FIRST THINGS FIRST: FOCUSING ON THE OBVIOUS FOR BETTER MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT.

AuthorBroucker, Bruno
  1. Introduction

    In the past, the impact of educational programs has been questioned regularly (Broad and Newstrom, 1992; Awoniyi, Griego and Morgen, 2002). Yet, educational investments, in both the public and the private sector, continue to be considered as important human resource development strategies to increase individual and organizational performance. The same goes for management programs and leadership training, where it is assumed that they affect management and leadership, and thus performance (Wright and Pandey, 2010; Buelens et al., 2006). The question is whether those programs actually 'work', because there needs to be a translation from learning to practice before performance can be affected positively. And if so, can we increase that impact by focusing on the dependent variables? That is what this article is about, and its added value is on two fronts. First, most transfer studies have been limited to short term training programs in the private sector (Gilpin-Jackson and Bushe, 2007; Broucker, 2010). The focus of this article is on long term management programs in the public sector and their main inhibiting and enhancing conditions, based on quantitative results of a survey taken from Belgian civil servants. Second, this article wants to tackle the question of what factors have to be dealt with primarily in order to enhance transfer and thus effectiveness of management programs in the public sector. This is necessary, since literature suggests that the number of transfer stimulating and inhibiting factors remains large. Even though there is a consensus about the main independent variables, i.e. the individual, the transfer climate and the training program (Broad and Newstrom, 1992; Holton, 1996; Burke and Hutchins, 2007), the list of sub-factors of those main variables is extremely large, which incorporates the risk of theoretical vagueness and the loss of a clear research focus. Burke and Hutchins (2007) in their review came to a list of 17 factors which have a strong or moderate relationship with transfer, 5 factors with mixed support in the research debate for their influence on transfer, 8 factors which have been examined minimally, and 18 factors which need more research. Broucker (2014) also claims that the complexity of the transfer processes and the number of its influencing factors may even be higher.

  2. Transfer of training: The concept

    Transfer is often defined as 'the effective and continuing application, by trainees to their jobs, of the knowledge and skills gained in the training, both on and off the job' (Broad and Newstrom, 1992). Broucker (2010) has argued that this definition doesn't make a distinction between different types of educational programs and doesn't make clear what 'application' actually means. Therefore he suggests another definition upon which this article will be based: 'transfer is when acquired knowledge and skills add value that improves job performance' (Broucker, 2010). Two elements in this definition are important: (1) time, since transfer is future-oriented and continuing by nature; (2) transfer must be considered as an elementary and conditional step between the learning process and job performance. Several theoretical models have emphasized this sequence of events (Foxon, 1994; Thayer and Teachout, 1995; Kontoghiorghes, 2004; Pidd, 2004; Broucker, 2014).

    Transfer studies and conceptual models have, throughout the years, identified and emphasized the importance of three variables in this process (Broucker, 2010): individual characteristics (Quinones and Holladay, 2003; Pidd, 2002; Lim and Johnson, 2002; Ruona, Leimbach, Holton and Bates, 2002), training characteristics (Paek and Hawley, 2006; Ford, Quinones, Sego and Sorra, 1992; Broad and Newstrom, 1992) and transfer climate characteristics (Broad and Newstrom, 1992; Awoniyi, Griego and Morgan, 2002; van der Klink, Gielen and Nauta, 2001; Clarke, 2002; Ford et al., 1992; Gumuseli and Ergin, 2002; Quinones, 1995; Olivero, Bane and Kopelman, 1997). Those variables stand for (1) the individual competencies and motivation to apply what has been learned, (2) the similarity between program and work environment, and (3) the organizational climate of support for the transfer process (i.e. the transfer climate).

  3. Methods

    3.1. Data collection

    The data was collected from a survey taken from 300 Belgian federal civil servants in 2008, graduated from an educational program in public management (the 'Public Management Program', hereafter: PUMP) in the period 2001-2007. The entrance to the program was yearly limited to 50 federal civil servants. The main objective of PUMP, commissioned by the federal government, was to contribute to the reform of the federal administration by giving civil servants the necessary knowledge, competencies, skills and attitudes to support the modernization process and therefore preparing themselves for a future managerial or leadership role. Simultaneously, PUMP wanted to create an inter- and intradepartmental network of civil servants, enhancing a reform culture and a new way of managerialism (Broucker, 2011). The intensive one-year program contains different sections such as, among others, public management and leadership courses, exercises aiming at knowledge integration, organizational consultancy tasks and an external internship.

