Environmental hostility, individual learning, and intrapreneurship as predictors of organizational learning: A study applied to two selected mining companies in Chile.

摘要

Organizations are faced with competitive and changeable environments which demand more prepared employees to successfully cope with these current and future challenges (Oswick, Grant, Michelson, & Wailes, 2005). Organizations, as a way to cope with more hostile environments, may foster individual learning, intrapreneurship, and organizational learning within their employees in order to potentially increase the organizational level of competitiveness. In other words, individual learning, intrapreneurship, and organizational learning may help organizations increase their levels of productivity and be better prepared to face uncertain scenarios.The purpose of this study was to examine the path of relationships among Environmental Hostility, Individual Learning, Intrapreneurship, and Organizational Learning for two selected mining companies in Chile. A survey instrument was applied to 383 participants who worked in the mining companies. Structural Equation Modeling was the statistical technique utilized to examine if the collected data supported the researcher's proposed model.None of the models---the researcher's proposed model, a proposed model based on Exploratory Factor Analysis, and a proposed model based on AMOS were considered as confirmed models. For this reason, four possible arguments were elaborated to explain why the data did not fit any of the models.First, there is a lack of empirical support of the potential relationships among the construct/variables of the proposed model. Second, this study is a pioneering work in examining Environmental Hostility, Individual Learning, Intrapreneurship, and Organizational Learning altogether. Third, previous studies related to the construct/variables of this study were mainly conducted in the United States and Australia. Fourth, and finally, the social and economic scenarios that Chile faced during the last century were very different than the social and economic situations confronted by the United States in the same period.