fbpx

Antecedents of Motivation to Learn among Sarawak state Treasury Department’s Employees

Faculty of Business and Design
Master of Human Resource Management

Antecedents of Motivation to Learn among Sarawak state Treasury Department’s Employees
In Sarawak, the establishment of its State Treasury Department (STD) is one of the important aspects in public administration and it was established since 1948 to play the roles of treasurer and taxation controlling agency. In its efforts to possess efficient, productive and competent personnel, STD had envisioned training and staff development initiatives with the aim to upgrade the competencies of its employees. In the Sarawak Public Sector, there is a policy that requires all civil servants to attend training for a period of 42 hours for those in the Professional Group, 36 hours for those in the Support Group1 and 24 hours for those in the Support Group 2 on annual basis. With the high commitment and allocation towards staff training and development, it is important to know the effectiveness of the 42/36/24 hours government policy in achieving the main objective. Stemming from these concerns, this research is conducted with the aim to seek better understanding and to analyse factors that might contribute to the training effectiveness in STD. But due to time constraint faced by the researcher, this study is focusing on how STD employees had perceived on the implementation of training and personal development opportunities within their organisation. The Theory of Training Motivation suggests that Motivation to Learn (MTL) are affected by three antecedents namely self-efficacy, valence and job involvement. Previous studies had employed the Theory of Training Motivation and suggested that there are positive relationships between these antecedents and MTL. However, there is dearth of study to confirm this relationship particularly among the civil service in Malaysia which may call for research initiatives to be undertaken in order to better understand the underlying success factors in training and personal development opportunities in government bodies. In this study, data mining was conducted through a cross-sectional survey of the 168 usable questionnaires from STD employees were analysed using the Partial Least Square technique. The results demonstrated that valence and job involvement factors/ aspects had positive direct effects on MTL. However, self-efficacy did not exert a significant effect on MTL based on the responses that were gathered in this study. The findings of this study had also suggested that the organisation should include (other matters, topics, issues and concerns by) the trainees and their supervisors in the (pre) training (and ongoing training) processes in order to have more positive training framing among trainees (STD employees).

Author: Raca Mulong
Publication year: 2018