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The Mediating Role of Opportunity of Participation Impact in Determining Training Effectiveness among Potential Entrepreneurs in Business Organisations

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the training effectiveness on potential entrepreneurs through opportunity of participation given on a task in an organisation. The methodology used in this study is a survey research design through a quantitative approach. Questionnaires are used in collecting data in a cross-sectional survey. The data was analysed using the special package for social sciences (SPPS). Pearson’s correlation co-efficient and regression analysis were conducted. Sobel test was also conducted to confirm the mediating effect of opportunity of participation. The findings revealed that there is a positive relationship between training effectiveness (Kirkpatrick Four Levels) and potential entrepreneur’s performance. The regression analysis indicates opportunity of participation has been a dominant factor in the relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneur’s performance. The integration of a mediator in the frame contributes to Kirkpatrick model in the extant training and development as well as entrepreneurship literature. Furthermore, policy makers and HR departments of business organizations will have more appreciation of how training can be appropriately evaluated more particularly, the on-the-job training for an improved performance.


Specific Hypotheses
H a1 : There is a significant relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneur's performance.
H a2 : There is a significant influence of work environment (construct) on potential entrepreneur's performance.
H a3 : Opportunity of participation mediates the relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneur's performance.

Training Effectiveness
Training effectiveness focuses on the characteristics of individuals, trainings, and organizational factors that affect training, before, during and after training. It pay more attention on the learning process as a whole, thus providing a macro view of training outcomes. Conducting a lot of training does not means that the training programmes were effective if there were no improvements in potential entrepreneurs performance and productivity. To ascertain the effectiveness of training, an evaluation is required. From the results of training evaluation, the business organizations will be able to ascertain more accurately whether the training received by potential entrepreneurs has been effective in the business organization, and subsequently in their new business start-up.

Opportunity of Participation
According to Ford et al. (2013), opportunity of participation is the extent to which an individual obtains work experiences relevant to the tasks is provided or through an activity for which he or she was trained. Potential entrepreneurs are supposed to get different opportunities to apply their training as these opportunities can affect the training outcomes. Low organizational performance would be manifest if the potential entrepreneurs do not have job opportunities to perform and transfer the new knowledge, skills and attitude on a given task in the business organization. Similarly, Clarke (2012) affirmed that training effectiveness can be undermined when heavy workload and time pressure are the main constraint against the opportunity to perform. The potential entrepreneur must have the opportunity to perform in order to ensure the training effectiveness. This will also help them to refine their knowledge, otherwise the knowledge and skills from the training will be forgotten.
Learning opportunities in the job improve the employability of individual workers.

Potential Entrepreneurs and Performance
Potential entrepreneur's performance is a set of behavior which person show in relation to his task, or otherwise, amount of efficiency gained due to the person's type of job. It is efficiency in his role according to his legal tasks and the degree of efforts and successfulness of a person. It can be defined as the skills of potential entrepreneurs in doing a given task (DeSimeone and Werner, 2012). To improve business performance, it is usually a good idea to be on the lookout for new ways. Both at a managerial and employee level, improving business performance should be a concern of many business organisations. Productivity, reputation, employee morale and customer service may all improve greatly if a business organization is efficient and well-run. To get day to day work done, most organizations rely heavily on their employees. The janitor, the office worker, the floor supervisor, and even the cafeteria employees can all be a major factor in how good the company is and how efficiently it runs. It is important to listen carefully to employee feedback to improve business performance since many entry level and junior workers are on the ground floor of the company, they may be in the clearest position to be honest about possible improvement. Management and employees can go a long way toward improving business performance through creating an open dialogue about improvements by allowing a level of participation on task among the potential entrepreneurs within the organization which may later form their own business.

