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Overall Aim of the Studies
These studies aimed to describe the conditions under which transfer of training would occur and the processes that are involved in the transfer of training to the workplace. The literature that I reviewed is described in my book chapter (Machin, 2002).
Outline of the Studies and Instruments
Two studies were conducted that assessed the individual, situational, and training design factors that impacted on the transfer of training to the workplace. Study 1 examined the influence of individual and situational factors on the achievement of trainees’ transfer goals. Study 2 was based on a model of the determinants of training transfer proposed by Thayer and Teachout (1995) (see Figure 1). The model was modified to focus on the determinants of trainees’ transfer implementation intentions and implementation activities (see Figure 2).
Thayer and Teachout's (1995) original model of the transfer process portrayed the climate for transfer of training and the transfer-enhancing activities that occur during the training program as influencing the training and transfer outcomes. The climate for transfer part of Thayer and Teachout’s model was directly based on Rouiller and Goldstein's (1993) model that depicted transfer climate as consisting of two components: antecedents and consequences. Thayer and Teachout subsequently created a Climate for Transfer Questionnaire that incorporated many of the items from Rouiller and Goldstein's questionnaire, plus additional items they developed themselves. One category of items in Rouiller and Goldstein’s model (self-control cues) was omitted from the Climate for Transfer Questionnaire (CTQ) and incorporated into a second questionnaire called the Transfer-Enhancing Activities Questionnaire (TEAQ). This second questionnaire assessed the presence of various transfer-enhancing elements in training, such as overlearning, varied practice, physical and psychological fidelity, teaching of principles, as well as other strategies that impact on transfer such as goal setting, relapse prevention, self-management activities, and top management support. Both questionnaires were developed to measure the various constructs in sufficient detail so that the impact of their component parts could be determined.
The questionnaires developed by Thayer and Teachout (1995) enabled a number of issues to be addressed. First of all, the trainees' perceptions of their transfer environment could be measured prior to training in order to determine the influence of transfer climate on pre-training self-efficacy and motivation. Mathieu and Martineau (1997) and Quiñones (1997) predicted that climate for transfer would influence trainees' self-efficacy and motivation, and that these would in turn impact on trainees' transfer intentions.
Another issue concerned whether the perception of workplace constraints affecting transfer of training might be biased by individual differences in disposition. Fogarty, et al. (1999) found that NA was strongly related to employee's perceptions of stressors in the workplace and PA was strongly related to employee's self-reported coping strategies. It seemed that appraisal of both positive and negative work-related variables may be influenced by PA and NA, but it was also possible that work-related variables may have an influence on PA and NA. It was expected that NA would be more closely related to the perceptions of negative aspects of the workplace, while PA would be more closely related to the positive aspects of workplace. Therefore, PA and NA were measured in order to determine whether these variables were related to trainees' perceptions of the work environment, and whether PA and NA were mediators of the relationship between climate for transfer and individual variables such as self-efficacy and motivation.
A third issue concerned the components of training measured in the TEAQ that would have the greatest influence on the trainees' implementation intentions. It was expected that those components that focused on developing the trainees' awareness of self-control cues (i.e., feedback cues), those that assisted the trainees to set goals for the use of their skills, and those that focused on relapse prevention behaviours would be most influential (Haccoun & Saks, 1998). The other components of training included in the TEAQ, such as overlearning, fidelity, varied practice, and the teaching of principles (principles-meaningfulness) were expected to have a stronger impact on the trainees' actual level of learning, rather than their intentions to transfer their training. It was also expected that the components of training measured in the TEAQ would impact directly on the trainees’ levels of post-training self-efficacy and motivation.
Machin, M. A. (2002). Planning, managing, and optimizing transfer of training. In: K. Kraiger (Ed.), Creating, implementing, and managing effective training and development (pp. 263-301). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (click on the link to download a copy of this chapter. It is a 139 Kb PDF file).
Thayer, P. W., & Teachout, M. S. (1995). A Climate for Transfer Model (AL/HR-TP-1995-0035). Brooks Air Force Base, Texas. (click on the link to download a copy of this paper. Note that it is over 1 Mb in size and the quality is not perfect as it has been scanned).
Click here
for a PDF file with all of the references from the
PhD.
Factors influencing trainees' goals for transfer and goal commitment
Study 1 found that trainees’ goals for transfer and their commitment to those transfer goals were found to act as mediators of the influence of self-efficacy, motivation, and situational constraints on transfer goal achievement. This result supported previous research that has shown that the impact of personal and situational factors on performance is mediated by the personal goal level and level of goal commitment (Wofford, Goodwin, & Premack, 1992). The results of Study 1 were published in the paper described below.
Machin, M. A., & Fogarty, G. J. (1997). The effects of self-efficacy, motivation to transfer, and situational constraints on transfer intentions and transfer of training [Special Issue on Transfer of Training & Transfer of Learning]. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 10(2), 98-115.
Factors influencing the trainees' implementation intentions
Study 2 found that climate for transfer (assessed prior to training commencing) influenced pre-training levels of self-efficacy. However, positive and negative affect also influenced pre-training levels of both self-efficacy and motivation, and the two climate for transfer factors (Positive and Negative Work Climate) were found to influence positive and negative affectivity, respectively. It was concluded that climate for transfer does impact direct and indirectly on pre-training levels of self-efficacy and motivation. A second structural model found that pre-training self-efficacy was a strong determinant of the learning that occurs during training, and the level of post-training self-efficacy. Post-training self-efficacy was a strong determinant of transfer implementation intentions, which in turn were a strong determinant of implementation activities. Implementation activities were positively related to transfer success. Separate structural models were developed to assess the impact of in-training transfer enhancing activities on learning, post-training self-efficacy, transfer implementation intentions, and implementation activities. Self-control cues, relapse prevention activities, and goal setting were found to positively influence post-training self-efficacy and implementation intentions. Relapse prevention activities and goal setting were also found to positively influence implementation activities. The results strongly supported the modified model of training transfer that was presented. It was also concluded that situational factors do exert an indirect influence on the transfer process, apart from simply constraining what trainees are able to do after training has completed (Mathieu & Martineau, 1997, Quiñones, 1997).
