Business Students and Employers Attitude Towards Supervision

Transcription

1 Business Students and Employers Attitude Towards Supervision Maija Zakrizevska Dr. psych. Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration, Latvia Abstract: The research is done, because the role of supervision and professional business advisory continues to grow not only in Latvia, but in Europe as well. In increasing number of sectors, it is seen that supervision and its methods are used for emotional support and leadership ability promotion. Whereas there is a growing need for specialists from this field, the aim of this research study is to investigate the emotionally evaluating attitude of students studying business in institutions of higher education, and also of employers, towards supervision. The study included 50 students of business programs and 40 potential employers who might be supervision service workers. All three s of attitude towards supervision are compared in the study: emotional, cognitive and behavioural, the links between each of them. In order to investigate the differences between attitudes of students and employers the T criterion was used. The study concluded that, overall, students and employers attitude towards supervision is positive, but they lack knowledge about it and are not consistent whether they would be willing to attend supervision sessions. Half of the respondents have never experienced supervision, but 80% think it would be useful for use in business. Differences between students and employers have been found in emotional (p=0.004) and behavioural (p=0.025) of attitude. The research and its findings give a better understanding of supervision and supervisor profession and minor public's attitude towards it. This is especially important because the growing number of academic education programs in Latvia creates a need to inform potential recipients of supervisor services - entrepreneurs and business managers. Keywords: supervision, supervisor, attitude, higher education. Introduction The demand for supervision is currently developing rapidly globally and in Latvia. Since 2014, the profession of a supervisor/consultant, monitor appears in the section of lead experts of the Classification of Professions (Noteikumi par, 2010). The Latvian Union of Supervisors (Sertificēti supervizori, 2015) includes 28 certified supervisors, has published two books and numerous articles of supervision, this profession can be acquired in three institutions of higher education: Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration (RISEBA), Riga Stradins University (RSU), Latvian Christian Academy (LKrA), and two doctoral dissertations related to supervision have been defended (Āboliņa, 2012; Truskovska, 2013). The necessity of supervision in the public sector is already now acknowledged in various laws, other legal acts and drafts of the same, such as Law on Social Services and Social Assistance, Cabinet Regulation No. 291 Requirements for Social Service Providers of 3 June 2003 (Prasības sociālo, 2003), Cabinet Regulation No. 48 Concept for Development of Human Resources in Public Administration of 6 February 2013 (Par valsts pārvaldes,2013) which establishes that a consultative supervisor service should be provided in the direct public administration, and also policy planning documents (Zvirgzdiņa, 2013). In most West-European countries, supervision is no longer a monopoly of the assisting professions, and it appears in pedagogics and service sectors, the public and sector and business (Mārtinsone, 2010). Supervision has nowadays become a complex and flexible consultative opportunity due to its very wide scope: from working with a case and team supervision to consultation of an entire organisation (Horšers, 2007). It is expected that this tendency will become increasingly significant in Latvia soon, and supervision will more frequently be used in business-related professions. Supervision can be used to handle problems which are already now significant for those working in business environments, such as frequent change of employers, dissatisfaction in the job environment, lack of motivation, etc. One may claim every business organisation requires supervision, because it may help to achieve own financial and business development targets and excellence in customer service. 283

