The relationship between career development, emergent change, situational motivation and adaptive performance: mediating role of readiness to change and moderating effect of learning orientation / Ainaa Idayu Iskandar

Adaptable employee continues to be the key advantage necessary for an organisation at present as work environments are vulnerable, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous. Producing a highly adaptable workforce forces the higher education industry in Malaysia to employ educators who are highly adaptable and able to swiftly react to current changes. Despite its importance, there is still a lack of an integrative approach in further understanding the lecturer's adaptive performance. Hence, in order to empirically support the claim of this issue, this study aims to examine the relationship between individual-based factors (career development and readiness to change),organisational-related factors (emergent change and learning orientation), and situational factors (situational motivation) as the predictors of adaptive performance. This study introduces readiness to change as the mediating variable in the relationship between career development, emergent change and situational motivation with adaptive performance. Readiness to change was conceptualised in I-ADAPT Theory as predictorin my contribution of study, thus readiness to change acts as mediator as supported by Social Cognitive Theory between individual-based, organisational-related and situational factor. Finally, the study also assessed the moderating role of learning orientation with regards to the relationship between readiness to change and adaptive performance. From theoretical views, three social theories had been recognised to support the theoretical framework of the study namely the self-determination theory, social cognitive theory and I-ADAPT theory. A quantitative and cross-sectional approach was conducted using a set of survey questionnaire that was distributed via the official email addresses of social science lecturers of Malaysian Research Universities with a sample of 196 respondents. The research model was further analysed using the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. Based on the research questions, the main findings of the study show that, firstly, career development, emergent change and readiness to change influence adaptive performance among the Malaysian lecturers. In contrast, situational motivation is not a significant variable to adaptive performance. Secondly, readiness to change has a mediating effect in the relationship between career development and emergent change with adaptive performance. Meanwhile, situational motivation shows an insignificant influence on adaptive performance when tested using readiness to change as the mediating variable. Thirdly, as for the moderating variable, learning orientation shows an insignificant role in strengthening the relationship between readiness to change and adaptive performance in the context of this study. Thus, this study contributes empirical evidence that individual-based factor and organisational-related factor play an important role in influencing adaptive performance among the Malaysian lecturers. Furthermore, the overall predictive power of this study is high which indicates that the proposed comprehensive model of this study can provide a wide-raging guideline on the importance of adaptive performance. Finally, the implications of this study are vital from the practical and theoretical angles as the findings of this study can assist higher education institutions in enhancing the adaptive behaviour of lecturers and in enriching adaptive performance literatures in the Malaysian context specifically. The study concludes with the limitations of the study and directions for future research.