The impact of employee perceptions of training on organisational commitment and turnover intentions: a study of multinationals in the Chinese service sector.

This study examines the impact of employee perceptions of training on organizational commitment, and the latter’s relationship with turnover intentions. Structured equation modelling is conducted on survey data from 437 Chinese employees of five multinational enterprises operating in the Chinese service sector. The results of the survey are consistent with social exchange theory. They highlight the importance of training as a tool to enhance the affective organisational commitment of employees, and reduce turnover. The findings differ from previous studies in non-Chinese settings. No evidence was found of any impact of motivation to learn and perceived benefits of training on organizational commitment. This may be explained by three factors; the involuntary nature of employee training, the limited career development opportunities on offer to local employees of multinational enterprises and the difficulty employees face in applying learnt skills given cultural differences. The implications for research and practice are discussed

Perceived Dissimilarity and Perspective Taking Within Work Teams

The authors investigate the relationship between employee perceptions of surface- and deep-level dissimilarity and within-team perspective taking. Results suggest that the more dissimilar employees perceive themselves to be from their fellow team members in terms of their work style, the less their perspective taking (i.e., lower positive attributions and empathy). In addition, the authors found that perceived work-style dissimilarity interacted with a contextually salient surface-level attribute (perceived age dissimilarity) such that when perceived work-style dissimilarity was low, perceived age dissim-ilarity had a stronger negative effect on within-team perspective taking. This study demonstrates the importance of considering perspective taking in their understanding of the effects of dissimilarity within teams and furthers theoretical understanding of the effects of relational demography by testing competing theories undergirding relational demography research