Exploring the relationship between work alienation and employee learning behavior: a moderated mediation model of alienative commitment and political skill

In contemporary times, organizations place great emphasis on learning and development to remain competitive and innovative amidst constantly evolving environment. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this thesis examines how two facets of work alienation—work powerlessness and work meaninglessness—shape employee learning behavior via alienative commitment, and whether political skill buffers these effects. Three-wave, time-lag data from 397 nurses across 26 District Headquarters Hospitals in Punjab, Pakistan were analyzed using SEM (AMOS 24) and moderated-mediation tests (PROCESS in SPSS 25). Results show that work powerlessness and work meaninglessness are each positively related to alienative commitment; alienative commitment, in turn, is negatively related to employee learning behavior. Political skill weakens the links from (a) powerlessness to alienative commitment and (b) meaninglessness to alienative commitment, yielding a significant conditional indirect (moderated-mediation) effect on learning. Theoretically, the study re-centers alienation and alienative commitment in the learning literature, clarifies a resource-loss pathway that depresses discretionary learning, and identifies political skill as a personal resource that constrains loss spirals. Practically, the findings offer actionable levers for public hospitals—enhancing autonomy and role meaning, and developing staff political skill—to sustain learning under resource pressure and role ambiguity.