Some antecedents and outcomes of informal learning behavior in a virtual team

Abstract

Virtual teams are commonly used in businesses to meet employees’ needs for teleworking. Meanwhile, informal learning is a social phenomenon that influences work outcomes in learning organizations. Understanding informal learning behavior with its important antecedents and outcomes is necessary, especially in the context of teleworking via electronic communication media as virtual teams. This paper proposes and examines a structured model that describes the relationships among employee-coworker relationship quality, psychological empowerment, informal learning behavior, job performance, and job satisfaction of virtual team members. The results show a positive relationship between ((i) job performance and job satisfaction, (ii) informal learning behavior and job performance, (iii) psychological empowerment and informal learning behavior, (iv) employee-coworker relationship quality and psychological empowerment. The employee-coworker relationship quality, psychological empowerment, and informal learning behavior can explain 30.3% of the variance of job performance, indicating the role of informal learning behavior and its antecedents on the work outcomes of virtual team members.