DSpace at VNU: Learning organizations in higher education: An empirical evaluation within an international context

To bridge these gaps, we developed a conceptual framework that included a wide set of ents and outcomes of Senge’s five disciplines the components of a LO, comprising personal mastery, m

Management Learning

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Learning organizations in higher

education: An empirical evaluation

within an international context

manage-In order to remain viable in an uncertain and changing environment, organizations and individuals alike rely on an ability to learn (Edmondson and Moingeon, 1998; Senge, 1990) Thus, a learning organization (LO) must constantly strive to develop and implement policies and strategies, which encourage and make use of learning at all levels within the organization (following Church, 2002; Hitt,

Corresponding author:

Yehuda Baruch, Rouen Business School, Boulevard André Siegfried - BP 215, Mont-Saint-Aignan 76825, France Email: yehuda.baruch@rouenbs.fr

Article

1995; Hodgkinson, 2000; Rowley, 1998; Sackmann et al., 2009) In so doing, they are likely to create and deliver innovative products and services (Church, 2002; Corbett, 2005) LOs align people’s learn-ing and development continuously to corporate vision, mission and strategy (Harrison, 1993) A LO works to create values, practices and procedures, in which learning and working are synonymous throughout the organization (Rowley, 1998) Learning is a core part of all operations The LO process challenges employees and communities to use their collective intelligence, ability to learn, and creativ-ity to transform the existing system (Bierema, 1999) It helps people to connect with each other, their work, and their community It is not a programme, but rather a new process for understanding and learning together In our study, we adopt Senge’s definition for LOs:

organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together (Senge, 1990: 3).

LOs are expected to build the capability to adapt and confront change-related issues in order to prevail and excel, and to meet the challenges inherent in an unstable environment (Bokeno and Gantt, 2000; Senge et al., 1999) In the knowledge economy, institutions of higher education (HE) constantly need innovation Business schools with a strong professional learning base are better able to offer valid pedagogy and be more effective in promoting student achievement (Sackney and Walker, 2006) Though Senge (2000) posits that changes in institutions of public education are harder to deliver than in business, Resnick and Hall (1998) argue that LOs bring about sustainable educational reforms True learning communities encourage educators to acquire the knowledge and skills that they need from many sources, inside and outside the LOs They openly share their own knowledge and skills with others because they realize that they are all working toward achiev-ing personal and professional goals (Sackney and Walker, 2006)

While the literature provides ample support for the concept of the LO, both theoretical (Sackmann et al., 2009) and managerial (Garvin et al., 2008), there are clear gaps that call for investigation First, related studies have been conducted mostly in western work environments (Birdthistle, 2008; Blackman and Henderson, 2005; Nyhan et al., 2004) Second, the educational sector, which is growing in scope and importance, is rarely represented in LO studies (White and Weathersby, 2005) Third, most of the studies which focus on LOs have employed qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, research methods (Eijnatten and Putnik, 2004; Harvey and Denton, 1999; McGill et al., 1992; Slater and Narver, 1995) Fourth, while Senge’s contribution has attracted vast scholarly and practical attention, there remains an acute shortage of empirical investigation of his work (Nair, 2001) Specifically, Ellinger and Bostrom (2002) call for further studies to explore the relationships between characteristics of the LO and organizational performance

To bridge these gaps, we developed a conceptual framework that included a wide set of ents and outcomes of Senge’s five disciplines (the components of a LO), comprising personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking We tested the frame-work within an international context of HE Employing a multi-level analysis (Klein and Kozlowski, 2000), we started at the individual level (personal mastery) through the collective level (team learning, mental models), and up to the organizational level (shared vision, systems thinking).Our study answers these deficiencies by addressing the issue in the HE sector, and comparing universities from two distinct cultures We benefited from a unique opportunity to examine and compare the LO model in two different cultures, namely East and West, to recommend theoretical and managerial implications Further, we employ quantitative research methods to complement earlier investigations which have tended to be based on qualitative methodology

