Abstract:
The purposes of this research were (1) to study human resource practitioner's professionalism in Thai state higher education institutions; (2) to study the following variables: competency of human resource practitioner, role of human resource practitioners, personal credibility dimension of the human resource administrator's leadership, and organizational administration capability dimension of the human resource administrator's leadership; (3) to study the relationships of competency of human resource practitioner variable, role of human resource practitioner variable, personal credibility dimension of the human resource practitioners leadership variable, and organizational administration capability dimension of the human resource administrator's leadership variable influencing the variable of human resource practitioner's professionalism in Thai state higher education institutions; and (4) to propose recommendations on guidelines for development of human resource practitioner's professionalism in Thai state higher education institutions. The research sample consisted of 485 staff members of five Thai state higher education institutions: Chulalongkorn University, Mahidol University, Thammasat University, Kasetsart University and Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University. The studied variables consisted of five causal factors: professionalism, competency, role, personal credibility dimension of the administrator's leadership, and organizational administration capability dimension of the administrator's leadership. The employed research instrument was a six-part questionnaire on causal factors influencing professionalism of human resource practitioners in Thai state higher education institutions.
Research data were analyzed using the frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and path analysis as analyzed with LISREL software, version 8.30.
The research findings indicated that (1) human resource practitioner's competencies and roles had direct influence on the human resource practitioner's professionalism, while organizational administration capability dimension of the human resource administrator's leadership and personal credibility dimension of the human resource administrator's leadership had indirect influence on the human resource practitioner's professionalism; and (2) the developed causal structure relationship model influencing human resource practitioner's professionalism in Thai state higher education institutions was in accord with the empirical data (x=131.68, p-value> 0.05, GFI = 0.98, AGFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.005).