Abstract
The training of human resources improves business performance: myth or reality? While the literature has extensively addressed this issue, the transfer that occurs from training to performance still remains unresolved. The present study suggests an empirical solution to this gap, through a multiple mediation model of dynamic capabilities. Accordingly, the study makes a major contribution to the effectiveness of an organizational-level training: the “true” relationship between training and performance is mediated by absorptive and innovative capacities. It is difficult from training to directly affect the results: it must be done through a chain of intermediate variables. Training can be argued to be indirectly related to performance, through absorptive capacity in the first place, and innovative capacity in the second, sequentially in this order (three-path mediated effect). Of all immediate relationships received by performance, its explained variance is achieved partly via absorptive capacity and partly via innovation. The direct relationship through training is not significant and only explains a small percentage of the variance in performance. These results have been corroborated by combining two methods of analysis: PLS-SEM and fsQCA, using data from an online survey. This dual methodology in the study of the same phenomenon allows overcoming the limitations of each method, which would not have been possible with a single methodological approach, and confirming the findings obtained by any of them.
Highlights
Transfer of training refers to the degree to which learned skills and behaviors from the training environment are applied, generalized and maintained in the working environment (Baldwin and Ford, 1988)
Few empirical studies examine the specificities of the models of absorptive capacity, whether it intervenes to translate the different sources of external knowledge flow into realized benefits, such as innovation
Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method (fsQCA) Approach fsQCA was run in order to generate the combinations of conditions leading to dorgfs. fsQCA calculates three solutions: the complex, the intermediate, and the parsimonious solutions
Summary
Transfer of training refers to the degree to which learned skills and behaviors from the training environment are applied, generalized and maintained in the working environment (Baldwin and Ford, 1988). There is a number of studies examining the positive effects of training on organizational performance (Bartel, 1994, 2000; Barrett and O’Connell, 2001; Aragón-Sánchez et al, 2003; Dolan et al, 2005; Ng, 2005; Barba et al, 2014; Úbeda-García et al, 2014). The existence of an explanatory gap in that relationship (Baldwin and Ford, 1988; Aragón and Valle, 2013; Barba et al, 2014; Saks and Burke-Smalley, 2014) together with the scarcity of empirical research on the subject, especially at the level of organizational analysis, have often been criticized (Tharenou et al, 2007). Few empirical studies examine the specificities of the models of absorptive capacity, whether it intervenes to translate the different sources of external knowledge flow into realized benefits, such as innovation. Most studies consider innovation as the only outcome of absorptive capacity (Kostopoulos et al, 2011)
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