anteced-Theoretical background

The context of higher education in a global environment

Like any other sector, the HE is under increasing pressure to improve its competitiveness The competition in HE is getting more severe within and across national borders (Marginson, 2007), with indications of an emerging global phenomenon described as ‘brain drain’ This phenomenon can be observed in the movement of highly educated people from developing countries to devel-oped countries (Baruch et al., 2007; Carrington and Detragiache, 1999) However, there is also evidence to suggest that this phenomenon may turn into a ‘brain circulation’ (Carr et al., 2005; Saxenian, 2006; Tung and Lazarova, 2006), particularly within a global open labour market.Management should cope with fast-paced social, economic, and political transitions that place extensive demands on the system and its employees The western HE sector is still operating in a lucrative market, but the situation is changing, as many developing countries are catching up and establishing their own high quality HE systems (for example, see Altbach and Selvaratnam, 1989; Marginson, 2007) In such context, LOs bring about sustainable educational reform (Resnick and Hall, 1998), and as a result, a wide range of organizations across the globe adopt the LO framework (Davies, 1998; Franklin et al., 1998; Patterson, 1999; Rowley, 1998; Willcoxson, 2001; Yeo, 2006; Yeo and Marquardt, 2010)

The learning organization and higher education

Senge’s (1990) LO is depicted as pragmatic, normative, and inspirational (Easterby-Smith, 1997; Roper and Pettit, 2002) Easterby-Smith (1997) adds that LOs encourage organizations to go beyond single-loop learning (actions as learning repeating in a routine) to double-loop learning (attempts to change normal practice, i.e single-loop learning), and even triple-loop learning (learn-ing about learning, about redesigning the current systems for better learning and operations) (Argyris, 1999; Argyris and Schön, 1996) Amidon (2005) argues that Senge designs a set of prac-tices in a robust way that might lead to a knowledge-worker utopia Senge attempts to build organi-zations that ‘serve humans rather than enslave them’ (Amidon, 2005: 408)

Senge’s LO is considered inspirational, as it possesses a power to nurture practical creativity Though there is no specific prototype for developing universities as LOs, Senge’s (1990) model is highly regarded as an essential framework for their construction (Gudz, 2004; Jackson, 2000; Patterson, 1999; White and Weathersby, 2005) Like business, HE is facing challenges of changes and innovation Many HE institutions have adapted LO models to facilitate progress and advance-ment in line with economic changes and technological development (Duke, 1992; Patterson, 1999).Based on the extant literature we posit a model which comprises several antecedents and out-comes of the five disciplines These are depicted in Figure 1 and explicated in the hypothesis development section

Research hypotheses

Personal mastery

Personal mastery refers to a personal commitment to continuously clarify and deepen a personal vision, focus energy, develop patience, and endeavour to see reality as objectively as possible (Appelbaum and Goransson, 1997) It is ‘the learning organization’s spiritual foundation’ (Senge, 1990: 7) It goes beyond competence, skills, and spiritual unfolding though it is grounded on those

bases (Senge, 1990) As discussed by Senge (1990), personal mastery is influenced by personal values, personal vision, motivation, and individual learning through training and development First, personal values are rooted in an individual’s own set of values, beliefs, and aspiration (Homer and Kahle, 1988; Kahle, 1983; Senge, 1990) Since employees are believed to bring their values into the work setting (Robertson, 1991), the impact of personal values is of special relevance in educational systems (Blackmore and Castley, 2005) Second, personal vision is the ‘groundwork’ for continually expanding personal mastery (Appelbaum and Goransson, 1997; Nightingale, 1990; Senge, 2006) There is an increased confidence in employees’ personal vision when universities develop as LOs (Smith, 2003; Wheeler, 2002) Third, motivation has long been studied to explain why humans are inspired to do certain things (Deci, 1975; Kanfer and Ackerman, 2000; Maslow, 1970; Rueda and Moll, 1994; Siebold, 1994) An individual with high personal mastery would be self-motivated (Ng, 2004) Fourth, individual learning is the primary learning-enabling element in LOs (Antonacopoulou, 2000b; Dodgson, 1993; Senge, 1990; Watkins and Marsick, 1993) Individual learning can promote personal mastery (Gong et al., 2009) Life-long learning is a part

