information about labour markets. Very often, students do not know what employers want them to do, or, in the other word, which skills and knowledge they should receive when studying in universities. Thus, what students want to study may probably not be coincident with what they should study. If universities provide only knowledge and skills that students want, in the short-run, they will attract many students to participate in their training courses. However, in the 4 long-run, fewer and fewer students will enter these universities if what they provide to students (also what student want to study) are not fit for what employers want them to study. Or we can say that students will not want to take training courses provided by those universities if they can not find jobs in the future. The second group of customers of universities consists of all kinds of employers, including firms, government agencies or any organizations. Sometimes, employers can be directly buy services provided by universities, such as technical advices. However, normally, this group is considered as “indirect” or “ultimate” customers of universities. Universities should create and maintain relationship with employers to collect information about labour markets, such as which skills and knowledge employers want employees to be trained, future. Basing on the collected information, universities can change their contents of training programs, teaching methods, and so on, in such a way that provide knowledge and skills that are most-needed for students. By doing so, it will be easy for their graduated students to find jobs in which they can apply what they have been trained. Relationship or linkage between universities and enterprises is a topic which has been studied by some foreign as well as Vietnamese researchers. This topic has often been examined in one of three approaches. In the first approach, universities were regarded as the main beneficiary from the relationship, in which they received information from enterprises for improving their training services. Conversely, in the second approach, enterprises were regarded as the main beneficiary from the relationship, in which they received advices, advanced technologies and so on from universities for improving their businesses. In the third approach, enterprises and universities are supposed to be mutually equal beneficiaries from the relationship. 5 This relationship will become a partnership. In addition, the topic can be examined at international, national or provincial levels. Following, we will briefly review some research results about the topic. In the article “Training association between universities and enterprises in Vietnam” presented in the scientific journal of Ha Noi National University, volume 24., Trinh Thi Hoa Mai discussed about objective demands to associate with each other by both universities and enterprises. In this paper, she proposed eight recommendations for universities and enterprises to promote their association, such as designing curriculums, creating a network of former students, and enterprises involving in deciding marks to students, etc. However, this paper lacked evidence to support some arguments. The final report (2010) of the EUE-Net (European University Enterprise Network), the project funded with support from the European Commission, had four main objectives, of which the first one was “Increasing the presence of the entrepreneurs within the University by design, experiment and promotion of innovative mobility schemes involving entrepreneurs” (EUE-Net, 2008, p.5). This project produced eleven formal outcomes, including those relating to the development of framework documents at European level such as Quality of Practical Placements in Enterprises (WP1), EUE-Net CDO Sub-Network and European unified employment database (WP2), Teaching and learning Entrepreneurship in Europe as a general competence (WP3) and the organization of an Workshop on “Entrepreneurship mobility” that resulted in a set of Guidelines for a European Programme of Entrepreneur’s mobility within Universities (EUE-Net, 2008, p.11). In the dissertation named “The relationship between enterprises and universities/ research institutes: A study in Vietnam” in 2010 by Nguyen Thi Thu 6 Hang in the doctoral course provided by the University of Technology belonging to the National University of Ho Chi Minh city, she surveyed 269 managers of enterprises, 32 leaders of universities, and 40 leaders of research institutes in Ho Chi Minh city. The main objective of this dissertation is to identify factors that affect the relationship between enterprises and universities/ research institutes, and benefits enterprises can get from the relationship. In this dissertation, she exposed 15 factors affecting the relationship between enterprises and universities, and 10 factors affecting the relationship between enterprises and research institutes, including those have positive effects and those have negative effects on these relationships. She also proposed some sets of solutions for developing the cooperation between enterprises and universities/ research institutes. These proposed solutions were acceptable. Limitations of this dissertation included the low validity of generalization because the survey was undertaken only in Ho Chi Minh city and the absence of effects of macro variables. As far as I know, in Vietnam, there have been very few researches about opportunities and areas in which universities can create the relationship with enterprises in order to improve their training “quality”. In the other word, very few researches indicated answer for whether enterprises are willing to help universities and what they want to receive in return. In addition, the results have a low validity level of generalization. In June, 2012, ULSA exposed the Mission “to provide high-quality training ‘products’, contributing to the development of the human resource for industrialization, modernization, and globalization of Vietnam”. In order to execute this mission, as well as for the long-term development of ULSA, the university has planned many things to do. One of which is to improve its training programs in such a 7 way that based on demands of labour markets by creating and maintaining a good partnership with employers. In this partnership, both parties are mutually benefited. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM In some previous paragraphs, we saw that ULSA has a very weak relationship with enterprises. The university has not undertaken any surveys to collect information from employers about labour demands in order to perfect its training programs. On the contrary, contents of its training programs were decided basing mainly of what it could provide. In addition, most of its students had no opportunities to participate in practical visits to enterprises or to fulfill trials when studying in the university. These can be some of main reasons why its graduated students faced difficulties in finding jobs. The research problem in this dissertation can be stated as follow: ULSA’s weak partnership with enterprises leads to the incompatibility between what their graduates have studied and what they need for job. This research problem comes from current situation of ULSA. More than ninety percent of ULSA’s graduates said that lacked practical skills and knowledge, and about the same number said that they had low ability in using foreign languages for their jobs. Although there were some researches about improving university-enterprise linkage/ relationship, they often studied universities in general, not any specific one. Moreover, there were very few researches about university-enterprise partnership (not relationship). Beside that, each university has its own conditions and may have different training ologies. Some solutions to improve university-enterprise linkage proposed in previous researches may be useful for many universities but may probably unuseful for ULSA. In addition, ULSA’s graduated students can work for 8 any kind of employers. However, about than ninety percents of them worked for enterprises. Thus, in this dissertation, the ULSA-enterprise partnership, not the partnership with employers in general, is chosen to study. RESEARCH QUESTIONS In order to solve the problems stated in this dissertation, we are going to answer following questions: First, is there any opportunity for ULSA to cooperate with enterprises in order to raise its training quality? For this question, we will try to find out whether enterprises are willing to cooperate with and help the university to improve its training services. Second, in which areas can ULSA develop a good partnership with enterprises? Answers for this question are those activities in which ULSA can cooperate with enterprises and take advantages for its operation. Third, which solutions can ULSA use to improve its partnership with enterprises? For this question, we will try to find out what enterprises want to receive in the cooperation with ULSA in exchange for helping the university to raise it training quality. In the other word, we will determine which policies that ULSA can use to attract enterprises to participate in a permanent relationship with it. Forth, can ULSA raise it training quality through creating, maintaining and taking advantages of its partnership with enterprises? In this question, we will focus on finding whether it is easier for ULSA’s graduated students to find their jobs; whether enterprises set a priority to hire ULSA’s graduated students if the university has a good partnership with them. 9 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The main objective of this study is to develop strategies that will strengthen the partnership of ULSA and enterprises in Hanoi that will improve the training quality provided by the university. Specifically, the study sought to: • Characterize and analyze the internal and external factors affecting the quality of trainings provided by ULSA • Identify, define and analyze the mismatch of the training courses provided by ULSA with what is needed by the industries • to identify approaches that will increase the training quality provided by ULSA HYPOTHESES Because ULSA has not had any real “partnership” with enterprises, in this dissertation, we can not collect pre and after data. Thus, we can not apply testing techniques to hypothesis. However, we can use comparative tools to prove hypothesis. In order to answers research questions for attaining research objectives, we will try to prove following hypotheses: • Enterprises are eager to cooperate with ULSA if they can benefit from this cooperation This hypothesis will be proven is we can find out that a large percentage of (surveyed) enterprises are willing to cooperate with ULSA. • It will be easier for ULSA’s graduated students to find jobs if the university has a good partnership with enterprises. This hypothesis will be proven is we can find out that (a large percentage of surveyed) enterprises are willing to employ graduates from ULSA if the university has a good partnership with them. 10 • Getting money is not the main motive of enterprises when helping ULSA improve training quality. This hypothesis will be proven is we can find out that the percentage of (surveyed) enterprises want to get money from the partnership with ULSA is much less than the percentage of enterprises want to get other (non-financial) benefits. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This study will show the analysis of the current training quality of ULSA. In the analysis, we will identify causes that lead to (probably) low training quality of ULSA. We also specify areas in which ULSA can develop and maintain the partnership with enterprises to raise its training quality. Moreover, in the study, a set of recommendations will be proposed for encouraging enterprises to cooperate with the university, as well as recommendations for improving this relationship. Thus, the study will be significant for following beneficiaries. First, ULSA can directly receive great benefits from results of this study. Its can get updated surveyed information about jobs of its graduated students and what they want to change in ULSA’s training programs. The university can also get information about whether enterprises are eager to cooperate with it and what activities they are willing to cooperate. More important, the university can think of proposed recommendations as the reference for improving its future training quality. Second, its current and future students are the next beneficiaries. If the university has a better relationship with enterprises, its students will receive training programs which are more appropriate to demands of labour markets and enterprises will participate more in training processes. As a result, certainly, it will be easier for graduated students to find jobs conformable to their studied specialty. Third, enterprises can gain benefits from the partnership with ULSA. By 11