2 If there is knowledge about, understanding of, and positively evaluating attitudes towards supervision and supervisors in the helping professions, then this does not frequently occur in business-related professions. What is better known in business environments is coaching, which is attainment of the desired targets (Fillery-Travis, Lane, 2006) or continuous cooperation between the client and the coach to help the clients achieve actual results in their personal and professional lives (Nieuwerburgh, 2014) by providing support and feedback to the clients (Auerbach, 2001). It is often believed that coaching and supervision are the same. Several West-European countries, such as Germany and The United Kingdom, offer professional Master s Degree in coaching. There is no respective profession standard in Latvia. Thus, in Latvia coaching can be acquired in various professional courses by anyone, and this is inadmissible in the preparation of supervisors according to the education guidelines issued by the Association of National Organisation for Supervision in Europe (ANSE) (Welcome to the ANSE, 2015). Like in other places globally, there are two ways of understanding the fundamentals of supervision in Latvia. One is that the supervisor has certain competence, i.e., the profession (typically) acquired within two years, not before four years of successful experience in a certain area of professional activity. This approach id supported by the Latvian Union of Supervisors, which is a member of the Association of National Organisation for Supervision in Europe (ANSE). Another is that the supervisor is a monitor, a more experience colleague (with certain job experience, usually at least five years), who, among other tasks, assumes partial liability for the practice of the person being supervised in order to assure as highquality professional activity as possible (Mārtinsone, Mihailova, 2014). This second approach is more widely known and used in business environments and management. Although the Latvian Commission for Terminology approved the terms of supervision and supervisor (consultant/monitor) in 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science approved the standard for the profession of a supervisor in autumn the same year, and, in early 2014, it was included in the Classification of Professions. When searching for the term supervisor on the website of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, one can still find monitoring and in-service training (uzraudzība, darbaudzināšana). The current usage of the words of this group largely associates with the explanations (including even the meaning of a consultant, advisor ) used by others to justify the borrowing of English terms mentoring, mentor, mentee (Par supervision, 2005). Nowadays, supervision has become part of professional practice and also education in many professions. Nevertheless, there is shortage of information about it in business, and this explains the rationale of this research. When hearing the words supervision, supervisor, many employers have different emotionally evaluating attitudes, and, for many of them, these may associate with in-service training, monitoring, and mentoring. Attitude is a relatively stable, positively or negatively evaluating response which influences and motivates the behaviours associated with them (Olson, Maio, 2003), it may be targeted at a certain individual or event, at various things as well as at an abstract object, it helps the individual carry out an evaluation of an object or event, adapt to the environment and express their feelings or beliefs to others (Nevid, 2014). Attitude has an evaluating tendency, and it is this evaluating element which distinguishes attitude from belief (Davey, 2005), which can be measured by contrast signs: good bad, pleasant unpleasant (Ajzen, 2001). Attitude has three s, they show in a wide spectrum the ways attitude may manifest in an individual (Rosenberg, Hovland, 1960, Ya Hui, Petty, 2013). The three s (or components) of attitude are formed by cognitive (knowledge about an environment object), emotional (emotional evaluation of the object) and behavioural reactions to an object (purposeful action with regard to the object) (Chaiken, Pomerantz, 1995). Thus, attitude is defined as views regarding the achievement of certain targets, including understanding them, evaluation and readiness to act (Schwarz, Bohner, 2001). Emotional attitude largely differs from, for instance, cognitive attitude, because it may often not be logical or based on facts. Behavioural reaction, in its turn, may vary depending on the actions of the surrounding people, because the individual may go with the majority and act the way they do despite their knowledge and emotions being in contrast to the behaviour. It may be assumed that attitude can also be caused by false knowledge about an object. 284