of commitment to personal mastery (Barker et al., 1998; Davies, 1998), and to LOs (Davies, 1998) Academic scholars are highly qualified in terms of formal education and rich in informal learning (Baruch and Hall, 2004; Knight et al., 2006) Fifth, development and training is essential for employees’ personal mastery (Senge et al., 1994) This process plays a significant role in making employees aware of Senge’s LO concepts, including personal mastery (Kiedrowski, 2006) Research also shows the effect of development and training on personal mastery (Antonacopoulou, 2000a; Blackman and Henderson, 2005) Many countries’ HE makes development and training a top priority (Blackmore and Castley, 2005; Dalin, 1998; Maslen, 1992)

Figure 1 The LO model.

Hypothesis 1 Personal values, personal vision, motivation, individual learning, and development and training are positively associated with personal mastery.

Mental models

Mental models refer to deeply-held assumptions or metaphors through which people interpret and understand the world, and take action (O’Connor and McDermott, 1997; Senge, 1990) Mental models are powerful in influencing human behavior (Senge, 1990) Mental models are assumed

to be composed of a number of factors First, organizational commitment is defined as ‘the tive strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization’ (Mowday et al., 1979: 226) Despite Gallie et al.’s (2001) finding that British employees had a relatively weak commitment to their organizations, organizational commitment is considered to

rela-be at the heart of mental models (Kofman and Senge, 1993) It is essential for the development and sharing of mental models (Bui and Baruch, 2010b) Second, leaders are responsible for learn-ing and creating a learning environment for people to continually expand their ability to under-stand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models (Fullan, 1993; Horner, 1997; Marquardt, 1996; Marsick and Watkins, 2003; Mazutis and Slawinski, 2008; Mintzberg, 1998) For our study, we consider leadership to be relevant to identifying mental models that challenge organizational members with the question: ‘What values do you really want to stand for?’ (Senge

et al., 2000: 67) Third, organizational culture is a key factor of organizational management (Pettigrew, 1979) It is about fundamental assumptions that people share about an organization’s values, beliefs, norms, and symbols that give meaning to organizational membership and are considered guides to behaviours (Bloisi et al., 2007; Tyler and Gnyawali, 2009) Organizational culture is highly influenced by the societal culture in which it is embedded (Dimmock and Walker, 2000; Hofstede, 2001) Thus, organizations with a low power distance culture are more likely to succeed in mastering mental models than those in cultures with high power distance (Alavi and McCormick, 2004) because a culture of trust and openness that encourages inquiry and dialogue

is needed to challenge assumptions (Gephart et al., 1996; Jones et al., 2005; Senge, 1990; Watkins and Marsick, 1993)

Hypothesis 2 Organizational commitment, leadership, and organizational culture are positively associated with mental models.

Team learning

Team learning is a ‘process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its member truly desire’ (Senge, 1990: 236) It is regarded as a fundamental unit of LOs (Hitt, 1995; Senge, 1990) Despite its importance, team learning among academics remains poorly understood (Nissala, 2005: 211) However, a study on team learning have found that some univer-sities have succeeded in creating team learning through the process of becoming LOs (Bender, 1997) The literature shows that team learning is composed of a number of factors First, team commitment is the essence of team learning (Katzenbach and Smith, 2004; Park et al., 2005) Talented individuals do not necessarily form talented teams if they lack team commitment (Senge, 2006) When people are committed to team learning, they tend to set clear goals for the team and themselves (Kofman and Senge, 1993) Second, leadership inspires innovation and the creation of knowledge within team members (Kozlowski et al., 1996; Lee et al., 2010; Wageman, 2001) The most successful teams have leaders who proactively manage team learning efforts (Choi, 2009;

