Tài liệu Solutions to develop leadership capacities of departmental level officers to enhance the effectiveness of hoa lac hi tech park management board

UPPSALA UPPSALA UNIVERSITET & ^S{ UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS & BUSINESS, VNUH \^^^ UNIVERSITET ^p^»5>^^ ,•••. MASTER THESIS OF MPPM Title Solutions to develop leadership capacities of departmental level officers to enhance the effectiveness of Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board Authors: Dang Dinh Tung Bui Thanh Tung Si4pervisors: Prof. Lars - Torsten Eriksson PhD Dr, Dinh Viet Hoa PhD Class: MPPM INTAKE 6 - Group 22 Hanoi, M a y - 2 0 1 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to Prof. Lars Torsten Eriksson, Dr. Sven-Erik Svard, Dr. Dinh Viet Hoa, and other tutors at National Economics University and Uppsala University. Their precious guidance, advices and lectures greatly helped us to complete not only our thesis but also the wonderful master course of public management. Second, we greatfully appreciate my colleagues at Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board, Ministry of Science and Technology, and at the programme for their valuable comments and supports. Finally, our special thanks are given to our family, our friends, who encourage and motivate us to study in this course. ^ > ABSTRACT Leaders', over years, have been proved to play a vital role in the development of organizations. Via their proper policies, they can create a harmonious working environment then encourage their team to efficiently coopperate to achieve orgarnization's target. However, in Vietnam, the necessary capabilities of organization leaders do not seem to be carefully considered especially in the public sector while the international integration and future development require these qualifications to be improved to adapt to a continuously changing economy. Although there were anumerous studies on leadership, almost of them focus on businesses and not emphasize on state administrative units. With the purpose of researching the development of leadership in state administrative units, the authors would like to provide some sollutions to improve leadership skills of middle managers at department level in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board, which is responsible for managing and developing an intensively high-tech center and stimulating technological innovation in Vietnam. 1. Objectives: There are three main objectives of this paper as below: First, the study aims to understand the current status of leadership of managers at the departmental level (middle managers) in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board. Second, the research will investigate the impact of leadership skills on work efficiency of the board to define essential skills. The last objective is to propose measures to improve leadership abilities and the efficiency of the board based on these essential skills. 2. Methodology: Method for data analysis The authors use qualitative analysis method with the two follovinng models/methods: - SWOT analysis: the authors only use this method for the analysis of secondary data to understand the current situation of the leadership of the Management Board which emphasizes the strengths, weakness, opportunities and challenges relating to skills used for dealing with everyday tasks. On this basis, the authors w\\\ undertake a questionnaire-based interviews to clarify this analysis and find the results. - Comparative assessment: This method is mainly used in the thesis. This method is based on the data collected from the survey questionnaires, charts, drawings to analyze, identify and indicate the results from the synthesis of data. This analysis will clarify the findings from the SWOT analysis, thereby mastering the leadership situation objectively from the data collected. Methods for data collection - Collecting secondary data: Legal documents on organization structure, plans, agendas, operation of the managment board, international and domestic results on esential skills, Internet materials, observations and inteviews. - Collecting primary data: through questionnaire based surveying all the managers at the departmental level of three divisions of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board and departmental level leaders of the Ministry of Science and Technology. The authors collected and synthesize data from 41 questionnaires. 3. Conclusions Defining essential skills for leadership applied in Hoa Lac - Skills applied to all the units: planning and job organization, communication, assigning and delegating, listening, foreign language and information and comunication technology. - Skill applied to some units whose work requires more communication, cooperation with outside partners: negotiation. - Skill applied to some units whose work requires less communication with partners outside and focusing on cooperation inside the units: teamwork. Solutions to improve leadership capacities based on these skills: two solution groups are proposed including (1) Enhance the awareness of leadership and (2) improve the skills for leadership where training method of adult learning is preferred. 