INDIVIDUAL_CHARACTERISTICS_AND-MANAGEMENT-DEVELOPMENT_OUTCOMES_ROLE-OF-TOP-MANAGEMENT

Abstract

The importance of management development to the organization has been well recognized by studies. However, the effect of individual characteristics and organizational variables on management development outcomes in public limited organization has not been explored in Nepali context. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among individual characteristics: self-efficacy for development, learning goal orientation and proactive personality and management development outcomes (job satisfaction, affective commitment, innovative behavior and critical opinion sharing) and top management support as the moderating variable. The data was collected from 204 managers and officers working in public organization through survey and analyzed with regression. The findings reveal that individual characteristics i.e. self-efficacy and proactive personality is positively and significantly associated with management development outcomes (job satisfaction, affective commitment, innovative behavior and critical opinion sharing), whereas learning goal orientation was not supported. Moreover, top management support was found to act as a moderator in critical opinion sharing only; self-efficacy, proactive personality with job satisfaction, affective commitment and innovative behavior was not moderated by top management support. This study provides empirical evidence to researchers to explore different interactive effects to understand the positive outcomes of management development. Moreover, this study identifies self-efficacy and proactive personality as the most important factors to enhance the positive outcomes which could help to enhance the capacity of the managers to achieve individual and organizational performance.