Date of Award

2010

Thesis Type

PhD

Document Type

Thesis

Divisions

Faculty of Business and Economics (formally known as Faculty of Business and Accountancy)

Institution

Universiti Malaya

Abstract

Human resource development professionals have been investing several resources to provide necessary skills, knowledge and abilities to their employees in order to get competitive advantage in the global market and to achieve organizational goals. To provide these necessary skills, knowledge and abilities, organizations have been investing millions of dollars in formal training programs. The main objective of these training programs is to align the employee‟s expertise with organizational goals. The organizations can only achieve their desired objectives when employees transfer the learned skills at workplace. But unfortunately, employees transfer a small percentage of learned skills at workplace. To effectively manage their training programs, organizations need to recognize the factors influencing training transfer and assess the factors that are promoting or inhibiting behavioral changes. These influential factors that emerged from different training transfer models were individual factors which includes (training retention, learner readiness, transfer motivation and performance self-efficacy), environmental factors (peer support and supervisor support) training design factors (transfer design and perceived content validity), Situational factor (Instrumentality or intrinsic rewards) and reaction. To determine the relationship between these factors and their influence on training transfer and to test the model, the researcher selected a quantitative research design and administered self-reported survey instrument to a target population of thousand (1000) employees from the Malaysian banking sector. Based on the data collected from 503 employees (51% response rate), the researcher performed Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to test the model and to determine the relationship. To check the model fit, CFI, GFI, AGFI, CMIN/df and RASEMA have been reported. Furthermore, to see 4 the relationship between each path (t-value, squared multiple correlation, P-value and parameter estimate) has been reported. The result of the study indicated that all path are statistically significant but the most influential factor were perceived content validity, transfer design and transfer motivation. Transfer design and perceived content validity explain 62 percent of the variance of performance self-efficacy. In addition, perceived content validity explains 27% of the variance of reaction. Performance self-efficacy, reaction, learner readiness, peer support, supervisor support and instrumentality explain 48% of the variance of transfer motivation. Furthermore, instrumentality explains only 2% of the variance of training retention. Finally, training retention and transfer motivation explain 23% of the variance of training transfer. The researcher also performed descriptive statistics and frequency distribution analysis to report the attribute variables and numeric variables associated with the demographic data. The result of this study suggested that training stakeholders should play their role to effectively manage the training program. The transfer would be maximized when trainee would have social support, high performance self-efficacy and transfer motivation. Role of each stakeholders like trainers, trainee, supervisors and peers support have great importance in training transfer process. Furthermore, the role of learner readiness, trainee reaction, instrumentality and training retention are critical in the training transfer process. Finally, the result of this study revealed that perceived content validity and transfer design work together and influence the trainee performance self-efficacy level. In other words, if the trainers want to improve the performance self-efficacy level of the trainee‟s they need to explain how the trainee can transfer the learned skills at workplace and at the same time, they should make sure the contents of the training are similar with actual job. Future research should continue to explore current study variables with the more diversified population in various settings. The quantitative research design used in this research and for future studies, data could be collected from qualitative data collection techniques such as interview to provide more in depth information and understanding about the varying dimension of training transfer. In addition, future study that measure actual behavioral changes rather than self reports or perceptions could be conducted to develop strong training transfer theory.

Initial

khm

Additional Information

Thesis (PhD) – Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya, 2010.

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