4. Limitations of the thesis and suggestions for future research: Scope of the research i) The research of this thesis focuses on skills (S) for leadership to improve leadership capacities while leadership capacities includes more 3 factors including 2 other like attitude (A) and knowledge (K) (ASK model). Therefore, the research result in this thesis should be acceptable only when all of middle managers have enough qualifications and good behaviour to deal with work. Futhur research will be on the impact of knnowledege and attitude on leadship capacity of middle managers of the board. Based on this result, some solutions will be proposed to be added to skill solutions for leadership capacity enhancement. ii) The research of this thesis focuses on leadership of middle managers without taking account into the employees who will tentatively be planned to be potential middle managers in the future. It should extend the research range which investigation wiW be focus on essential skills for the officers of the board who are planned to become middle managers in the fijture or who are playing roles as middle managers in the board. iii) Although the model of leadership capacity fi-amework with 7 elements are included in the thesis to research, authors focused only on leadership skills but did not analyze the impact of these elements or skills on the work efficiency. In the ftjture, the fi-amework model and set of skills for the leadership capacity should be researched to apply this model in practice. Methodology The thesis only used qualitative methods based on data ft-om a questionnaire survey to analyze, so the reliability of the data depends largely on the opinions of the surveyed subjects. This should deploy additional research based on quantitative indicators measuring performance to find out the relationship between skills needed and the effectiveness of application of these skills to the job handling. And then, it can be pointed out what skills are needed and greatly affect the job handling. 5. Contribution of the thesis Theoretical contributions This thesis has combined model and SWOT analysis of results from survey data by taking the results from the SWOT analysis as the rationale for the survey data for qualitative analysis. This will help research and collect data effectively and conveniently, thus ensuring the logics and accuracy of identifying and analyzing data. Practical contributions - The resech reflexes the clear status of leadership in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board as well as in hi-tech parks throughout the country. - The research is valuabe when in Vietnam there are few projects/plans on essential skills. - Based on the current state and on the grounds of research, authors can suggest building a set/ a regulation of necessary skills and training solutions to these skills for middle managers at our units. And then, we will propose these contents to be implemented throughout the units belong to Hoa Lac HiTech Park Management Board as well as to the Ministry of Science and Technology. 6. Key words: leadership/leaders,management/managers, leadership capacities, middle managers, essential skills for leadership, integration. TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ^ 1. Background 2 1.1. The foundation of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park 2 1.2. Overview of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board 4 1.3. Overview of operation of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park 4 2. Defining the research problem 3. Research questions 6 : 7 4. Research objectives 7 5. Scope of the research 8 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 9 1. Theories about leadership 9 1.1. Concepts/views of leadership 9 1.2. A leader versus a manager 10 1.3. Middle managers and management model at the middle level 11 2. Models about leadership abilities 12 2.1 ASK Model 12 2.2. Model of leadership capabilities on characteristic .......14 2.3. Leadership model proposed by John Maxwell 17 3. Views and identification about essential skills ....-19 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 21 1. Methods for data analysis 21 1.1. SWOT model 21 1.2. Comparative assessment 22 2. Methods for data collection • • 23 2.1. Collecting secondary data 23 2.2, Collecting primary data - Surveying method (using questionnaires) 24 CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND FINDINGS 27 1. SWOT analysis 2. Analysis of questionnaire data: ^o Zo 2.1 Data synthesization 2Q 2.2 Data analysis ^q 3. Analysis to define necessary skills for leadership 42 3.1. Analysis by seniority ^2 3.2 Analysis by gender 4c 4. Findings from the result 45 4.1. Situation of leadership 4^ 4.2. Necessary skills for work 45 4.3. Skills need to be added 47 4.4. Prefered measures in skill training CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 47 43 1. Summary of the result and discussion 48 1.1 Situation of skills for leadership of the middle managers in Hoa Lac 48 1.2 Essential skills for leadship for the middle managers in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park's environment 49 1.3 Proposals on measures to improve skills for leadership 2. Conclusions 53 55 2.1. Defining essential skills for leadership applied in Hoa Lac 55 2.2. Solutions to improve leadership capacities based on these skills 55 3. Answer the research questions 56 4. Limitations of the thesis and suggestion for further research 57 4.1. Scope of the research 57 4.2. Methodology 58 5. Contribuitions of the thesis 58 5.1.Theoretical contributions 58 5.2. Practical contributions 59 REFERENCES 1 LIST O F FIGURES AND CHARTS Figure 1.1: Organization Chart of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board .'