Research Methododlogy
The research design for the conduct of this study is a survey research. It is one of the traditional and oldest research techniques (Babbie, 2014). Survey research is most often used to access about respondent's beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and self reported behaviors (Kapoor 2008). The survey research was used test the hypotheses for this study, and to ascertain whether a possible relationship exists between training effectiveness, work environment, and potential entrepreneurs. The methodology used in this study based on quantitative research. Quantitative research was used to explore the relationship between training effectiveness, and potential entrepreneurs as well as determining the mediating role of work environment. The method used in this survey is the questionnaire method as a means of data collection from the respondents, and which is the easiest and quickest instrument to gather the respondent's views. The research design involves a sample of employees whom questionnaires were sent and filled, with regards to their opinions, feelings and perceptions. The training effectiveness is the independent variables; the work environment is the mediating variable, while potential entrepreneurs are the dependent.

Relationship between the Kirkpatrick Levels of Training Evaluation and Potential entrepreneurs' performance
According to Kirkpatrick (1996), the reaction, learning, behaviour and the results level of training evaluation influence a potential entrepreneur. From the findings of Kirkpatrick (1996), the construct of training evaluation is found to influence a potential entrepreneur.
This supported the following hypothesis: H a1 : There is a significant relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneur's performance.  Table 1 above indicates that reaction level of training evaluation has a significant relationship with potential entrepreneurs at significant value, p=0.000, which is less than p=0.01. The results from the "r" value r=0.800 translate a strong positive relationship between reaction level and potential entrepreneurs. Therefore, the first alternative hypothesis is accepted. (p=0.000, which is less than p=0.01, r=0.800).This findings is in line with the work of Baldwin (2008) who found that the knowledge and skills of an organizations employees has become increasingly important to performance, competitiveness, and advancement, as such, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes gained by the employees through training has to be periodically evaluated over time so that their capability will match with the existing gaps and bridge the skills requirement needs on current and future jobs requirements.  Table 2 above indicates that learning level of training evaluation has a significant relationship with potential entrepreneurs at significant value, p=0.000 which is less than p=0.01. The results from the "r" value r=0.770 translate a strong positive relationship between learning level and potential entrepreneurs. Therefore, the first alternative hypothesis is accepted. (p=0.000, which is less than p=0.01, r=0.770).  Table 3 above indicates that learning level of training evaluation has a significant relationship with potential entrepreneurs at significant value, p=0.000 which is less than p=0.01. The results from the "r" value r=0.402 translate a moderate positive relationship between behaviour level and potential entrepreneurs. Therefore, the first alternative hypothesis is accepted. (p=0.000, which is less than p=0.01, r=0.402).  Table 4 above indicates that results level of training evaluation has a significant relationship with potential entrepreneurs at significant value, p=0.000 which is less than p=0.01. The results from the "r" value r=0.876 translate a very strong positive relationship between results level and potential entrepreneurs. Therefore, the first alternative hypothesis is accepted. (p=0.000, which is less than p=0.01, r=0.876).

Pearson's Correlation on the relationship between Organization's Culture and Potential Entrepreneurs
Performance H a2 : There is a significant influence of work environment (construct) on potential entrepreneurs.  Table 5: above indicates that opportunity of participation as a construct of work environment has a significant relationship with potential entrepreneurs at significant value, p=0.000, which is less than p=0.01. The results from the "r" value r=0.725 translate a strong positive relationship between opportunity of participation and potential entrepreneurs. Therefore, the second alternative hypothesis is accepted. (p=0.000, which is less than p=0.01, r=0.725).
This finding is in line with Christopher and Khann (2013) that the opportunity to participate as a work environment construct is an employee's immediate surrounding which he manipulate for his existence. Facteau (2006) also indicates that environmental conditions affect employee safety perceptions which have impact upon employee commitment in the workplace. In Table 6 above, the result of this study confirmed that opportunity of participation is statistically in significant linear relationship based on the perception of employees with the dependent variables since it is significant at p=0.003, which is less than p=0.01, therefore, the fourth alternative hypothesis is accepted, and it can be assumed as the dominant factor contributing to the potential entrepreneurs.

