This study presented and explained the relationships between training and development, employee job satisfaction, PsyCap and organizational commitment. The theoretical foundations and the hypothesis were elucidated in chapter two and the empirical hypothesis derived tested in chapter four. This chapter is divided into five phase. The first phase presents the conclusions of the study. Phase two discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of the results. Third phase elucidates the recommendations for both Researchers and Human Resource Development practitioners. The fourth phase outlined the limitations of this study and the suggestions for future research. Final considers are illustrated in the fifth phase of the chapter.
Conclusions
This study sought to bring out to the academic spot light the varied important of the key factors of training and development, employee job satisfaction, PsyCap, and organizational commitment of a public organization employees. As public organizations in The Gambia are one of the main employers, there is a need to create a positive organizational environment, in order to saves its best hands that create the key element for achieving its vision in today's dynamic and changing organizational environment. Thus, creating such environment, which cares about the welfare of employees, is thought to be imperative. Since, it is through that the organizations‘ expectations of employees‘ commitment and endeavour to undertake additional roles in the organizational processes will be attained. Consequently, employee willingness to remain in the organization may be actualised when they perceive a higher degree of supportive work setting. .
According to the results and discussions, training and development is associated with organizational commitment and the mediating role of PsyCap and employee job satisfaction is found to be positively significant. To sum, the variables under study are critical factors enhancing employees‘ commitment behaviour. The detailed conclusions are presented below.
Training and Development has effect on Employee Job Satisfaction
The first hypothesis elucidates that training and development has an impact on employee job satisfaction. The results indicated that employee‘s training (Supports, benefits and personal motivation) orientations are associated with their job satisfaction. This suggest that when employees‘ feeling towards the support received from management, training benefits,
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and personal motivation to training are negative, they may developed undesirable feeling towards the organization, and vice versa. The study concludes that training affect employee job satisfaction which can have an indispensable impact on their level of performance, commitment, and productivity. Considering that employee who have no or little affection for the organization will not feel inclined to put in much effort into the organization without reservation.
Psychological Capital Dependent on Training and Development
The second hypothesis that training and development affect employee PsyCap is found to be positive. The results of the correlations and regressions analyses indicated that employee with higher orientation to training might be more likely to have higher level of PsyCap; these conclusions might suggest that employees with support for training are more adept at using their PsyCap to facilitate positive organizational outcomes. Hence, the ability for PsyCap to flourish could possibly imply that employees who receive training are more aware of the factors that could contribute to their own personal development. As Badran and Youssef (2015) posits that awareness of the factors that elicit PsyCap and understanding the benefits of PsyCap components could help employees to take the appropriate actions that influence positive organization citizenship behaviours. Consequently, if the employees level of PsyCap drops, limited training support and benefits are likely to be some of the factors leading to such a situation. Similarly, if employees PsyCap increase, they are more likely to contribute to the organization. Accordingly, organizations with positive PsyCap employees tend to be more effective than with employees with little or no PsyCap (Luthans, 2007). Thus, these conclusions will have implication for public organizations such as the Gambia Revenue Authority.
Training and Development has impact on Organization Commitment
The results of the data analysis confirmed that the research prediction in hypothesis 3 is positive and indicate that employees who receive high levels of training tend to have a higher level of organizational commitment. This study also designates that employees allocate differing values to the aspects of training like supports, motivation, and benefits, rather than addressing training and development as an all-or-nothing concept. This may mean numerous things to employees, researchers, and to the organization. Results of surveys noted in the introduction are a testament to the importance of training and development in the minds of employees. This study confirm that employees value training as it is the dominant factor that leads to organizational commitment behavior.89
To examined on another level, employees in revenue administration that are in constant communication with tax payers might be often motivated by the ability to be trained on tax payer services and in return organizational commitment may be attained.
