The interaction of situational factors on individual factors and self-development

Abstract

Purpose Organizations are facing pressure to reduce costs of training and enhancing the role of self-development that is self-driven and contextual in nature as a means to supplement employee development. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of individual and situational factors on self-development as well as the moderating role of situational factors. Individual factors are referred to personal characteristics, i.e. learning goal orientation and proactive personality, while situational factors are environmental conditions, including job autonomy and empowering environment. Design/methodology/approach Data were gathered from 280 middle managers of the banking sector. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was conducted to validate the model. Findings The study findings revealed a significant direct relationship of individual (learning goal orientation and proactive personality) and situational (empowering environment and job autonomy) factors with self-development. The study also found only a significant moderating effect of empowering environment in relation to learning goal orientation and self-development, correspondingly job autonomy moderates the relationship of proactive personality and self-development. Practical implications The study concludes with offering some implication for organization to focus on self-development activities by providing an empowering environment and job autonomy to its employees, which will result to minimize the overall cost of training. Organizations should also identify the individual factors that lead to self-development like proactive personality and learning goal orientation. Originality/value This study gives new insight on the predictors of self-development and their interaction. This study may be a pioneer to empirically validate a theoretical model about the interaction of situational factors between individual factors and self-development. Furthermore, it contributes and advances our knowledge by demonstrating how individual and situational factors are influencing middle mangers’ self-development in workplace.

A person-situation perspective of informal learning: the role of supervisor feedback environment

“…TAT asserts that situational signals available in the workplace act as moderators and increase individual cues for learning behavior (Tett and Burnett, 2003). The integration of personal and contextual factors of informal learning has scarcely been addressed in existing literature (Noe et al, 2017;Zia et al, 2020). The conceptual model of the study is based on presage, process and product (3-Ps) of workplace learning (Tynjälä, 2013).…”

“…Noe et al (2017) concluded that informal learning is a mix of both personal and contextual factors; however, the combined relationship of these two streams is scarcely investigated (Kyndt et al, 2009(Kyndt et al, , 2016Govaerts et al, 2018), particularly very limited evidence is available from SMEs literature. More importantly, employees' involvement in learning and development activities increases when supported by situational/contextual factors (Orvis and Leffler, 2011;Zia et al, 2020). Feedback environment is a contextual factor that acts as a moderator in person-situation interaction (Young, 2013;Young and Steelman, 2017).…”

Interpersonal conflict at work and knowledge hiding in service organizations: the mediator role of employee well-being

“…This article integrates the literature on interpersonal conflict and well-being to show that knowledge hiding is a response to environmental stimuli that affect individual variables. Therefore, this paper heeds recent calls from the literature to understand how situational and individual factors explain employees’ attitudes and behaviors at organizations (Zia et al , 2020).…”

The Personal Resources Influence on Malaysian Graduates’ Career Adaptability via Mentoring as a Mediator

“…Personal resources refer to unique individual characteristics, strengths, and abilities to strive and understand the environment to act accordingly toward the situation (Zia et al, 2020). As the environment is unanticipated, individuals must be concerned about their capabilities through strengthening their control to enable them to explore possible future scenarios (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012).…”

“…The extant literature on personal factors found in prior research determines the personal factors as a goal orientation (Creed et al, 2009;Yousefi et al, 2011), meaningfulness and emotional intelligence (Harry, 2017), proactive personality, and learning organization orientation (Zia et al, 2020) that have a direct relationship with career adaptability and selfdevelopment. Therefore, changes in society, technology, job demand, and job autonomy affect the indirect effect of personal variables on career adaptability and self-development.…”