Organizational-Level Training and Performance: A Meta-Analytic Investigation

Abstract

While extensive research has examined the relationship between human resource management systems and organizational performance, the impact of organizational-level training—defined as the quantity and quality of training that an organization provides to its employees—remains less understood. In this article, we conducted a meta-analysis of the relationship between organizational-level training and organizational performance to determine the magnitude of the relationship and test a set of moderators of the relationship. Grounded in human capital theory, our meta-analysis employs a theoretically driven moderator analysis to identify the conditions under which organizational-level training significantly influences organizational performance. The results from 159 studies (N = 75,033) show that the relationship between organizational-level training and organizational performance is positive and significant ( ρ = .13, SD ρ = .17, 95% CI [.11, .16]). More importantly, the effect size differs significantly across several theoretical (e.g., training dimensions, type of human capital, outcome dimensions, and timing of measurement) and contextual (e.g., industry knowledge intensity, firm age, and region) moderators. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.