Edmondson, 2003; Edmondson et al., 2004; Marsick and Watkins, 2003; Morgeson et al., 2010) Leaders are expected to create a learning environment in their organization (Mazutis and Slawinski, 2008) Leadership is of significance in education because it motivates educators, stu-dents, and parents to learn together (Sackney and Walker, 2006) Third, goal setting is important for evaluating the result of team learning and team performance (Mehta et al., 2009) The more educated staff are, the more participative and effective their goal setting is likely to be (Ivancevich and McMahon, 1977) Fourth, development and training related to team skills is important for successful learning (Bowen, 1998; Druskat and Kayes, 2000), and enhances team learning (Morgeson et al., 2010; Prichard et al., 2006) Development and training is a priority in HE in many countries (Brancato, 2003; Dalin, 1998; Maslen, 1992) Fifth, organizational culture deter-mines the effectiveness of team learning and team working (Elfenbein and O’Reilly III, 2007)

A LO’s culture should support and reward learning and innovation; promote inquiry, dialogue, risk-taking, and experimentation; allow mistakes to be shared and viewed as opportunities for learning; and value the well-being of all employees (Gephart et al., 1996: 39) Sixth, individual learning is at the core layer of organizational learning (Antonacopoulou, 2006; Pedler et al., 1991)

In other words, organizational learning is the product of individual learning (Antonacopoulou, 2006; Argyris and Schön, 1978; Fiol and Lyles, 1985; Senge, 1990; Watkins and Marsick, 1993)

is a key factor that leads employees to sharing their vision with the organization (Senge, 1990) Fifth, organizational culture is regarded as a catalyst for creating a shared vision (Reeves and Boreham, 2006) Sharing vision seems to be more effective in organizations that are embedded

in a high societal collectivism and future orientation culture (Alavi and McCormick, 2004), i.e

in an open, dynamic and group-oriented cultures

Hypothesis 4 Personal vision, personal values, leadership, and organizational culture are positively associated with shared vision.

Systems thinking

Any attempt at creating a LO must start from systems thinking (Appelbaum and Goransson, 1997; Senge, 1990) This is the capacity to see deeper patterns lying beneath events and details, in the full setting of interconnecting elements (Hosley et al., 1994; Senge, 1990; Senge et al., 1994) Bui and Baruch (2010b) propose some antecedents for systems thinking First, individual competence includes systems thinking which actively contributes to personal and professional success (Anderson et al., 2006; Antonacopoulou, 1996; Marquardt, 1996) People from all parts of the organization who are competent and genuinely committed to deep changes in themselves and in their organizations are considered as leaders (Senge, 1996; Spreitzer, 1995) Second, leaders need systems thinking to recognize those people who will be influenced by their decisions (Dixon et al., 2010; Kumar et al., 2005; Yang et al., 2010) Furthermore, leaders in LOs should be ‘philosopher kings, who are willing to inquire into their own competence for kingship (Coopey, 1995) In HE, the way that universities are organized into disciplines may create the false impression that the real world is divided into fragmented parts (Vo et al., 2006) To overcome such possible pitfalls, leaders

in HE benefit from the concept of systems thinking Third, organizational culture can affect tems thinking Alavi and McCormick (2004) found that organizations high in societal collectivism tend to be successful when working collectively, as their staff tend to be more inclined to effec-tively take part in teams for systems thinking Systems thinking was found to be applied success-fully in HE (Austin, 2000; Wright, 1999)

sys-Hypothesis 5 Competence, leadership, and organizational culture are positively associated with systems thinking.

