Do Lian Thang

PhD Dissertation Defense Questions

1. In the assessment of a PhD dissertation the examiner usually looks for what
theoretical contribution the study is making. What is the theoretical
contribution of your study? In what way it is significance? Is your theoretical
contribution 'incremental' or is it 'revolutionary', revelatory [reveals something
not known before] or is it confirmatory [affirms something that is already
known]. Doest it challenge an existing norm, or does it set up a norm where no
norms exist?
2. Jason A. Colquitt and Cindy P. Zapata-Phelan [2007] writing in the
Academy of Management Journal [AMJ] identified four types of research
namely Theory Builders, Theory Reporters, Theory Testers, and Theory
Expanders. How would you classify your study? Provide justification for your
answer. Is your study good enough for a PhD dissertation?
3. What gap in research does your study address? How did you identify this gap?
Why has this gap not been addressed so far? Have you been successful in
addressing this gap in literature through your research design?
4. State the objectives of your study on-by-one and argue whether you have
indeed met your objectives.
5. A PhD research is often judged by its findings. Can you enumerate all your
findings? Which among these, in your opinion, is the most important? Are
there any counter intuitive findings? Findings that defy common sense. If so
provide a good explanation for such unexpected findings.
6. Researchers say that one of the ways to weaken the credibility of the PhD
dissertation or of any research study is to question the reliability and the
validity of instruments of data collections. Convince us as to how you
managed reliability and validity issues in your paper. I see that you tested the
measurement model of your conceptual framework. How does the different
tests of your measurement model help you to build validity and reliability?
7. Imagine that I am a layperson in the world of management studies. Explain to
me ‘Employee Turnover Intention’ and the factors influencing them in very
simple language excluding the technical jargon. Also tell me why is it so
important to study and manage ‘Employee Retention’?
8. Situate you study ‘Employee Retention’ within the framework of management
thought and within the discipline of management studies. The first part of the
question deals with placing ‘Employee Retention’ within an appropriate
school of management thought. My second question deals with where you will
place ‘Employee Retention’ in the functional spectrum of management such as
Finance, marketing, HRM, Accounting, operations, MIS etc. Can you further
situate ‘Employee Retention’ with in a more specific area of HRM?
9. Do Lian Thang in your paper [the abstract] you state the purpose of your study
‘is to present a causal model which explains employee turnover intention so
that industry practitioners can retain skilled and competent employees.’ For
your study you collected data from ‘non-sectarian profit oriented colleges’.
My question is to what other types of institutions and organizations you may
be able to generalize the study?
Can your study be generalized to sectarian not-for-profit organizations? Argue
10. Your study found out ‘that intrinsic factors such as workplace spirituality,
mission attachment, employee engagement, and organizational commitment
explained 18% of variance in the turnover intention of employees.
a. Explain how WS, MA, EE and OC influence Turnover Intention of
Employees.
b. The other 82% of variance is explained by what other possible factors?
Explain. Your paper identifies such other factors on page 23. ‘that as a
predictor of employee turnover, employee satisfaction generally
accounts for 16% of the variances’. Why didn’t you study them in the
first place?
11. Enumerate the recommendations that your study makes. Are these
recommendations useful or are they just of academic interest?
12. On page 136 of your dissertation you have your final structural model. You
say that the best predictors for employee turnover intention are workplace
spirituality, mission attachment, employee engagement, and organizational
commitment.
For your model to make a theoretical contribution it needs to ‘explain’ not
only if the variable are related but how and why they are related. Explain the
relationships [direct/indirect, and positive/negative] among the variables
identified in your final structural model.
13. In your research you found that ‘organizational commitment [OC] is positively
related to employee turnover intention [TI] as it has not been expected
initially. This means higher organizational commitment leads to higher
Employee Turnover commitment Page ____. However, in your review of
literature page 70 you say that, ‘The findings of Hussain and Asif (2012) and
Gatling (2015) show that there is a negative and strong relationship between
organizational commitment and turnover intention (-0.697 and -0.63,
respectively). So your findings is counter intuitive and contrary to what other
researchers have found. Can we trust your findings? Did something go wrong
in your research? You have not provided any explanations in your paper for
this counter intuitive findings.
14. Further, in your research you also found that ‘Employee Engagement [EE] is
negatively related to organizational commitment [OC] as it has not been
expected initially. This means Employee Engagement [EE] affects
Organizational Commitment [OC] negatively. An increase in EE cause a
decrease in OC Page 134. However, in your review of literature page 81 you
say that, ‘The findings of Moussa (2013) and Shoko and Zinyemba (2014)
showed that there is positive and a pretty strong relationship between
employee engagement and organizational commitment (0.59 and 0.60,
respectively). Table 8 page 82 also shows the empirical evidence that there is
a positive relationship between employee engagement [EE] and organizational
commitment [OC]. So your findings is counter intuitive and contrary to what
other researchers have found. Can we trust your findings? Did something go
wrong in your research? You have not provided any explanations in your
paper for this counter intuitive findings.
15. Do Lian Thang, I want to ask you a question on your conceptual framework.
Can you please project the slide that shows your conceptual framework?
When I look at your conceptual models I see arrows going from one variables
to another. How did you determine which variables are related to which? Did
you just assume these relationships or are you informed by theory and
 empirical data from previous studies? If so identify the theoretical foundations
of your study.
16. On page 137 you show the Final Structural Model Indices, Most of the indices
seem to be within acceptable limits. Explain the significance of each model
indices. What do they actually mean? Could you have got a better model that
you presently have in terms of the %age of variance your present model
explains?
17. I see that you have used a questionnaire to collect your data. In the
questionnaire, that you used, explain how different statement got into it. In
other words how did you operationalize your latent variables into ‘observables
indicators’? To what extent theory played a role in determining the statements
in your questionnaire.