Managerial skill utilization: work environment, gender, and training incentive

Abstract

Past studies have demonstrated that a supportive work environment can positively influence managerial skill utilization. Adopting the instrumentality-expressiveness perspective, the present study extended the past research by illustrating the moderating effect of gender on this relationship. It found that the relationship between the work environment and managerial skill utilization is stronger among female managers than among male managers and further, that this interactive effect is more pronounced in a low incentive situation than in a high incentive situation in terms of reaching a high level of training performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Keywords:

• Managerial skill utilization
• instrumentality-expressiveness perspective
• work environment
• gender
• training incentive

Acknowledgements

This research was initially funded by the Grant-in-Aid for JSPS (the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) related to the JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship for Foreign Researchers (P98347). Subsequent financial support was provided by the City University of Hong Kong (Strategic Research Grant, #7001166). We would like to acknowledge IJHRM editor Michael Poole and the anonymous referee for their most helpful comments in the development of this paper. We also would like to thank Jia Lin Xie, Kwok Leung, Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, Joseph C. Cheng and Teck Dines for their helpful support and comments on an earlier draft of this paper.