The Influence of Organizational Politics and Power on Training Transfer

THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS AND POWER ON TRAINING TRANSFER Hanbyul Kim

Abstract Organizational politics and power have been regarded as critical factors affecting various organizational practices. Although many studies in HRD investigated what factors are influential in training transfer, organizational politics and power have largely been ignored. This study is, therefore, aimed at exploring how politics and power within organizations affect the aspect of training transfer. The findings of this study show that learners’ relationship with supervisors who hold power, and the power derived from their own role status within the organization signal their capacity to transfer what they have been trained in. This study also reveals that organizational norms and values lead learners to control the aspect of transfer for themselves. Internalized in learners’ minds, these norms and values reflecting managerial interests repressed transfer of training in a hidden way. Introduction In a performance-oriented human resource development (HRD) paradigm, HRD is viewed as an organizational effort that is ultimately geared toward performance improvement through learning (Swanson & Holton, 2001). For HRD practitioners, it is a paramount issue to demonstrate the linkage between training, one of the HRD interventions, and performance improvement either at the individual level or at the organizational level. Unless training can appropriately result in performance, it is likely to be perceived of little value. Accordingly, training transfer emerges as a crucial issue when performance really matters to the training sponsors (Holton & Baldwin, 2003). In accordance with the importance of enhancing training transfer in practice, a good deal of research has been conducted to investigate significant factors affecting training transfer (Baldwin & Ford, 1988; Holton, Bates, & Ruona, 2000; Tannenbaum & Yukl, 1992) and to suggest pertinent strategies to support the transfer process...