It has been widely acknowledged that human resources are of pivotal importance to the sustainable competitive advantages of companies. In a similar vein, the resource-based view suggests that companies try to exploit their various internal resources f...
It has been widely acknowledged that human resources are of pivotal importance to the sustainable competitive advantages of companies. In a similar vein, the resource-based view suggests that companies try to exploit their various internal resources for sustainable competitive advantage by effectively developing and deploying human resources in ways that add unique value that is difficult for competitors to imitate. This in turn contributes to companies’ performance. Therefore, human resources development is positively necessary for ultimate financial results.
For this reason, many companies focus on human resources development by investing numerous expenses in educational practices that are expected to improve financial performance. Not only educational investment, but also innovative culture, relation of transfer about training, and organizational commitment can be important variables for financial performance.
Despite this notion, few comprehensive studies about educational investment, innovation, relation of transfer, organizational commitment, and organizational performance have been examined. Also, they have shown different results about the relationship among the variables. Thus, additional studies are needed.
The purposes of this study are to develop a structural model that explains organizational performance(organizational commitment, financial performance) focus on educational investment, innovation, and relation of transfer, as well as to examine the effects among these variables in Korean companies.
The research questions in this study are as follows:
1. Do educational investment, innovation, and relation of transfer have effects on organizational commitment?
2. Do educational investment, innovation, relation of transfer, and organizational commitment have effects on financial performance?
To meet the purpose of the present study, Human Capital Corporate Panel Survey(HCCP, 2009) data collected by the Korean Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET) were utilized. Four hundred seventy-six companies participated in the survey but only 288 companies completed all the data used in the present study; therefore, 288 companies are analyzed for this study.
To confirm the validity and reliability of the measurement scale, exploratory factor analysis(EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis(CFA) were administrated. Then, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and structural equation modeling(SEM) analysis were performed in a row using SPSS and AMOS.
The major findings of this study are as follows:
First, innovation, and relation of transfer had a significant effect on organizational commitment. But, educational investment had no significant effect on organizational commitment. That is, employees are likely to experience organizational commitment when working in the innovative culture and in the same context as the corporate training programs provided.
Second, organizational commitment had a significant effect on financial performance. But, educational investment, innovation, and relation of transfer had no significant effect on financial performance. Thus, organizational commitment could link to ultimate financial results.
Third, the additional analysis proved that organizational commitment was a meaningful mediator between innovation, relation of transfer and financial performance. This finding means that innovative culture and relation of transfer can be utilized to improve the level of employees’ organizational commitment and ultimately contribute to companies’ financial performance.
Based on the results of this study, further research is suggested as follows.
First, the effect of educational investment to financial performance was not significant, which is still controversial in previous research. The present study was designed a year after the original educational investment to verify the effect on financial performance; however, one year was not appropriate to find the effect of educational investment to financial performance. Thus, future research must be longitudinally analyzed in order to investigate a proper time interval to find financial results through educational investment.
Second, this study limited educational expenses per employee for educational investment and sales figures per employee for financial performance. But for the future study, the variables should be considered in various aspects such as involvement, total training time, customer satisfaction, productivity, profit, stocks etc.
Finally, the present data included organizations representing various industries, which increases the generality of the findings, but also may ignore potential differences according to the industry, size, or operating systems. For example, each industry may have different performance-related dynamics. Besides, size or environmental situations may produce somewhat different results than the present patterns.