Abstract
Training refers to a planned effort to equip employees with essential skills, knowledge, and attitudes through a learning process. As an effective strategy of human resource development, training aims to improve employee competencies, fulfill organizational needs, and achieve improved performance. Effective training can facilitate employees to turn missions or policies into practice by performing assigned tasks successfully. Previous studies claimed that training directly correlates with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and performance. These studies indicate that research on training effect, although still at an early stage, has started to accumulate knowledge. However, research on training in the public sector is limited and even rare in the Chinese context. Therefore, exploring the effects of training on job attitudes is valuable.To explore whether training can foster job satisfaction and organizational normative commitment, this study first operationalizes training through two lenses: training availability and training quality. On the basis of social exchange theory, it is hypothesized that training availability and training quality have positive associations with job satisfaction and organizational normative commitment. Despite these positive associations, this study also hypothesizes that training availability and training quality have indirect effects on job attitudes through job involvement and self-efficacy. In addition, it is hypothesized that training availability and training quality moderate the relationships between job attitudes and role conflict/ ambiguity. To test the abovementioned hypotheses and address the particularities of Chinese public personnel management, this study employs a mixed-methods design, which consists of a quantitative study and a follow-up qualitative analysis. For the quantitative phase, this study uses three independent studies to test the direct, indirect, and moderating effects of training on job attitudes. First, with a sample of 804 Chinese government employees at the county and municipal levels and a set of controls, Study 1 tests the direct effects of training availability and training quality on job satisfaction and normative commitment using seemingly unrelated regression (SUR). Second, Study 2 tests the indirect effects of training availability and training quality on job satisfaction and normative commitment via job involvement and self-efficacy using SUR. Lastly, Study 3 tests the moderating effects of the two training variables with the same group of controls using SUR.
Results of this study show that the two training attributes have significantly and directly positive associations with job satisfaction and normative commitment. In addition, training availability has an indirect effect on job satisfaction and normative commitment through job involvement, and training quality has an indirect effect on job satisfaction and normative commitment through self-efficacy. Nevertheless, training quality moderates only the associations of role conflict and role ambiguity with job satisfaction, and training availability moderates only the association between role ambiguity and normative commitment. To further supplement and elaborate the quantitative results, this study conducts in-depth interviews with 40 Chinese local government employees.
Overall, this study extends our understanding of training by testing its direct, indirect, and moderating effects on job attitudes using a sample of Chinese local government employees. It also contributes to the literature on job attitudes by clarifying the interaction mechanisms and transmission paths among training, job-related characteristics, and job attitudes. With relatively integrated models of job satisfaction and normative commitment, this study reveals the interactive and intervening roles of training in influencing job attitudes. Moreover, this study presents the particularities of Chinese political personnel in training and job attitudes in local governments and therefore advances the knowledge of training and job attitude in a country-specific sense. In practice, this study implies the directions for optimizing human resource management in local governments and can help government leaders to effectively deal with training so as to achieve an increased level of job attitudes and improved performance.
| Date of Award | 2 Jun 2017 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Chan Su JUNG (Supervisor), Chih Wei HSIEH (Supervisor) & Jie GAO (Supervisor) |