Outcomes

Personal mastery is believed to lead to self-efficacy and better individual performance (Bloisi

et al., 2007; Senge, 1990) In addition, personal mastery can create a balanced work and home life (Baruch, 2004; Doherty and Manfredi, 2006; Johnson, 2006) When mental models and team learning are developed and learnt throughout the organization, one of the outcomes is a higher level

of knowledge sharing and knowledge creation (An and Reigeluth, 2005; Argyris, 1999; Senge, 2006; Watkins and Marsick, 1993) Developing appropriate mental models and team learning gen-erates more knowledge and can consequently lead to improving job performance (Chan

et al., 2003; Davenport et al., 1998; Inkpen, 2000; Pedler et al., 1991) Fullan (2004) also stresses the importance of systems thinking in organizational strategic planning To generate impact, strat-egy should be backed by passion and vision from the people who create and implement it (Domm, 2001: 46) Without systems thinking, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop a strategy that fits the organization As a result, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 6 The five disciplines are positively associated with individual performance, knowledge sharing, self-efficacy, work-life balance, and strategic planning.

We combine hypotheses 1 through 6 to test the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 7 The five disciplines mediate the relationship between the antecedents and outcomes.

Cultural differences

Cultural differences may have a dramatic impact on management (Fadil et al., 2005; Hofstede,

1980, 1984; Schwarz, 1992; Sun et al., 2004) Because our study was conducted within an tional context, cultural differences were considered to be a major factor

interna-Based on Hofstede’s study (1984, 1993, 2001), the UK scored very highly in individualism and masculinity Individuals realize their potential in what they do, i.e they often have intrinsic moti-vation for their work People put priority on the task (Hofstede, 1993, 2001) In the UK, a low power distance culture, educators encourage independence in students, encouraging them to chal-lenge themselves, each other, and even their teachers (Hofstede, 1984)

In contrast, Vietnam is a collectivist culture (Grinter, 2006; Smith and Pham, 1996) In tivist cultures, people place greater emphasis on relationships (Hofstede, 1984; Smith and Pham, 1996) This is particularly true in education where students try to avoid arguments or expressing different viewpoints to their teachers’ In addition to these cultural differences, the two countries are also different in infrastructure One country is a developed nation whilst the other is develop-ing This may affect the process of becoming learning organizations in the two countries Therefore

collec-we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 8 The components of the learning organization model in the UK are expected to have higher values/scores than in Vietnam.

Methods

Sample and data collection

The two selected organizations were established universities in Vietnam and the UK Pilot tests were conducted before the main data collection to ensure that the questionnaires would function similarly in two different countries An initial pilot study was conducted with a sample of 40 par-ticipants (25 in the UK and 15 in Vietnam) The pilot study confirmed the clarity and relevance of the questionnaire, and preliminary analysis conducted in both countries to assess internal reliability generated positive outcomes These and the respondents’ feedback suggested there was no need for significant changes to the final questionnaires, except for some re-wordings The questionnaires were presented in English and Vietnamese In order to prevent any methodological problems that may stem from the translation of the questionnaires (Sperber et al., 1994) a combination of three questionnaire translation techniques was employed including back-translation, committee approach, and pre-test procedure (Brislin, 1976; Hofstede, 1980; Sperber et al., 1994)

Stratified sampling was used to ensure representativeness (Wiersma and Jurs, 2005), and to decrease bias in the data, as it eliminated subjectivity in choosing a sample (Fink, 1995) The popu-lation was divided into subgroups of academics (i.e those who were employed for teaching, research, or both) and non-academics A number of schools/departments were selected at random within the UK university, including the School of Environment and Earth Science, the School of Computing and Technology, the School of Mathematics, the School of Business, the School of Education, the School of Language and Literature, the School of History, and the Registry Office (including its managing board, administrators and assisted staff) After that, questionnaires were sent to academic and non-academic staff of all levels in those schools The equivalent process was conducted in the Vietnamese university, after identifying schools that matched those sampled in the

