Learning organizational environment and extra-role behaviors: The mediating role of employee engagement

Abstract

Purpose

Only 13 percent of the world’s employees are engaged in their work, which has become a challenge for the managers of today. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of employee engagement between perceived learning environment and extra-role behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

This quantitative study collected data from 563 employees using a questionnaire-based survey on a convenience basis.

Findings

The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results of the study show that employees’ perception of learning environment urges them to perform beyond their formal job descriptions (i.e. extra-role behaviors) regarding proactivity, knowledge sharing and creativity. In addition, employee engagement performs the mediating role between learning environment and extra-role behaviors.

Research limitations/implications

The data for this study were collected at a single point of time (cross-sectional), which limits the inferences about the causality.

Originality/value

This study is perhaps the first attempt to empirically investigate the mediating role of employee engagement between the relationship of the learning environment and extra-role behaviors such as knowledge sharing, proactivity and creativity.

Citation

Islam, T. and Tariq, J. (2018), "Learning organizational environment and extra-role behaviors: The mediating role of employee engagement", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 258-270. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-01-2017-0039