.4 Figure 1.2: Middle management in comparision with junior and senior level 12 Figure 1.3: Model ASK of capabilities 13 Figure 1.4: Leadership model based on characteristics 15 Figure 1.5: SWOT analysis 22 Chart 2.1: Skills approved "necessary" to the middle managers who have 5 to 10 years'experience 42 Chart 2.2: Leadership skills approved "necessary" to the middle managers who have 10 to 20 years'experience 43 Chart 2.3: Skills approved "necessary" to the middle managers who have 10 to 20 years' experience 44 Chart 2.4: Skills approved "necessary" to the middle managers who have over 30 years'experience 44 Chart 2.5: Skills approved "necessary" to the middle managers by gender 45 LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1: The comparision between leaders and managers....... 11 Table 1.2: 21 golden qualifies of leadership 18 Table 2.1: SWOT analysis on leadership at Hoa Lac 28 Table 2.2: Statistic data 28 Table 2.3: Knowledge about organization 29 Table 2.4: Viewpoints about leadership Table 2.5: The importance of leadership skills • ^9 30 Table 2.6: The statistic analysis of prior order for daily works 30 Table 2.7: The priority order based on the importance degree 31 Table 2.8: Leadership in work assigning 31 Table 2.9: Work assigning 32 Table 2.10: Dealing with incomplete work 33 Table 2.11: Working cooperation 33 Table 2.12: Dealing with meetings 34 Table 2.13: Charing a meeting 35 Table 2.14: Dealing with partners/senior managers 35 Table 2.15: Cooperation with partners outside '. 36 Table 2.16: Persuasiveness ability 37 Table 2.17: Listening skill 37 Table 2.18: Working motivation 38 Table 2.19: Awareness of working cooperation 38 Table 2.20: Attendance rate of participation in training 39 Table 2.21: Training result 39 Table 2.22: Foreign language skill ^^ Table 2.23: Primary orders of training methods 40 Table 2.24: Viewpoint of essential skills ^'^ Table 3.1: Research on essential skills in the U.S 50 Table 3.2: Research on essential skills in Australia 51 Table 3.3: Research on essential skills in Canada 51 Table 3.4: Research on essential skills in the U.K 52 Table 3.5: Research on essential skills in Singapore ^ Table 3.6: Research on essential skills in Vietnam CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The year of 2012 seems to be a gloomy year of global economy. Th public debt crisis in Europe is an ongoing serious cumbersome whil leading economies such as America and Japan are facing a pessimistic economic future. Contributing to the somber picture of internaltional market, the growth rate in emerging countries like China, India, and Brazil is slowing down in comparision with 3-5 years agol That leads to a downward trend in purchasing power and an increasing unployment rate.i In Vietnam, the GDP growth in 2012 reached only 5.03%, a little higher than crisis year 1999 but much lower than that of recent years. This year also witnessed about forty thousand companies which have gone bankrupt; contributing approximately ten one hundred thoudsand of bankrupted organizations from 2011-2012 or a half of total cases in two recent decades. As a result, job seeking has been restricted and the unployment rate has become more serious, consequently that has bad effects on individual income and spending.^ For recent years, the foundation of hi-tech parks has helped Vietnam to concentrate working forces, attract more foreign investment and technology transfer. In addition, these establishments have stimulated firms' competition and technology. These parks have proved their pioneer role in restructuring and development of economy and workforce, improving living standard, and encouraging export. The role can be clearly I Source: http: \\\v\\.i;did \n channel 2^80 2012^0Tong-quan-ve-kinh^te-Viel•Nam-nam-20l2-va-du-baoklnh-lc-vi-mo-nam-20 I .V1964.^00 ' Source: http://www.baQhaiquan.vn/page.s/nhin-lai-kinh-te-viet-nam-2Q12.aspx seen via a huge foreign direct investment of global technology corporations into Vietnam for recent decade; and many of them have been benefited from hi-tech investment encouragement policy of Vietnam Government. On the other aspect, the firms such as Samsung, Foxconn, Canon, Nidec, and Intel, which are in their global supply chain, have significantly contributed to export volume and created many jobs in Vietnam. Despite of a modest level of value added, these firms helps Vietnam to be recognized in international High-tech industries.3 1. Background 1.1. The foundation of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park was established according to Decision 198/1998/QD-TTg dated 12, October 1998 issed by Prime Minister of Vietnam with the support of Japanese Government and based on experience of other countries all over the world. The hi-tech zone of 1,650 hectares is maily located in Thach That District, Hanoi, Vietnam and the primary goal of the park is to stimulate industrialization and modernization in local and national economy. It is a convenient environment for receiving technology transfer and inventing advanced technologies. In addition, the foundation has provided valuable experience for the futher start-up of other high-tech zones in Vietnam. Furthermore, the firms investing in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park are entitled to be benefited not only financially but also other aspects at the highest level according to Domestic Investment Encouraging Act, Foreign Investment Act and other valid laws. Below is the summary about the hitech park. First, as for characteristic, the park is a technological and economic complex, attempted to researching, developing then applying advanced Source: hnp: sgn.vn Kinh-te/172634 