No.85 An Empirical Study of the Conditions for Successful Knowledge Transfer in Training Programs

The shortage of qualified human capital is a major impediment to development. In the field of international development cooperation, training programs (TPs) have been widely employed to enhance the capacity of workforces in developing countries. This paper investigates the conditions in which TPs can contribute not only to individual human resource development but also to organization-level reform and innovation in developing countries. Regression analyses of TP monitoring records as well as follow-up e-mail interviews with former participants of ICT training programs sponsored by Japanese International Cooperation Agency reveal that bilateral communication between training participants and the dispatch organizations during the training plays a key role in increasing the probability of successful organization-level transfer of individual-level learning, irrespective of the original level of organization’s absorptive capacity.

Keywords: training and dialogue programs, human resource development, development aid, transfer of training, absorptive capacity