UK university

The staff population in each university was approximately 3200 people A total of 1391 tionnaires were distributed in person, 711 in Vietnam and 680 in the UK based on strata that we determined above Participation was anonymous and voluntary Respondents could either return the completed questionnaires via the stamped envelope or make appointments for the researchers

ques-to collect them later As 96 employees in both universities (61 in Vietnam and 35 in the UK) were away on study, maternity, or sabbatical leave; 1285 employees (640 in Vietnam and 645 in the UK) actually received the questionnaires After systematically screening for missing data, 687 com-pleted questionnaires (341 in Vietnam and 346 in the UK) were used for analyses This represents

an effective response rate of 53.5%, which is above the norm in social sciences (Baruch and Holtom, 2008; Neuman, 2000; Roth and BeVier, 1998)

Most of the respondents were highly educated with 308 (44.8%) PhD holders, 141 (20.5) Masters degree holders, and 146 (21.3%) Bachelor degree holders A total of 315 (45.9%) respond-ents had worked in their organizations for five years or less, and 362 (52.7%) respondents had worked there for more than five years 446 respondents (64.9%) were academics, while 241 respondents (35.1%) were non-academics

Measures

Participants responded to the items listed below using an ordinal scale ranging from 1 to 7, with 1 represents ‘disagree strongly’ to 7 represents ‘agree strongly’, or ‘not at all important’ to ‘extremely important’ The choice of the measures employed was based on academic criteria, namely the rel-evance and suitability of items to our literature review and model development We opted for exist-ing and already validated scales which had been frequently utilized in earlier studies

Personal values Five out of nine items were taken from Kahle (1983) They were self-respect, security, warm relationships with others, and sense of accomplishment The Cronbach alpha was 72

sam-ple item is ‘I am confident in my ability to do my job’ The Cronbach alpha was 85

research studies (Forssen and Haho, 2001; Noe, 2002), no suitable construct of development and training was found Therefore, a four-item scale was created to measure development and training in organizations These items comprised ‘This University encourages staff to develop team-working skills’, ‘This University encourages staff to identify skills they need to adapt to changes’, ‘I was mentored when I first took up the job here’, and ‘I receive the training I need

to perform my current job effectively’ The Cronbach alpha was 78

work, I lead myself by the goals of my team’ is a sample item The Cronbach alpha was 85

McMahon (1977) ‘The goals assigned to our team members are equitable and can be accepted’

is a sample item The Cronbach alpha was 89

A sample item of motivation is ‘I am very personally involved in my work’ The Cronbach alpha was 76

Peiperl (2000) One of them was ‘My own learning and development at work are essential to me’ Another item was borrowed from Kanfer and Ackerman (2000) ‘I prefer activities that

provide me the opportunity to learn something new’ One more item was created to measure individual learning, ‘I am committed to life-long learning’ The Cronbach alpha was 86.

Personal vision. With no known measure for this construct existing in the literature, we designed

a four-item scale to measure personal vision We developed the items based on the literature These items were ‘I set up career goals of my own’, ‘I have my personal vision for my career’,

‘Part of my personal vision is to make the University more successful’, and ‘I understand how the work I do helps this University achieve its vision’ The Cronbach alpha was 83

Organizational commitment. Four out of eight items of affective organizational commitment by Meyer and Allen (1991) were taken to fit the construct of the research, in line with earlier use

of these items (Iverson and Buttigieg, 1999; Meyer et al., 2002; Riketta, 2002) A sample item

is ‘I enjoy discussing the University with people outside it’ The Cronbach alpha was 85

The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) The questionnaire has been validated as a research tool (Marsick and Watkins, 2003; Yang, 2003) ‘At this university, leaders/managers continually look for opportunities to learn for their professional develop-ment’ was one of the sample items The Cronbach alpha was 90

asking them to evaluate the culture within their organization on six scales adopted from Baruch and Peiperl (2000) Each scale ranges from 1 (one extreme) to 7 (the opposite extreme) The scales were: stable—dynamic; closed/bureaucratic—open/interactive; reactive—proactive; individual oriented—group oriented; aggressive—accommodating; reserved—friendly (Baruch and Peiperl, 2000) The direction was such that the second extreme is the one consid-ered more positive or fit for contemporary labour markets The Cronbach alpha was 90

