Social support as a neglected e-learning motivator affecting trainee’s decisions of continuous intentions of usage

Drawing from the social influence theory and acknowledging that the others’ support within the work context affects employees’ learning, values, and behaviours, an alternative framework was proposed to explain employees’ learning satisfaction and future intention to participate in e-training programs in the current study. 578 survey data collected from employees of various corporations in Taiwan provide empirical support for our extended model. The results suggest that social support from peers and supervisors, a usually neglected factor, has significant effect on trainees’ learning satisfaction, while family support, an often neglected antecedent of e-learning choice, was surprisingly found to affect trainees’ continuous intentions to participate. Finally, the paper concludes with the importance of employees’ perceptions of social support in terms of organisational training. The impact of human resource management policies is also discussed.