Effects of Perceived Professional Learning and Supportive Work Environment on Job Satisfaction and Transfer of Training

Muhammad Adil ,Nadeem

doi:10.20547/jms.2014.2007203

Abstract

In all those functions which require cognitive thought process, trainability is recently recognized as a major problem for managers. Despite considerable amount of investment in training and development, managers often remain unsuccessful to transfer the training contents to others in their organizations. This paper analyzes a) the impact of perceived professional learning, supervisor support, and peer support on job satisfaction and in turn, on the transfer of training; and b) whether job satisfaction mediates the relationship between three variables (perceived professional learning, supervisor support, and peer support), and transfer of training. A useable sample of 384 managers is drawn from five private hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan. A measurement model is constructed with high validity and reliability, whereas hypotheses are tested using a covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) method. We used SPSS, AMOS and Jamovi software applications for data analysis. The results show that perceived professional learning and peer support have a significant and positive effect on job satisfaction and in turn, on the transfer of training. Similarly, job satisfaction mediates the relationship between the two variables (perceived professional learning and peer support), and transfer of training. Nevertheless, contrary to our hypotheses, supervisor support does not have a significant effect on job satisfaction, and job satisfaction does not mediate the relationship between supervisor support and transfer of training too. This study contributes to the training literature in three different ways. First, it extends the findings of Western studies to the private healthcare institutions of Pakistan. Second, it is perhaps the first report to reveal job satisfaction as a significant new predictor of transfer of training. Third, job satisfaction also mediates the positive relationship between perceived professional learning and transfer of training as well as between peer support and transfer of training. Theoretical contributions, managerial implications, limitations, and directions for future studies are discussed.

Highlights

Training is a very useful tool in the workplace to enhance knowledge and skills of the workforce (Brahma & Chakraborty, 2019) and in return, the senior management of an organization believes that the trainees would disseminate the learning out-Received 9 April 2020; Received in revised form 15 July 2020; Accepted 30 August 2020 Available online 22 September 2020comes of the trainings in order to benefit their organization as a whole
We looked into modification indices (MI), standardized residual covariances (SRCs), model-fit indices, and we estimated validity and reliability of the latent variables (LV) used in the measurement model
This study finds that perceived professional learning (‘PPL’) has significant and positive effect on job satisfaction of managers working in the private healthcare institutions of Karachi, Pakistan

Summary

Introduction

Training is a very useful tool in the workplace to enhance knowledge and skills of the workforce (Brahma & Chakraborty, 2019) and in return, the senior management of an organization believes that the trainees would disseminate the learning out-Received 9 April 2020; Received in revised form 15 July 2020; Accepted 30 August 2020 Available online 22 September 2020comes of the trainings in order to benefit their organization as a whole. Transfer of training refers to a consistent dissemination of knowledge, skills and abilities gained during trainings to others in the workplace (Baldwin & Ford, 1988). An employee is considered to have transferred the training contents when the person applies the learned KSAs in the workplace and remain consistent over a period of time (Ford, Baldwin, & Prasad, 2018). Literature has concluded that transfer of training positively affects the overall organization in achieving a competitive advantage. It has been argued that employees should apply and transfer what they have learnt from training interventions if the organization intends to gain such level of organizational performance which could enable it to gain a competitive advantage over rival companies (Saks & Burke-Smalley, 2014)

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Discussion

Conclusion