A Phantasmagoria: Does Learning and Development Support Organizational Performance?

Abstract

Background: Organizational leadership authorizes significant investments in Learning and Development (L&D) to align and develop employee competence with strategy execution to accomplish organizational performance. Nonetheless, strategy execution fails – endangering the well-being of organizations, their employees, customers, and society. Research reports a persistent problem, namely, the absence of suitably competent employees to execute strategy – a phantasmagoria that demands examination. As part of a larger study, this paper reports on organizations’ investments in employee competence development by aligning L&D and effective strategy execution to accomplish organizational performance. Our research question was: “How do organizations align L&D with effective strategy execution to manage organizational performance?” Limited empirical information on the topic compelled an exploratory approach. To gain understanding, we combined literature on strategy, L&D, and operations into a comprehensive integrated conceptual framework (Figure 1). Figure 1 clearly demonstrates how employee competence aligns with effective strategy execution to accomplish organizational performance. Figure 1 served as the basis for our exploratory online survey, which collected extensive standardized data from a purposively selected sample. Responses met norms for exploratory surveys and trustworthy criteria. We descriptively analyzed the data. The findings suggest a feckless L&D and organizational strategy alignment, which returns performance shortfalls. Responses to an open-ended question revealed that respondents neglected customer value, the core rationale for an organization’s existence and essence of strategy. Consequently, no amount of L&D expenditure would align or develop employee competence to create and deliver customer value. Contribution: Our conceptual framework unambiguously aligns L&D and organizational performance – an idiosyncratic contribution. Our framework propels leadership to rethink L&D and practically craft an effective strategy based on customer value. The cross-sectional design limits generalizations. We recommend further studies to permit generalizations.