Mediating role of Employee Job Satisfaction and Psychological capital
The last two hypotheses 4 and 5 elucidated the mediating role of PsyCap and employee job satisfaction on relationship between training and development and organizational commitment. The hierarchical regressions results showed that training have not only have an effect on employee job satisfaction and PsyCap but have a significant impact on employee organizational commitment. With that been said, this study laid the groundwork for future studies in the Gambia to further examine factors that affect employee job satisfaction and PsyCap in order to unveil their potential influence or for organizational commitment.
The hierarchical regression results also showed that employee job satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between the two variables. Referring to this association, the results confirmed that training and development (training support from colleague, management training support, personal motivation of training, and training benefits), couple with PsyCap, employee job satisfaction had an impact on organizational commitment. The result further elucidates that training and development had a greater effect on organizational commitment.
Thus, the Gambia Revenue Authority should consider all these variables when promoting employee committed behavior.
In addition, this result also lent empirical support from Tansky and Cohen, (2001) argument which emphasized that employees‘ satisfied with job training are more committed to their organizations, and employees who are satisfied in their jobs are more willing to accept organizational goals and values. Therefore, employees who posess higher PsyCap are also more willing to exert effort in the organizations (Luthans 1996; Hatcher, 1999). These results are important implications for HRD practitioners in GRA to take into consideration.
Theoretical and Practical Implications
This study makes several theoretical contributions to training and development, employee job satisfaction, PsyCap, and organizational commitment literatures. Based on the research conclusions, the corresponding theoretical and practical implications were discussed as follows:
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Implications from hypothesis 1 Training and Development and Employee Job Satisfaction
As shown in table 4.12 in chapter IV, hypothesis 1 ‗‗there is a significant relationship between training and development and employee job satisfaction‘‘ was fully supported. This means that within the context of the GRA there is a significant positive relationships between training and employee job satisfaction
Theoretical Implications.
This research has very important implications for researchers in the field of human resource development, as it adds on the literature of training and development and employee job satisfaction in the Gambia. For instance, despites the importance of training and development, there is very limited research on its impact on satisfaction related in the Gambia. Moreover, the study found the relationship between training and employee job satisfaction to be positive. The results expand the factors influencing employee job satisfaction. However, given the exploratory nature of the results, any interpretations provided based on this findings should be treated circumspectly.
Practical Implications.
These results have numerous implications for GRA management and for HRD practitioners. It is suggested that HRD practitioners consider desired work-related attitudes such as employee job satisfaction to be an additional outcome of training and development activities. Results indicating that training can play a role in the development and maintenance of employee job satisfaction should encourage GRA management to further explore the role of training and its relationships to improvements in retention and productivity of employees.
This could also suggest that HRD professionals adopt a broader perspective towards training outcomes.
The results of this study also illustrate that HRD practitioners can play a significant role in establishing a positive perception toward training and development within organizations.
Employee attitudes toward access to training, perceived benefits of training, and the social support for training from colleagues and senior management staff can be influenced by management actions. The results that these attitudes are related to employee job satisfaction should encourage those responsible for recruitment, selection, and initial socialization of newly hired employees to add information on the amount and type of HRD provided and the level of managerial support toward training and development. Thus, in order to develop
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appropriate positive organizational outcomes out of training and development, GRA can do the following:
I. Training needs assessment: Employee skills assessment first need to be done in order to create a vibrant public enterprise that triggers positive organization outcomes behaviors. The needs assessment is a process for figuring out how to close a learning or performance gaps. It involves determining what the important needs of employees are and how to address them (Gupta 2011). This different components couple with the training support and benefit will immensely help in employees‘ capacity building and job satisfaction. However, the needs valuation is supposed to identify and address the following:
I. What are the organization current learning and performance gap that will determine future action?
II. What interventions (assets or resources) GRA can do to improve the skills and competencies of employees
III. Employees relationships with colleagues and management that affect the delivery of informal training and formal training
IV. Examine department work culture and employee behavior within the organization to gauge what factors affects employee job satisfaction.