3 The aim of this research study is to investigate the emotionally evaluating attitude of students studying business in institutions of higher education, and also of employers, towards supervision. There were three research questions during the study: What is the emotionally evaluating attitude of students studying business towards supervision? What is the emotionally evaluating attitude of employers towards supervision? Are there statistically significant differences between the attitudes of students and employers towards supervision? Depending on the knowledge of entrepreneurs and employers and their attitudes towards supervision, the demand for it will develop in future. Therefore, it is important to conduct research in this field in order to find out the attitudes of business students, who might be future employers, and employers themselves towards supervision. Methodology All three s of attitude towards supervision are compared in the study: emotional, cognitive and behavioural, the links between each of them. Thus, it is possible to find out the affective attitude towards supervision, what the knowledge of both research samples about supervision is, and what behaviours in association with supervision each of the research samples has, simultaneously finding out whether there are any differences between the results of both samples and what these differences are. The survey consisted of 23 statements which were evaluated on a Likert-type scale with four values. The survey was conducted between January 2015 and April The questionnaires were provided and sent out electronically to more than 100 people, four of them turned out to be invalid because they were not completed, and part of them were not returned. The total of 50 questionnaires from business students and 40 questionnaires from employers were obtained and processed. The average age of the students was 25 years, and the average age of the employers was 32 years. Out of all business students involved in the survey, 16 were males and 34 were females, whereas there were 9 males and 31 females among the employers participating in the survey. The students were in the third or fourth year of business programmes. The disproportionate distribution of the employers can be explained by the fact that a large part of the respondents were personnel managers, which is a predominantly female occupation. The types of occupation mentioned by the students most frequently were studies in the institution of higher education, customer service, sales, and duties similar to administration. The most frequent responses among the employers were personnel manager, entrepreneur, high-level manager. The statistical analysis of the collected data was carried out using the IBM SPSS statistics program. Results and Discussion To verify the credibility of the designed questionnaire regarding supervision, the questionnaire was distributed among the initial 40 respondents (20 business students and 20 employers), and the Cronbach s Alpha (or the Consistency Coefficient) was calculated. It shows whether the statements are adequately and mutually consistent within each particular scale and within the entire survey (Table 1). Table 1 The Cronbach s coefficient alpha for the questionnaire regarding attitude towards supervision Scale Cronbach s Number of alpha statements Emotional Cognitive Behavioural All s together The aggregate Cronbach s coefficient alpha for all the s can be rated as very good (Table 1), which means that the results obtained during the survey are credible and can be used for further data analysis and interpretation. 285

4 Analysis of the results obtained from the student sample The compliance with the normal distribution was assured by performing the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z- criterion test (Table 2). Table 2 The compliance of the results of the student sample with the normal distribution Emotional Cognitive Behavioural All survey together Mean score Standard deviation Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z criterion Significance As can be seen, the significance for all scales and the survey in total is above 0.5, and this means that the data are presentable and can be used to make judgements regarding the entire population (Table 2). Descriptive statistics was used in the IBM SPSS statistics program to obtain the central tendency indicators, such as mode; median; and arithmetic mean. In addition to these, other values characterising the descriptive statistics were also calculated (Table 3). Table 3 The descriptive statistics for the student sample data Emotional Cognitive Behavioural All survey together Valid data, respondents Mean value Median Mode Skewness ratio Standard error of skewness ratio Excess coefficient Regarding the skewness ratio (Table 3), which is negative for the emotional and the survey in general, it can be said that the respondents have a tendency to higher values, which means that their attitude towards supervision in the emotional is more frequently positive than in the remaining two s of attitude. A comparison of the skewness ratio and the standard error of the skewness shows that the ratio is below the standard error for all of them, and this means compliance with the normal distribution. The mean value is 43.08, which almost ideally corresponds to the median of and the mode of The excess coefficient, in its turn, is the same for all the scales (it is negative in all cases). A negative excess coefficient shows a tendency of the results to be spread along the X-axis, which means very different attitudes among the students on these scales. Both clearly positive and clearly negative attitudes can be seen, and there are also a lot of responses which are in between (likely negative and likely positive attitudes). A positive excess shows that the results tend to cluster around the mean value, which would mean that the opinions, or the attitudes, of the students are most frequently similar, but this does not occur on any of the scales. The score for the cognitive is very close to zero, i.e., (Table 3), and, for this reason, it is not unequivocal, and both positive and negative excess tendencies might occur in the responses of the students. At the same time, the results of the survey conducted between the business programme students show: In the emotional. Absolutely all students involved in the survey think that supervision is useful nowadays; approximately one half of the students (44%) are more likely not in support of dealing with problems in a group; the majority (82%) of the students acknowledge that it is useful to spend time on planning personal growth; 58% of the students do not like discussing the internal activities and 286

