Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among supervisor support, awareness of employees’ developmental needs, motivation to learn, training readiness, motivation to transfer and job performance. Design/methodology/approach A total of 216 responses from educational organizations in the USA were analyzed using the structural equation modeling method. Findings The findings indicate that supervisor support for training directly affected motivation to learn; both developmental needs awareness and motivation to learn had direct and significant effects on training readiness, motivation to transfer and job performance; developmental needs awareness directly affected motivation to learn; training readiness directly affected motivation to transfer. Research limitations/implications This study investigated how supervisor support contributes to motivation, training and job performance. In addition, this study attempted to bridge the gap in the literature by investigating the relationships among supervisor support, developmental needs awareness, learning motivation, training readiness, transfer motivation and job performance. Practical implications By conducting an initial needs assessment of participants, human resource development (HRD) practitioners can reflect on what participants want and need when designing and implementing professional development programs. HRD practitioners can also collaborate with participants’ supervisors to prepare for interventions to improve the quality and practicality of existing professional development programs. Originality/value Although the extant literature suggests that organizational support, motivation and training transfer are distinct but highly interrelated constructs; little is known about the predictive properties of a supervisor’s role in the training literature. Supervisors play a crucial role in that they can influence their subordinates on whether to participate in training programs. The ability of supervisors to provide adequate support and engage in comfortable communication about training programs may lead to enhanced motivation to learn and to greater training transfer. These potentially desirable effects motivate the researchers to further explore the nature of this component and its relationship with other training outcome variables.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to augment knowledge of how work environment and personal characteristics affect intention to transfer in a work context. This study aims to investigate the factors that can influence intention to transfer training in a professional development training context. The study examined the predictive capacity of organizational support, supervisor support, training readiness and learning motivation on transfer intention among the study respondents. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from teachers in secondary schools in the USA. The structural equation modeling method was adopted to analyze 216 responses using a self-report survey. Findings We found that (a) organizational support was directly associated with supervisor support for training, (b) supervisor support for training significantly influenced training readiness and motivation to learn, (c) training readiness positively affected motivation to learn, and (d) motivation to learn positively influenced intention to transfer. In addition, supervisor support mediated the relationships between organizational support and training readiness and between organizational support and motivation to learn. Training readiness linked intention to transfer and motivation to learn. Motivation to learn also played a mediating role in the relationship between supervisor support and intention to transfer. Originality/value Our findings add to the academic work on training transfer by empirically analyzing how both the environment (e.g. organizational support) and individual factors (e.g. learning motivation) influence employees’ intention to transfer. In particular, we investigated the potential impact of both organizational support and supervisory support on intentions to transfer, compared to previous studies emphasizing only supervisory support to improve training outcomes.

We conducted a survey-based study on the meaning of work of some 1500 mid-level professional employees in private and public organizations in eight countries. Using the country clustering described in the GLOBE series of studies and the theoretical framework of the Meaning of Work study, five hypotheses were tested. The study found support for the universal valuation of work and family as major life domains and the relative importance of leisure, religion, and community involvement. Work centrality was related in differentiated ways to performance orientation, assertiveness, and humane orientation indices. Extrinsic and intrinsic work goals differed and were related to country clustering. The report concludes with implications for the theory and practice of human resource development and offers suggestions for further research.Few topics over the past thirty years have captured as much attention in the broader social science literature and the popular business press as the changing nature of work, with its effects on countries, organizations, families, and individuals giving rise to a broad literature on new careers and new work. Far from presenting a uniform picture of the effects of changing work provisions, the literature points to highly differentiated and complex sets of responses and assessments of the value of work in the new economy (for example, Baldry et al. 2007;Cooper and Burke 2002;Hall 2004;Volti 2008;Wrzesniewski 2001). While much of this research has focused on changes in objective provisions of work, the concern of human resource management is with the coherent and strategic management of individuals, groups, and other subsets of employees. Thus a deeper understanding of how individuals experience work and its changing nature is essential in a rapidly globalizing economy. The focus on the subjective meaning of work can provide insight into the construction of work as subjectively experienced and offers information about how individuals make sense of, negotiate, and navigate the new work environment.Despite its central role in guiding behavior at work, empirical cross-cultural HR research on the topic is underdeveloped. To help advance understanding and explore implications for research and practice, a group of researchers from countries around the world convened in late 2007 to plan and implement a multi-country empirical study focused on the core question of similarities and differences in subjective understanding of work in a diverse set of cultures, countries, and economies around the world. The population was defined broadly as mid-level professional level employees, such as managers, engineers, accountants, and human resource professionals, employed in medium and large public and private organizations in their respective countries, and working full-time in diverse sectors and industries. The choice of this volunteer population was determined by accessibility, but more importantly by their role as current or future leaders in their organizations. Mid-level managers and professionals with comp...

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of learning goal orientation and training readiness on teachers’ multicultural teaching efficacy and cultural intelligence. Design/methodology/approach A total of 182 responses from secondary schools in midwest and southern areas of the USA were analyzed using the hierarchical multiple regression. Findings The findings indicated that learning goal orientation positively influenced both teachers’ multicultural teaching efficacy and cultural intelligence, while training readiness did not significantly affect them. In addition, teachers’ multicultural teaching efficacy positively influenced their cultural intelligence. Research limitations/implications The study implied that high-level learning goal orientation can contribute to enhance multicultural teaching efficacy and cultural intelligence for teachers. Practical implications By conducting needs analysis of participants in advance, trainers can reflect what teachers want and need when designing and implementing a workshop. In addition, trainers could prepare for interventions to improve the participation rate of multicultural workshops and the quality of existing workshop programs. Originality/value This study is important in that it will help to develop culturally sensitive workshop/training programs that can prepare teachers for diverse classroom environments and face potential issues that may arise.

Purpose This study aims to identify people’s perceptions of what behaviourally differentiates effective managers from ineffective managers within a South Korean (SK) public sector organization, and the extent to which the findings are similar or different to those of an equivalent previous study in the SK private sector. Design/methodology/approach Adopting the “pragmatic approach” and assuming a post-positivist ontology and constructivist–interpretivist epistemology, examples of “effective” and “ineffective” managerial behaviour were collected from managers and non-managerial employees in an SK central government Ministry using the critical incident technique. The collected critical incidents were coded, classified and reduced to a smaller number of behavioural categories. These were then compared against equivalent findings from a previous SK private sector replication study using open, axial and selective coding to identify generic behavioural criteria (GBCs) Findings High degrees of convergence point towards the emergence of a “two-factor” SK behavioural taxonomy of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness comprised of positive (n = 11) and negative (n = 4) GBCs of effective and ineffective managerial behaviour. Practical implications The GBCs constituting the deduced SK behavioural taxonomy could be used by HRD practitioners to critically evaluate the efficacy of extant management and leadership development (MLD) programmes, or to inform/shape the creation of new MLD programmes. Additionally, they could be used by other HR professionals to critically evaluate the relevance and efficacy of the assessment criteria used for existing management selection, 360-degree feedback and formal performance appraisal systems. Originality/value The emergence of an SK behavioural taxonomy through Type 3 (emic-as-emic) and Type 4 (emic-and-etic) indigenous research is a rare example of Eastern mid-range theory development.