II. Identify implementation focus. After the needs valuations are done, GRA needs to decide what to focus on in order to help both employees and the organization. As the needs audit are implemented in complex systems, a change in one levels or element of the system can affect other levels. Moreover, the assessments within the organization can produce results that contribute to the larger shared vision of GRA (Kaufman, 2012) III. The next stage is to review what thematic areas is contributing to employee job
satisfaction and what needs to be improved. In consideration, GRA need to do performance evaluation/appraisal, taking into account the human resources, the tax payers‘ needs and the infrastructures available.
IV. Finally, employee job satisfaction is imperative in any organizational development, thus, the HRD practitioner should not alienate the strategic objectives of GRA. In all training interventions, strategies made must be aligned to the objectives of the organization.
This steps highlighted are not an ends in itself and a more detailed, well planned implementations steps are needed to guide the executions stage.
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Implications from Hypothesis 2 The relationship between Training and Psychological capital
As shown in table 4.13 in chapter IV, hypothesis 2 ‗‗there is a significant relationship between training and development and psychological capital‘‘ was fully supported. This means that within the context of GRA, training has a significant effect on PsyCap. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications:
Theoretical Implications.
The hypothesis 2, being supported, has made some important contributions to the theoretical relationships between training and development and PsyCap. As Psychological capital is a model characterised by the dimensions that assist in measuring human contribution to the organizations in subtly distinct ways. Firstly, as PsyCap concept is in its early stages, the premise requires rigorous explorations. However, this study looks at organizations invention such as training impact on employee PsyCap development. As indicated, PsyCap has been determined to be a second-order factor comprising of hope, optimism, resilience, and efficacy (Luthans, Avolio, et al., 2007). This means that PsyCap incorporates the mechanism(s) that these four discriminant constructs have in common. To explained, the PsyCap literature has utilized the notion of ―theory borrowing,‖ mainly drawing from psychological resource theory (Hobfoll, 2002). Some argue that PsyCap levels differ from one employee to another and the individual background can influence it.
However, one aspect of this research is that it suggests some constructs are best understood as indicators of broader underlying factors. That is, while an individual construct (training support) may be valid, it may be more beneficial to consider it as an indicator of PsyCap. Therefore, this study elucidates that support given through training is imperative to improving employee PsyCap than the training benefit they (employees) received.
Secondly, this research found very few studies that measured the development of PsyCap.
In other words, few have considered PsyCap to be the antecedents in a theoretical model.
Recent research has suggested that PsyCap can be enhanced by developmental interventions (Luthans, Avey, et al., 2010). However, there has been no systematic method of examining antecedents to PsyCap, which suggests this may be a fruitful area of future research.
Finally, the analysis revealed the relationships between development interventions (such as training) and employee PsyCap were strongest in studies conducted in the United States
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and in the service sector (Hobfoll, 2002).This study results provide a strong evidence-based that training and PsyCap relationship are strong in a public organization in the Gambia. Thus, it is recommended training affect PsyCap and the theoretical contributions for HRD conclude in this research that PsyCap can be an antecedent of training and development
Practical Implications.
There are also a number of practical implications, primarily revolving around HRD. As previously mentioned, PsyCap has been empirically found to be developable (Luthans
&Avey, 2010) even in relatively short training interventions though informal or formal trainings. Since the results from this study suggest PsyCap to be related to important employee behaviors, and organizational commitment, then HRD interventions such as training in this study, may be applied in HRD programs for potential increase in desirable behavioral outcomes back to the job.
In addition to desirable attitudes, research has found PsyCap to be negatively related to undesirable employee attitudes, such as cynicism toward change or turnover intentions.