The results of study two have been published in two papers. The first one is available by clicking on the link. It is a PDF file that is 108 Kb in size.
Machin, M. A., & Fogarty, G. J. (in press). Assessing the antecedents of transfer intentions in a training context. International Journal of Training and Development.
One theme that has clearly emerged from the training research is the need to design training that provides trainees with the opportunity to develop the requisite processes that underlie the transfer of that training to the workplace. These processes include: the formation of detailed and well-developed knowledge structures (Ford, 1997; Smith et al., 1997); the ability to monitor and control one's own learning and behaviour (Ford, 1997; Smith et al., 1997); the formation of specific goals or plans for the implementation of newly acquired knowledge and/or skill (Gollwitzer, 1999; Haccoun & Saks, 1998); a high level of self-efficacy for dealing with post-training barriers or constraints to the transfer of one's training (Latham & Seijts, 1997, 1999; Saks, 1997); and an understanding of how training outcomes at the individual level contribute to team or unit performance and the achievement of organisational goals (Kozlowski & Salas, 1997).
The current studies have also included an examination of the role of the broader organisational climate factors and positive and negative affective states in determining the trainees' levels of pre-training self-efficacy and motivation. Positive and negative affectivity (PA and NA respectively) have been portrayed as largely independent mood states, although Russell and Carroll (1999) suggested that this conclusion may be an artefact of measurement error, the timeframe over which affect is measured, the multi-dimensional nature of affect, and the choice of item response format. The current studies were not designed to resolve this issue, but it was established that PA had a stronger relationship to positive aspects of the work climate, while NA was more strongly related to the other two climate for transfer scales assessing negative aspects of the work climate. This result indicates that the two constructs (PA and NA), whatever their nature, are measuring different processes, and that these processes are related in different ways to positive and negative aspects of the organisational climate.
The conclusion that the positive and negative aspects of the organisational climate are related in different ways to the trainees' affective states was made on the basis of cross-sectional data. Therefore, the direction of the relationship between aspects of the work climate and trainees' affective states may be in the opposite direction, or there may be a non-recursive (reciprocal) relationship between them. This issue should be addressed in further research studies. Spector et al. (in press) concluded that affective states (especially NA) may have an important substantive role to play in explaining the impact of organisational stressors on individual and organisational outcomes. It now appears that both PA and NA play an important role in mediating the impact of aspects of the work climate that related to transfer of training on trainees' pre-training self-efficacy and motivation.
Haccoun and Saks (1998) recommended that training interventions should be accompanied by interventions at the organisational level such as encouraging supervisors to support the use of training. Also, they recommend that training only be provided for those areas that are supported by organisational changes. While these suggestions are useful, it is obvious that training will continue to be provided in many cases where there is little or no support for the transfer of that training. Therefore, research is required that focuses on further developing the range of transfer enhancement procedures and specifying the conditions under which they are most beneficial for trainees.
Various researchers (e.g., Ericsson & Charness, 1994) have suggested that high levels of expertise are only developed over a long period of time, and yet organisations usually require trainees to demonstrate evidence of adaptive expertise after training. Ford (1997) recommended that researchers develop comprehensive taxonomies of the specific behaviours which reflect increases in adaptive expertise, as well as the range of different situations in which trainees are expected to demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge and/or skills. Ford suggested several possible indicators of adaptive expertise such as evidence of new adaptive behaviour appearing after training, evidence of behaviour indicating proficiency occurring more frequently, improvements in the time taken to complete work tasks, or a reduction in errors made during completion of a task. The trainees use of implementation activities could be one kind of evidence that trainees were beginning to develop adaptive expertise. Other measures that might be collected include trainees' reports of the results of their attempts to implement their training, the range of situations in which they have attempted to implement their training, and the difficulties or barriers they faced in implementing their training. Further research is needed to clarify whether the actual implementation activities that trainees engage in after training are a useful, initial indication of whether trainees are developing a level of adaptive expertise.
When trainees are implementing their training in a team environment, particular attention must be paid to the mechanisms by which individual knowledge and/or skills are transformed into team performance. The term "vertical transfer" has been coined to describe the process whereby individual performance outcomes combine to determine higher level outcomes such as team/unit outcomes, or organisational performance (Brown, Weissbein & Kozlowski, 1998). Where individual performance is combined additively across individuals such as in a typing pool, the process is known as composition (Rousseau, 1985). In this situation, any one individual has a small impact on the group's overall performance. However, when the performance of the team depends on a minimum contribution from one or more members such with an aircraft crew, the process is know as compliation. In this situation, each individual's transfer of their training is critical for team performance. Cannon-Bowers and Salas (1998) described how transfer of training to team settings may require a better understanding in several areas. They suggested that further research was required to identify and establish techniques for analysing team tasks. Another area requiring research involved further exploration of the issues associated with team cognition. A final area involved developing a better understanding of ways to foster a continuous learning environment in teams.