Senge’s model quantitatively in research on realizing a learning organization in a sized company The size of the universities was relatively similar to a private sector medium-size company Although the main approach of his research was qualitative, Reed used quantitative research for his pilot test He designed a set of questions to measure four con-structs: personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking The Cronbach alpha of personal mastery, team learning, shared vision, and systems thinking were 69, 73, 91, and 80 respectively

medium-Mental models. With no known measure for this construct in the literature, we designed a item measure based on a literature review of the definition of mental models Those five items included, ‘The University treats its staff fairly’, ‘The University provides necessary skills for professional development’, ‘The University provides opportunities for professional develop-ment’, ‘The University has an appropriate mechanism to bring staff together to develop the best ways of problem solving’, and ‘When there is a problem in my department, we also seek help to handle the problem from other schools/departments’ The Cronbach alpha was 90

self-efficacy The scale has been successfully used in a number of studies (Miron et al., 2004; Rindova et al., 2005; Shalley and Gilson, 2004) A sample item is, ‘I have confidence in my ability to solve problems creatively’ The Cronbach alpha was 81

work Sample items are ‘My job makes me happy’, and ‘My personal life makes me happy at work’ The Cronbach alpha was 83

Bock et al (2005), which were originally developed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) A sample

item is ‘My knowledge sharing would help other members at the university solve problems’ The Cronbach alpha was 94.

Strategic planning. Strategic planning was assessed using four items adapted from two studies (Bryan and Joyce, 2007; Dye and Sibony, 2007) The Cronbach alpha was 93

and non-academic staff respectively The one-item scale for measuring non-academic staff was based on Baruch (1996) Respondents were asked to rank their performance score from number 1 (too early to assess) to number 7 (outstanding/effective) A two-item scale was used for academic staff, one item was for teaching performance, ranking from 1 (unacceptable) to

7 (outstanding), and the other was for research performance based on RAE score (in terms of the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise) Performance was also cross-checked Prior to the questionnaire delivery, actual individual research performance in terms of publication output was checked and classified into 7 ranks equivalent to the research performance question in the questionnaires This external evaluation was based on journal quality rankings, and enabled us

to avoid common method bias in the outcomes data The respondents’ questionnaire answers

actual research publication output, reflecting individual performance, was used for analysis in this research

Avoiding common method bias

As most of the data rely on self-reporting, common method variance was a potential cal problem (Campbell and Fiske, 1959; Podsakoff and Organ, 1986) In order to reduce the risk, a number of procedural remedies suggested by Podsakoff et al (2003) were employed in this study First, item ambiguity was substantially removed via the pilot tests Second, measures of the predic-tors and criteria variables were obtained from different sources, e.g the cross-check of research performance data prior to the questionnaire delivery Third, in the invitation letter, participants were informed that their answers were confidential, and that there were no right or wrong answers,

methodologi-in order to tackle possible evaluation apprehension Fmethodologi-inally, the question order was anced to control ‘priming effects, item-context-induced mood states, or other biases related to the question context or item embeddedness’ (Podsakoff et al., 2003: 888)

counterbal-Factor analysis

Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted to validate all the variables employed in this research The EFA test was used for validating distinc-tiveness of the newly developed measures The CFA test was used for variables already validated

in the literature

Exploratory factor analysis Two groups of variables, which were related conceptually to one another,

were validated The first group consisted of development and training, personal vision and

indi-vidual learning The determinant of the R-matrix is 003 (p > 00001), which shows that

multicol-linearity is not a problem for this piece of data (Field, 2005) The factor loadings of those variables

in the rotated component matrix showed no cross loading, suggesting significant orthogonality among the factors (Field, 2005; Tabachnick and Fidell, 2001)

The second group included the five disciplines of LO The factor loadings of those variables in the rotated component matrix showed some cross loadings After revising, an item was dropped

from each of the personal mastery, team learning, and systems thinking scales Therefore, there were four items in these three scales and five items in mental models and shared vision scales.