Specifically, based on the optimistic expectancies of future events as well as resilience to setbacks, those higher in PsyCap have reported being more open and less cynical about change in their organizations. Further, Avey, Luthans, and Youssef (2010,) note:
‗‗…―PsyCap has a motivating impact that can enhance internalization, determination, and pathways thinking, which contradict with ‗giving up‘ and despair associated with cynicism. Related to being less likely to give up is the notion that those high in PsyCap are less likely to have turnover intentions‘‘ (p. 439)
The Gambia Revenue Authority is no exception to this affirmation and thus, developing employees PsyCap levels might have some potential benefits to the organization. As the higher levels of optimism regarding the future and confidence in their ability to succeed in their current job will motivate them to take charge of their own destinies (Seligman, 1999), self-select into challenging work endeavors (Bandura, 2000), engage the necessary efforts, resources, and persevere in the face of obstacles (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998b)
Therefore, The Gambia Revenue Authority may want to consider development of PsyCap through training and development programs. The following practices are recommended:
I. Socialization: Process of becoming an Insider
Employee socialization or‗‗onboarding‘‘ will be an important practice to develop employee PsyCap, as it is a process by which an individual acquires the social knowledge and skills
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necessary to assume an organizational role. To become organization member, GRA can help employees establish relationships and learn behaviors, procedures, expectations and values.
However, learning new things, new employees may also need to unlearn things that helped them succeed in previous settings, but would be maladaptive in their new settings (Werner &
Desimone, 2011). During this phase, GRA can conduct orientations; realistic job previews (RJP) and on-job-training immediately new employee join the organization. As according to Werner and Desimone, (2011), successful socialization of employees is critical to both individuals and the organizations. At stake are:
I. The employee‘s satisfaction, performance, and commitment to the organizations II. Lower PsyCap which might impact the organization negatively, as employees with
higher PsyCap expect good things to happen at work (optimism), believe they create their own success (efficacy and hope), and are more impervious to setbacks (resilience) (Luthans, 2010)
III. Start-up costs invested in the employee (Such as recruitment, selection, training and the time employee will be fully settle)
IV. The likelihood that the employee will remain with the organization V. The costs of replacing the employees if they leave
2. Team Training/ Team Building.
Another very important practice GRA can adapt is team building, since the authority has many different departments with different mandates. Adapting this approach of training might be much more meaningful than joining trainees‘ from different unit. As Fortune and Utley (2006) viewed team building as efforts to unify varied individual energies, direct these energies towards valued goals and outputs, and these efforts are link to organizational results.
This intervention can help build the confidence, hope and resilience of individual employees as they work with groups they affiliated to. Thus, GRA should consider team training under the following conditions:
I. A specific training goal needs a multifaceted group of people with complementary talents.
II. A broad- based perspectives are needed to develop and carry out the vision of growing each departments
III. HRD professionals may rely on the HRD process model among other (Example., ADIE: assess, design, implement, evaluate) in designing and delivering team training programs (Desimone, 2007)
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Having elucidates the implication of research results 1&2, the researcher now proceed to discuss the implications of the research results 3.
Implications for Research Hypothesis 3: Training and Development and Organizational Commitment
The main question of the study: ‗‗what is the relationship between training and development and organizational commitment?‘‘ this was asked in an attempt to fullfill a part of the research purpose and in an attempt to address Ahmad and Bakar, (2003) study that claim the relationship between the variables is not clear and need further investigations.
Recall also that that the results for Hypothesis 3 (Table 4.14) showed that the overall dimensions of training and development had a positive impact on organizational commitment.
These results have both theoretical and practical implications discussed as follows;.
Theoretical Implications.
The study provides empirical evidence that training and development correlates positively with organizational commitment. This outcome gives researchers an understanding of the concept in The Gambia, as it has not been studied. In addition, the results elucidates that training was preferred predominantly by employees in this study as it has a higher impact on organization commitment
Practical Implications.
The relationships between training and development and organizational commitment have already been established to some extend in profit organizations, especially service enterprises.
This research has established this relationship in a public enterprise. Nonetheless, in terms of practicality of the relationship, the organization type does not matter. The motive of training and development is to increase the competencies of employees and enhance positive employee behaviours.
Even though organizational commitment is a diverse construct with a large body of theoretical and empirical literatures, HRD managers can focus on key elements. First, it
Even though organizational commitment is a diverse construct with a large body of theoretical and empirical literatures, HRD managers can focus on key elements. First, it