    The survey-instrument used was based upon the Learning Transfer System Inventory, originally created and validated in the United States, measuring the 'learning transfer system', which are all the transfer influencing factors within the individual, the training program and the organization (Donovan, Hannigan and Deirdre, 2001). It measures 16 factors (see table below) (Holton and Bates, 1998; Holton, Bates and Ruona, 2000), has been translated and validated in Thai (Yamnill and McLean, 2001), Chinese (Chen, 2003), Arab (Bates and Khasawneh, 2005) and French (Devos et al., 2006), and has proven cross-organizational validity (Holton, Chen and Naquin, 2003).

    Different steps were taken before launching the survey. First, it was qualitatively tested, using interviews taken from graduates from the Justice Department and from graduates from another program in public management (Van de Kerckhove, 2007) to see whether the factors were relevant for and applicable to the Belgian public sector. Second, the survey was translated by forward translation (Chen, 2003) and pre-tested by interviews taken from a small, yet diverse group of graduates of PUMP. Consequently, the questionnaire was adjusted to the specificities of PUMP, and elaborated. Since the LTSI only measures transfer inhibiting and stimulating conditions, questions about transfer were added (e.g. 'I use the knowledge gained from the program in my daily work'). Given that one of the objectives of PUMP was to create a network of civil servants, questions about 'peer support from student colleagues' were added. Finally, the survey was sent out on paper, and two reminders were sent as well.

    3.2. Results

    Some descriptive results. The response rate was 62%. A large majority of the respondents gave 4 major reasons why they enrolled the program: personal enrichment (25%), motivation to participate in the administration's reform (14.8%), career perspectives (11%) and personal interest (12%). In the survey a distinction was made between the working period of the respondent before his participation in the program and his working period after the program. This is necessary to see whether transfer, because of the program, took place, and because, for some graduates, the time lapse between the program and the survey was about 7 years and career changes might be expected:

    --54% of the respondents didn't participate in reform projects before the program, compared to 43% after the program. The difference between both periods was significant, suggesting that participation in reform projects is stimulated by PUMP (sig. t-value = 0.001). This is relevant, given the program's objective to contribute to the reform.

    --The respondents were asked whether their organization took transfer stimulating initiatives. They answered the question for the organization wherein they were active before the program and for their actual situation. 50.4% and 45.5% indicated that their organization didn't take any transfer stimulating initiative.

    --Respectively 18.9% and 32.5% of respondents stated that they were asked to take part in modernization projects, which is rather low, given the program's objective.

    --At least 75% of the respondents (1) agreed that PUMP had an added value on the daily work, (2) believed to have the capacities to use PUMP, (3) agreed that PUMP was a necessity for the government, (4) stated that non-use of PUMP wasn't perceived negatively by their organization, (5) believed in the utility of the educational program. Other results suggested that supervisor support, peer support, added value from the program to the individual career were perceived rather neutral.

    As a result, it can be stated that PUMP had, for the majority, been transferred to the workplace, but that the transfer climate from the federal organizations could be defined as neutral: for most respondents no consequences were linked to the non-use of the program.

    Factor analysis. Explorative factor analysis with SPSS was conducted, with direct oblique rotation as extraction method (Field, 2006; Ho, 2006). Only factors with an eigenvalue above 1 were selected (Ho, 2006). The way the variables, with their loadings, are clustered, is demonstrated in the next table. The statistics show that it was reasonable to conduct explorative factor analysis. The KMO Measure of Sampling Adequacy provides a value of 0.837 and the Bartlett's Test of Sphericity indicates a significance value of 0.000 (Field, 2006). The anti-image correlation matrix demonstrated that the diagonal values were higher than the necessary 0.50 (Field, 2006). The total explained variance by the...

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