IMPACT OF LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS ON EMPLOYEE RESILIENCE AND WORK ENGAGEMENT

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is twofold: to test the impact of learning organization on employee resilience and work engagement; and to explore the mediational role of employee resilience in the association between learning organization and work engagement. Large-scale Indian IT/ITES organizations located in 8 states of India were chosen as unit of analysis. Present research is confined to the middle level managers pronounced as the knowledge professionals working in IT companies. 330 middle level managers completed their surveys questionnaire measuring variables: learning organization culture, employee resilience and work engagement. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to analyze the proposed measurement model. Hayes and Preacher MACROS (2011) was employed to test the study hypotheses. The study findings offer interesting insights into the role of learning organization and employee resilience in augmenting work engagement in the context of Indian IT employees. The findings of the current study revealed that the association between learning organization and employee resilience, in turn, foster work engagement. The study results demonstrated that the learning organization culture boost the level of resilience experienced by employees and, as a consequence, exerts a positive impact on work engagement. The results of this study affirmed that resilience can be fostered among employees by inculcating a learning organization culture, which avow the fact that resilience can be developed by designing interventions at workplace. This evidences the critical influence of formal workplace support as an external resource. By identifying an organizational antecedent, the study findings bring a new dimension, which helps close a gap in the literature on resilience at work. As learning organization culture arise as initiator of this fruitful process, organizations should be interested in implementing interventions aimed at development of learning organizations. HRD practitioners should take into account the relevance of designing learning organization culture to foster employees’ resilience, as this may lead to long-term benefits such as a significant increase in employees’ level of engagement. By investigating the relationship between learning organization, employee resilience, and work engagement; the present study embarks to fill the paucity in academic and practitioner literature in the Indian organizational context