5 problems of the enterprise with an outsider; most of the students associate the process of supervision with positive emotions; 78% of the students think that the process of supervision helps to identify own professional activity. In the cognitive. Approximately one half (46%) of the students lack knowledge about how to organise a supervision session; the majority (80%) claim that they understand the process of supervision, and the same percentage of students believe that there are situations in business when supervision is necessary; the attitudes of the students divide approximately in halves in all the statements related to supervision, methods of supervision, the information available about it, and also the definition of supervision as such; exactly one half of the students have experienced or heard about supervision before; 86% of the students believe that people doing social work require supervision. In the behavioural. 86% claim that they are ready to attend a supervision session if necessary, whereas others would most likely not attend such sessions; one third of the respondents acknowledge that they do not like discussing their targets or emotions with others, which is one of the components of supervision; only 62% of the students would be ready to organise a supervision session; the majority (64%) are not ready to pay for the services of a supervisor as part of their job; even though not all students would organise a supervision session, 92% of them would recommend supervision to a friend in case it seemed necessary; 40% of the students would avoid supervision in case it would involve group or team supervision. Analysis of the results obtained from the sample of employers To verify the credibility of the questionnaire, the compliance of the employer data with the normal distribution needs to be verified for the employer scale by carrying out the Kolmogorov-Smirnnov Z- criterion test (Table 4). Table 4 The compliance of the results of the employer sample with the normal distribution Emotional Cognitive Behavioural All survey together Mean score Standard deviation Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z criterion Significance It can be seen in the table that the data significance for all scales and the survey in total is above 0.05, and this means that the data are presentable and can be used to make judgements regarding the entire population (Table 4). Descriptive statistics was used in the IBM SPSS statistics program to obtain the central tendency indicators, such as mode; median; and arithmetic mean. In addition to these, other values characterising the descriptive statistics were also calculated (Table 5). Table 5 The descriptive statistics for the employer sample data Emotional Cognitive Behavioural All survey together Valid data, respondents Mean value Median Mode Skewness ratio Standard error of skewness ratio Excess coefficient When viewing the skewness ratio, one can see tendencies which are completely different from those observed in the analysis of the student data (Table 5). All the coefficients are negative in the case of employers, and this means that the respondents show a tendency towards higher values in all s 287

6 of attitude. So, positive or affirmative responses have been more frequently received in all s of attitude. A comparison of the skewness ratio and the standard error of the skewness shows that the ratio is below the standard error more frequently, and this means compliance with the normal distribution. The mean value is 44.87, which almost ideally corresponds to the median of and the mode of In the case of the excess coefficient, the results of the students and the employers are the same (Table 3 and Table 5), i.e., it is negative on all scales. A negative excess coefficient shows a tendency of the results to be spread along the X-axis, and not the mean value. Consequently, the attitude on these scales can be clearly positive or clearly negative. Simultaneously, the results of the employer survey show: In the emotional. All the employers have acknowledged that supervision is useful nowadays; 78% of the employers think that handling problems in a group or team is useful, which is different from the attitude of the students; almost all (95%) of the employers believe that every individual only benefits from spending time on planning their personal growth; 68% of the employers do not see a problem in discussing job problems with an outsider; one tenth of the employers associate the process of supervision with more likely negative emotions; 85% of the respondents agree that a supervisor helps to identify own professional activity, its successes and failures. In the cognitive. More than a half (53%) of the employers do not know how to organise a supervision session for themselves or the team; approximately one half of the respondents understand what supervision is, where to find information about it, and what the process of supervision involves; 80% believe that there are situation in business when supervision is necessary; 40% have not experienced or heard about the use of supervisor services; 28% do not know what supervision is and are not sure about their knowledge; 78% would be able to explain to a friend what supervision is. In the behavioural. 95% of the employers are ready to attend a supervision session; approximately three quarters like discussing their preferences and targets with others; one third of the employers acknowledge that they would not organise a supervision session; slightly over one half (53%) of them would not pay for supervisor services as p[art of job; 92% would recommend supervision to a friend in case it seemed necessary; approximately every fifth employer (18%) would avoid group or team supervision. Differences in the analysis of mathematical statistics The T-test is used in the statistical analysis part because the T-test enables to determine statistically significant differences between the arithmetical means of the two samples. The T-test modification for independent samples, which is usually used in case there are two independent or two different samples, has been used. This is also the case here when students and employers are compared. This test can be performed only in cases when the results of the questionnaire comply with the normal distribution, which is true for this study. The T-test results have been obtained using the IBM SPSS software (Table 6). Table 6 T-test difference results by scales between the students and the employers Scale T test Significance Emotional Cognitive Behavioural All survey together The table shows the T-test results and the significance. When looking at the results, special attention should be paid to the significance. In case it equals or is below 0.05, then there are statistically significant differences between the two scales. If it is higher, there are no statistically significant differences, and such results have, possibly, occurred accidentally. In relation to this study, it is necessary to look at the emotional for which the significance is (Table 6), which means possibility of large differences, the behavioural because the score for it is 0.025, which means differences 288

