The impact of organizational learning culture, goal orientation, managerial effectiveness, and psychological empowerment on employees‟ workplace learning.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of organizational learning culture, learning and performance goal orientation, managerial effectiveness, and psychological empowerment on employees' workplace learning. The main research question to guide this study was, How do organizational learning culture, goal orientation, managerial effectiveness, and psychological empowerment impact employees' workplace learning? Subjects of this study were Korean employees who were not executives, had worked at the company more than one year, and agreed to complete the survey. A paper-and-pencil-based questionnaire with 59 items (excluding six demographic questions) was designed. Six hundred questionnaires were distributed to ten organizations, and 382 responses were collected. The final response rate, after 17 unusable responses were identified, was 61% (365). Cronbach's alphas verified the reliability of the overall instrument, as well as the sections of the survey. Construct validity was determined using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Correlation analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were conducted to test the hypotheses of the study. The study found that organizational learning culture, learning goal orientation, managerial effectiveness, and psychological empowerment were positively related to workplace learning. In particular, psychological empowerment and workplace learning had the strongest relationship. Compared with learning and performance goal orientation, organizational learning culture had more impact on managerial effectiveness and psychological empowerment. Performance goal orientation was not significantly related to managerial effectiveness and was not negatively related to psychological empowerment, as hypothesized. Based on these findings, the implications for Human Resource Development (HRD) theory and practice, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research were discussed.