The moderating effect of transfer climate on relationship between trainees personality and training effectiveness

Abstract

Training is a vital contributor to employees’ and organizational success. Many organizations have invested large amounts of money to provide training, but few have examined the effectiveness of training programs. Based on literature reviewed, there is limited research conducted on the moderating effect of transfer climate on training effectiveness. This study investigated the moderating effect of transfer climate on the relationship between trainees' personality and training effectiveness. The respondents were one hundred and eighty-three police officers who participated in the selection of a driving training program offered by Maktab Teknik Polis Diraja Malaysia, Muar. Three sets of questionnaires comprising Big Five Personality inventory, transfer climate scale and training effectiveness (driving knowledge test and driving competency) were distributed to the respondents during pre-training, post-training and after two months of training. The data were analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 19.0 and SmartPLS 3.0. The findings showed that two of the personality traits, extraversion and neuroticism were significantly related to driving knowledge which is one of the training effectiveness variables. On the other hand, three personality constructs i.e, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience were significantly related to driving competency which is a training effectiveness variable. For the moderation effect of the transfer climate, only one variable opportunity to use, had negatively moderated the relationship between trainees’ personality such as conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience with driving competency. The findings of the present study would allow practitioners to understand different personality traits that have a maximum impact on training transfer under certain transfer climates. Besides that, the research explored and discovered ‘opportunity to use’ as potential moderator in the training effectiveness research.