Results for Sobel Test on Mediating Variables
The results of the Sobel test on organisation culture mediation shows that the Test statistics value=2.203, the Standard error value=0.717, and the p value=0.009. This shows that opportunity of participation mediates positively in the relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneurs, and it is considered as a dominant factor at (p=0.01).

Discussion
This study was conducted by survey on the sample organization with the total 107 respondents as the sample of the study. The result of this study confirmed that training effectiveness is a major and crucial factor that influences the potential entrepreneur's performance. The Kirkpatrick four levels of training evaluation to determine the impact of training effectiveness towards potential entrepreneurs were found to have a positive relationship towards influencing business performance. Opportunity of participation mediates positively in the relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneur's performance.This shows that opportunity of participation has a mediating influence towards effective performance of potential entrepreneurs in business organizations. When making decisions about the best methods to generate business achievements in their complex environments, organizational leaders are confronted with many complex issues. Thus, the sample organization should do everything possible to ensure that every training provided on the task as a participation by to the potential entrepreneurs should be evaluated at the four levels so that gaps and training needs should be identified, and corrective actions has to be consistently taken.

Implications
The results of this study will enrich the Kirkpatrick Training Evaluation Theory and Model, the Ludwig Open System Theory (System theory), and the Don Elger Theory of Performance that support the hypotheses of this study, in enhancing future research on the relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneurs performance, and the mediating role of work environment by developing a relevant model in the future researches. Future researchers can make further investigations to get more accurate data and reliable information, in terms of the instruments used in this study. By identifying the relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneurs performance, and the mediating role of opportunity of participation, the advantages of understanding how training can be evaluated appropriately, as well as also appreciating the environmental factors that can influence the performance of potential entrepreneurs by policy makers and HR department of the sample organization. This would allow the organization to remain proactive in the issues relating to training and its evaluation, and the environmental context and influence of work environment factors on potential entrepreneurs in a reduced cost within a specified period of time.

Limitations of the Research
This research concentrated only on training effectiveness as an independent variable, and work environment as a mediating variable, while potential entrepreneurs performance as a dependent variable. Therefore, other researches should be conducted using different variables to proliferate the validity and reliability of this research.
Another limitation of this research is that its performance evaluation is only based on the sample organisation's employees; other researches may be conducted beyond this.

Recommendation of the Research
Relatively, this research is important to business organizations in the way they can evaluate the employees training programs in such a way that it can be result oriented, thereby meeting the purpose and targets upon the employees, towards a successful task completion within time frame and with less cost that would firmly put the organisation on the path towards the accomplishment of it's goals and objectives, which is a bedrock for performance and productivity. The HR department of the business organisations should take in to consistent consideration about the four levels of evaluating a training program that has an influence on potential entrepreneurs performance, as well as the work environment factor (opportunity of participation) that also influence potential entrepreneurs performance. The population of this research is from a business organisation, because of the scope and limitation of this study. Future researchers should extend it to include public organisations. The sample size should also be increased to have a larger sample size in future research by other researchers. The method of data collection should also be enhanced, qualitative, and the combination of qualitative and quantitative research approach can both be used to improve the quality and reliability of the future research. The instrument to be used should include, in addition, an interview method. This, together with the questionnaire method, would improve the validity and reliability of the future researches, and hence, a way forward.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the Kirkpatrick four levels of training evaluation and the work environment construct has a positive correlation relationship with potential entrepreneur's performance. The stepwise regression analysis was used to determine the mediating role of work environment (organization's culture), in the relationship between training effectiveness (reaction, learning, behaviour, and results) and potential entrepreneur's performance. The findings revealed that opportunity of participation act as a mediator and a dominant factor in the relationship between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneur's performance. The regression analysis results show that opportunity of participation mediate positively in the relationships between training effectiveness and potential entrepreneur's performance.