IMPACT OF PERCEIVED LEARNING CLIMATE ON EMPLOYEE CREATIVITY; MODERATING ROLE OF POWER DISTANCE AND MEDIATING ROLE OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Abstract

The current working environment is dominated by competitiveness, rapid innovation, and continuous change (Eldor & Harpaz, 2015). Therefore the focus for the organizations has shifted from emphasizing employees’ proficiency to their ability to adapt to new organizational challenges (Griffin & Parker, 2007). The traditional perspective of the employee–organization relationship that requires employees to perform more to achieve maximum (Frese, 2008) with optimal use of resources has also been provoked by the current, quick paced work requirements with a constant shift in dynamics of work environment. (Masson, Royal, Agnew, & Fine, 2008).

The importance of measures taken by organizations to provide employees an environment where they can groom their skills has increased. Today employees mostly attain, polish and enhance their knowledge and skills by the experiences that have at their workplace. (Billett,  2006).This learning process is affected or has an impact by many organizational factors like leadership, structure of the organization, culture, systems and practices followed, incentives and rewards offered to employees etc (Victoria, 2009).Only those companies can maintain their worth where employees actively learn to adapt themselves to continuously changing work environment (Hall, 2002).

Literature supports that there is a strong association between organizational learning climate and innovation, as learning climate enhance the capacity of employees to think differently for their organization (Akgun, Keskin, Byrne, & Aren, 2007). Also it has been emphasized that the key factor to bring and manage innovation is only the climate that an organization provides to its employees (Khazanchi, Lewis, & Boyer, 2007).  Specifically, it has been noticed that innovations in technical and administrative activities of organizations are an outcome of organizational learning culture (Skerlavaj, Hoon, &  Lee, 2010).

With these advancements, the employee organization relationship has been reclassified in literature with the idea of employee engagement. Employee engagement is portrayed by high vitality and profound commitment (Bakker, Albrecht, & Leiter, 2011)(Gadot, Eldor, & Schohat., 2013). It is obvious from the fact that employees are allured scholars will try to work out on factors or resources that entice employees’ engagement (Eldor & Harpaz, 2015). Keeping this in mind, this study will focus on the learning climate in the organizations as being resourceful to enhance employees’ engagement. Learning climate in organizations is thought to be linked with increased significance of employees desiring to have continuous learning opportunities in their working environment and additionally developing trend of self-modeled career choices. (Baruch 2006)

It is evident from literature that learning climate is the base element in strengthening the position of organizations and on a parallel node progressively adds to the effectiveness of employees. (Marsick, 2009). Less has been studied about the link between learning climate in an organization and employee engagement. Especially in a context that employee engagement is an antecedent to high level of required extra role behaviors like proactivity, knowledge sharing, creativity, and adaptivity (Bakker & Xanthopoulou, 2013)(Demerouti & Cropanzano, 2010) (Rothbard, 2010). Analyzing the link between these variables can give companies an insight on how to perform with competitive distinction and retain good employees.(Griffin & Parker, 2007).

In this paper, we will study if employee engagement acts as a mediator between learning climate in the organization and one of the desired behaviors; creativity. Creativity, in organizational context refers employees coming up with new and worthy ideas ultimately enhancing the performance (Gong, Huang, & Frah, 2009). As impact of culture cannot be ignored in any organizational study, Power distance as a moderator is to be investigated in this relationship between learning climate and creativity. Literature supports that organizations where power distance is high, employees rely on directions and decisions from management and do not put an effort to bring solution to a problem that may occur.

 Job demands and resources model (Dermerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001), the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001)(Fredrickson,  2003) the conservation-of-resources theory (Hobfoll 2002) and the social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) support our research topic and provide the base for this study. Social exchange theory (Homans, 1958) has significance in a variety of research studies. This theory explains how the society is integrated and how its factors are interpreted. It can thus help the researcher to predict a certain stimuli and further the interaction of response to these particular stimuli.  Social exchange theory is a best source to analyze social behaviors of individuals regarding certain activities part of their behavior likewise presently research problem, that how the employees keep work-life balances in their lives? How some factors influence their work life activities? The behavior of individual can be analyzed by comparing reward and cost interaction.