Effects of proactive personality and conscientiousness on training motivation

Abstract

Training transfer is a ubiquitous but frequently unmet goal of training initiatives amounting to billions of dollars lost annually and masses of under-skilled workers due to the lack of application of training content to their job. Although research supports the impact trainee proactive personality, conscientiousness and motivation have on training transfer processes, their interrelationships remain understudied. To fill this gap, we utilized data from a multinational sample of trainees and examined a conditional, indirect process model, where proactive personality interacts with conscientiousness to influence transfer intentions through their effects on motivation to learn. Our results suggest that trainee proactive personality positively influences transfer intentions partially through its influence on motivation to learn and that higher levels of conscientiousness weakens this relationship. Our findings provide further evidence supporting the importance of proactive personality and conscientiousness as factors that need to be accounted for in the design of talent development solutions.

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“…The third obstacle to the effectiveness of training referred to by the supervisors is lack of motivation among head teachers to attend training programmes. Such lack of motivation minimises the positive impact of training programmes as confirmed by Roberts et al (2018); Grossman & Salas (2011); and Colquitt et al (2000); they conclude that trainee characteristics and motivation are the most important antecedents to training transfer. Similarly, Kim et al (2014) supports findings that trainee motivation towards training and development is decisive in ensuring the effectiveness of training programmes in which organisations invest.…”

The Impact of Perceived Organizational Support and Proactive Personality on Affective Commitment: Mediating Role of Prosocial Motivation

“…It creates many significant and positive outcomes for an organization as well as for an individual; such as individual job performance (Andri et al, 2019;Crant, 1995), leadership effectiveness (Crant & Bateman, 2000), work team performance (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999), innovation-related behaviour (Ng & Feldman, 2013), entrepreneurship (Becherer & Maurer, 1999), thriving at work (Jiang, 2017), employee altruism (Lv et al, 2018), job search (Brown et al, 2006), employee creativity (Kim et al, 2009), job crafting (Zhang et al, 2018), increase in salary, promotion (Seibert et al, 1999), LXM quality and voice behaviour (Wijaya, 2018), career satisfaction (Joo & Ready, 2012), citizenship behaviour (Hua et al, 2019), training outcomes, i.e. behavioural intention and motivation (Major et al, 2006), motivation to learn and transfer intention (Roberts et al, 2018), change in job satisfaction (Kuo et al, 2019), innovative performance (Rodrigues & Rebelo, 2019), work engagement (Dikkers et al, 2010;Lv et al, 2018;Tisu et al, 2020), and life satisfaction (Wang et al, 2018). Proactive personality has also been directly linked to career success.…”

Psychosocial Characteristics, Training Attitudes and Well-being of Students: A Longitudinal Study

“…Concerning individual characteristics, it was said that trainees with high internal locus of control, achievement motivation [13] and self-efficacy [37] have a moderate to strong positive relationship with motivation to learn. In addition, personality in terms of extraversion, openness [38] and conscientiousness, as well as being proactive [39,40], are all significant predictors of motivation to learn. Moreover, a strong to moderate relationship has been found between job involvement [13], organisational commitment [13,41], career planning and career exploration [13] and motivation to learn.…”