Thu-hut-cong-nghe-cao-''/oE2»^o80"'o9Chon-Truong-Ba-da-hang- thit''-oE2°o80°'o9D.html technology, supporting hi-tech firms, supplying technologically skilled workforces and creating hi-tech products. Second, about main standpoints and targets, Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park is devoted for: + Connecting, unitizing operations of the park with other functional entities of Hoa Lac Urban and local areas in terms of infrastructure. + Providing good conditions for operations of the organizations inside the park. + Exploiting the advantages of the location, creating an attractive investment environment and minimizing expenses of investing in infrastructure. + Creating solid legal foundation for the implementation, contruction and management of projects in the hi-tech park. Therefore, after ten years from the establishment, Prime Minister of Vietnam has issued decision 621/QD-TTg dated 23/05/2008 on the revision of general constructing scheme of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park. According the decision, the park is located in the area of 1,586 hectare, along Thang Long avenue, formerly Lang Hoa Lac highway; and this park includes a part of Bac Phu Cat industrial zone. In addition, the characteristics and goals of the project has been revised to that Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park will be targeted to be a national high technology research and application center, a place to support technologically intensive firms, create qualified workforce, stimulate hitech products invention and business. The park consists of several function areas, for example hi-tech intrustrial zone, the center of research and application, sofware zone, training and education zone, residence, office complex, and hi-tech services. In which, it focuses on developing hi-tech industries such as: informative technology, biotechnology, and renewable energy industry. telecommunication, 1.2. Overview of Hoa lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board Prime Minister of Vietnam has approved decision 98/2009/QD-TTg dated 27/07/2009 on approving the fimctions and responsibilities of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board. The decision stated that the board is a unit of Ministry of Science and Technology and responsible for directly administrative management over Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park. The organization chart of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board is described as the graph below Board ChairmanA'ice Chairman i Functioning units Administrative units - Contruction Planning and - Trainning Center Environment Department - High-tech Business Incubation - Investment Promotion Center Department - General Services Center Project - Accounting & Finance Department and Infrastructure Development Management Unit Hoa - Office, Department and Affiliates Lac Hi-Tech Park Infrastructure project management unit Figure 1.1: Organization Chart of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board (Source: Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board) 1.3. Overview of operation of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park 13,1. Land Acquisition The area of land acquisited was 845 hectares out of the planned of 1,586 hectares, in which: - Done before 2006: 200 hectares - Done from 2006-2008: 413 hectares - Transfered from Bac Phu Cat Industrial Zone: 232 hectares - Since 2009: the land acquisition is a problem. 1.3.2. Infrastructure According to decision 621/QD-TTg dated 23/05/2008 issed by Prime Minister of Vietnam, the most important items of infrastructure construction of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park is planned to be done in 2015 and completely finished in 2020. However, the target has not been achieved, below is the current situation of the construction: - Transportation system: there are 19 km of road which provide the link between Hoa Lac Avenue and the park and the road system enable to construct the function zones mentioned above. In addition, the project of 1,036 hectares of infrastructure, funded by Official Development Aids (ODA) from lapanese Government, has been in progress at phase 1 of technical support for design. The financing negotiation for the phase of construction, which is planned to be completed in 2015, has been preparing and signing. - Water and wastewater treatment system: the construction has been completed and a treatment system of 6,000 m^per day is in the final test. - Electricity system: Electricity Vietnam Group has been assigned by Prime Minister of Vietnam to supply power for the hi-tech park; however, the service quality is not as expected. Electricity cut-off normally results in problems of operation of the firm inside the park. Telecomunication system: Although Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group has been appointed to build the infrastructure, the construction seems to be not started. - Water supply: The quality of water is not high, unqualified sources is still in use inside the park. 1.3.4. Investment attraction There are 66 projects have been approved up to the first quarter of 2013, excluding 8 projects have been dismissed by the authority because of unqualification. Total registered investment of these projects is 51,791 VND, in which there are 22 projects completed and in operating while 13 project being constructed. The hi-tech park is targeted to become a city of advanced technology with different functioning areas and adequate hi-tech services and sound infrastructure systems. Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park aims to attract investment of leading organizations, both international and domestic, in high technology industry. Therefore, the role of the park management board needs to be altered to be adapt to these objectives. 2. Defining the research problem Despite the fact that Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park has implemented for fifteen years, the park has not achieved the prime goals. One of posible reason for the unexpected result is insufficient investment of Vietnam Government to meet the requirement of infrastructure construction. In addition, the park is the first hi-tech park in Vietnam; thus, there are unavoidable and unforecasted difficulties and it operates in totally different way from the existing normal administrative officers. Moreover, the staff of the management board has little experience in managing hi-tech fields and has to be concurrently responsible for many aspects such as state administration of high technology, project management, infrastructure management. To tackle this issue, we would like to get to know about the current status of operationa and leadership of middle managers of the Hoa Lac HiTech Park Management Board, and then to give propals to improve the working efficiency of the board. And then the authors have chosen title of this study is "Solutions to enhance leadership capabilities at departmental level to improve the working efficiency in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board". To middle managers, completing tasks depends on many factors such as: knowledge, qualifications, ability, skills and so on. Howerver, a Harvard University study shows that 15% of the reason a person gets a job, keeps a job, or advances in a job is related to technical skills and job knowledge... 85% has to do with people skills^. Therefore, in the thesis, the authors focus on investigating the status of ability, level and understanding about leadership skils to middle managers in the units of Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park. Given that, we aim to analyze the current skills of middle managers about organization management then provide suggestions to improve their abilities through enhancement of these skills, thereby facilitate the operations and promote the effiecency in the park. 3. Research questions The study will be conducted in questionnaires that emphasize on the solutions to improve leadership skills of middle managers for better administration efficiency in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board. The two main questions will be as below: - Which are necessary skills needed to be improved leadership capabilities of middle managers at Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board? - What measures are suggested to improve the leadership from these essential skills? 4. Research objectives There are three main objectives of this paper as below: * Source: www Jbrhcs.omT sites \vorkMn-nroi2rcss :012 (M :() ihc-SL-LTci-to-successful-netwo^^ First, the study aims to understand the current status of leadership of managers at the departmental level (middle managers) in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board. Second, the research wdll investigate the impact of leadership skills on work efficiency of the board to define essential skills. The last objective is to propose measures to improve leadership abilities and the efficiency of the board based on these essential skills. 5. Scope of the research The study will focus on the relevant leadership skills to Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board; thus does not emphasize on all the skills for leadership. The research will be carried out based on experience and opinions of middle managers of the units belonging to Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park Management Board as well as to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Based on this, authors will provide suggestions to improve leadership capacities of middle managers. 8 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Theories about leadership 1.1. Concepts/views of leadership The term of leadership has been emerged and analysized for thousands years. Normally, leader is considered as a powerful person who dominates and governs a country, a clan, a religion or an army. The definition, however, has been broadened with the development of human society. Nowadays, a leader can be an individual with a good strategic vision, and dynamic, creative characters or wiht abilities of significantly influencing or gathering many people into a group. There are a lot of outstanding examples for the importance of leaders such as Franklin Lincoln, Alexander the Great in politics or well-known entrepreneurs like Bill Gates of Microsoft: Inc., Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. (US), Akio Morita of Sony Corporatation (Japanese). The wide denotation of leadership might lead to misunderstandings about this term (Janda, 1960). Stogdill (1974) summarized that the perceptiveness about leadership depends on the way of approaching and specific situation. For example - Leadership is an action of an individual to control and govern a group for the purpose of achieving agreed targets (Halpin & Coons, 1957). - Leadership is an action of having influence on staff through conducts, regulations and decisions in an organization (D. Katz & Kahn, 1978). - Leadership is a process of influencing on operation of an entity to achieve agreed goals (Rauch & Behling, 1984).