Confirmatory factor analysis As some variables in this study were related conceptually, a series of

CFAs were conducted to verify each variable’s distinctiveness with the employment of AMOS Another reason for conducting these was to check for common method variance—Harman’s one-factor test, as prescribed by Podsakoff and Organ (1986) We conducted three sets of CFA The first (CFA1) covered measures relating to constructs at the organizational level These were: organiza-tional culture, leadership, organizational commitment, and strategic planning The second (CFA2), covered measures relating to constructs at the team level These were: team commitment, goal setting, and knowledge sharing The third (CFA3) covered measures relating to constructs at the individual level: personal values, motivation, competence, work-life balance, and self-efficacy The results of these three CFAs are presented in Table 1

The results of all the CFAs indicated that the data fit the models well, except the chi-square The use of the chi-square statistic is problematic because of its sensitivity to violations of normality and its relation to sample size (i.e with a large sample size, very small discrepancies between the expected

(687) that leads to the problem of significant chi-square values Other than that, all the fit indices were within the recommended range (Byrne, 2001; Hair et al., 2006; Hu and Bentler, 1999; Tabachnick and Fidell, 2001) Therefore, all these constructs were retained for further analysis

Table 2 presents the means, standard deviations, number of respondents, their correlations, and Cronbach alpha values for all variables of interest

Regression analyses

We employed hierarchical regressions to test the hypotheses Table 3 presents the regression results for testing Hypotheses 1 through 5 The three control variables including qualifications, job roles, and tenure were entered in Step 1 and the respective independent variables were entered in Step 2

regressions Hypothesis 1 predicted that development and training, personal vision, individual learning, motivation, and personal values would be positively associated with personal mastery As

shown in Table 3, development and training (β = 373, p < 01), personal vision (β = 180, p < 01), motivation (β = 128, p < 05), and personal values (β = 147, p < 05) were positively associated with personal mastery Individual learning (β = -.009, ns) was not associated with

Table 1 Confirmatory factor analysis.

Goodness-of-fit

statistics c2 df c2/df RMSEA SRMR CFI TLI PNFI Criteria p > 05 ≥ 0 2 to 5 ≤ 08 ≤ 08 ≥ 90 ≥ 90 ≥ 50 CFA1 647.78 (p<.001) 164 3.95 066 039 946 937 802 CFA2 163.75 (p<.001) 41 3.99 066 037 977 969 723 CFA3 548.88 (p<.001) 124 4.43 071 061 921 902 666

personal mastery Hypothesis 1 was mainly supported Hypothesis 2 posited that organizational commitment, organizational culture, and leadership would be positively associated with mental

models Table 3 shows that organizational commitment (β = 165, p < 01), organizational culture (β

= 438, p < 01), and leadership (β = 301, p < 01) were all related to mental models Thus,

Hypothesis 2 was fully supported Hypothesis 3 predicted that development and training, vidual learning, team commitment, goal setting, organizational culture, and leadership would be

indi-positively associated with team learning As shown in Table 3, individual learning (β = 121, p < 05), team commitment (β = 154, p < 01), goal setting (β = 085, p < 05), organizational culture (β = 167, p < 01), and leadership (β = 123, p < 01) were positively associated with team learning Development and training (β = 032, ns) was not associated with team learning Thus, Hypothesis

3 was mainly supported Hypothesis 4 predicted that personal vision, motivation, personal values, organizational culture, and leadership would be positively associated with shared vision Table 3

shows that personal vision (β = 444, p < 01), motivation (β = 120, p < 05), personal values (β =

Table 3 Prediction of the five disciplines.

Personal mastery Mental models Team learning Shared vision Systems thinking Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Qualifications −.039 −.033 −.015 008 −.038 −.022 −.029 035 009 029 Tenure 147** 148** −.136** −.078* −.040 010 084 117** −.088 −.050 Job roles −.007 011 012 011 032* 032* −.025 −.025 001 −.011 Development