7 between the attitudes of the students and the employers towards supervision, and the survey in general because the significance for it is Differences in the emotional. When viewing the central tendency scores of both samples, it can be seen that the student scores are in the range between 11 and 12 (Table 3), whereas the employer scores are in the range between 13 and 14.5 (Table 5), which means that the employer results are higher than those of the students. Consequently, the employers have a more positive emotional of attitude than students. Even though the employer results are higher than those of the students, the mean scores of both for the in which there are only 6 statements are with a comparatively high mean score of ~2, which means that more likely positive attitude towards the statements of the emotional has been marked more frequently. Differences in the behavioural. This component of attitude is very essential because it shows whether the individual is ready to acts and, for instance, attend or pay for supervision sessions as well as organise or suggest supervision in their job when necessary. When viewing the mean scores and the descriptive statistics part (Table 3 and Table 5), it becomes clear that the students and the employers have the lowest numbers of points on this scale 11 points for 6 statements for the students (Table 3) and 12 points for the same statements for the employers (Table 5). Both are frequently not ready to attend, organise or pay for supervision sessions. The employers should be highlighted particularly because they would, more frequently than students, not be willing to pay for supervisor services and would avoid supervision sessions. Even though attitudes towards supervision in business environments have not been studied, the study conducted in Latvia involving social workers who have completed the course Supervision in the management of a social case (2 credits) and the results of the survey showed that social workers have insufficient understanding of supervision, taking university knowledge as the basis if no practical experience has been acquired (Āboliņa, 2012). The results of this study suggest insufficient understanding of supervision even among trained specialists, assuming that supervision, as a service, is not sufficiently popular and developed in Latvia. Conclusions The results of the study show that the emotionally evaluating attitude of the business students towards supervision is generally positive. They like the process of supervision and associate positive emotions with them, but they do not like team or group supervisions and discussing problems with strangers. The knowledge of the students about the profession of a supervisor are incomplete, but they are ready to attend supervision sessions, giving priority to individual sessions, but they are not ready to pay for it themselves. The emotionally evaluating attitude of the employers towards supervision is generally positive. The employers think that the supervisor helps to become aware of one s own professional activity and that it is useful for dealing with problems jointly in a group. The employers also have incomplete knowledge about the process of supervision and the opportunities for organising it, but they would be willing to attend supervision in case they would not have to pay for it. There are statistically significant differences between the attitudes of students and employers towards supervision, and this mostly manifests in the emotional (p=0.004) and the behavioural (p= 0.025). The students more frequently have negative attitudes towards group supervision, and they would most likely avoid attending group or team supervision in their jobs. The employers, in their turn, would willingly to discuss the internal operations and the problems of the company with an outsider (a supervisor) and would more frequently than students be ready to pay for supervisor services. An investigation of the negative attitudes of the students and the employers reveals that this is most frequently related to insufficiency of knowledge about supervision. The respondents do not know where to find information about supervision, its process, methods, or why team supervisions are useful. Therefore, it is particularly important to inform and educate entrepreneurs and employers, including use of mass media. More information about supervision would also change the negative attitudes of both groups towards the need to pay for supervisor services. 289

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