اثر آموزش فرهنگ سازمانی بر انگیزه دانش کارکنان برای انتقال آموزش: تأثیرات تعدیل کننده محیط انتقال یادگیری Influence of Organizational Learning Culture on Knowledge Worker’s Motivation to Transfer Training: Testing Moderating Effects of Learning Transfer Climate

In this age of rapid innovation, one way for organizations to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage over competitor firms is to foster an organizational culture that advocates knowledge development and learning (Barney 1991; Bates and Khasawneh 2005). Organizations make huge investments on employee training and development each year (Silverman 2012). However, transfer of knowledge acquired through training programs to company stakeholders is not as easily achieved (Salas and Kosarzycki 2003). At best, only 15 % of the total learning that takes place during training gets transferred at work, as per some optimistic speculations (Cromwell and Kolb 2004). Several instances of failed training programs and inadequate learning have been noted. For example, the training program conducted by Burger King that resulted in its employees burning their feet while trying to walk over hot coal (Bunch 2007) or the ineffective team-building exercises conducted by the U.S. Postal Service (Feiden 2003) that cost the firm millions of dollars. The learning disseminated through majority of training activities gets lost within a span of a year as per experts (Salas et al. 2012). Past research has repeatedly highlighted the need for fostering a learning environment in organizations (Kolb and Kolb 2005) such that employees are motivated to actively learn new things and then share their knowledge with their peer. At the organizational level, research has identified organizational culture as a key driver for promoting a sense of healthy knowledge sharing among employees (Confessore and Kops 1998; Garvin 1993). Employees need to first realize that their firm expects them to disseminate the learning generated from a training exercise among the organizational members who did not attend the training (Bunch 2007; Clarke 2004). Unfortunately, this is seldom the case (Cromwell and Kolb 2004). Parallel studies on organizational climate have shown that climate can affect culture perceptions among employees (Bates and Khasawneh 2005; Kopelman et al. 1990) and can drive employees to share training acumen with peers (Egan et al. 2004). In the current study, an attempt has been made to empirically test the joint effect of organizational learning culture and learning transfer climate on knowledge workers’ motivation to transfer knowledge acquired through training programs. Knowledge workers may be summarized as employees who are involved in high-tech professions such as engineering, academics, law, medicine, accounting, science (Nomikos 1989), and who create intangible assets (Harrigan and Dalmia 1991). In concurrence with this, academicians, especially in higher education, may be categorized as part of knowledge worker community. Academicians in higher education institutions are required to teach advanced topics on specialized areas, mostly in recent fields of research and innovation. Academicians are expected to publish their research works in the form of research papers in reputed peer-reviewed journals, thus creating intangible assets for their institutions.