2. Conceptual background
2.1 Organizational learning culture
The organizational learning culture is a type of organizational culture that integrates organizational learning. It “supports the acquisition of information, the distribution and sharing of learning”, and it “reinforces and supports continuous learning and its application to organizational improvement” Aspects of organizational environment, such as climate or culture, have been shown toinfluence employee job satisfaction as a work-related outcome.consider organizational culture as the heart of human management strategy because of its influences on individuals’ attitudes and outcomes such as commitment, satisfaction, retention, performance, etc.found that job satisfaction levels varied across different corporate cultural types. In his empirical survey it was found that job satisfaction was positively related to clan and ad-hocracy cultures, and negatively related to market and hierarchy cultures. In related studies,
supported that a bureaucratic culture has a negative influence on job satisfaction whereas reported that a supportive culture is positively associated with employee job satisfaction. indicated that employee performance and job satisfaction depend on a match between the organizational culture and the characteristics of an individual employee. Thus, it is expected that an organizational learning culture has a significant impact on job satisfaction. Previous research supported the idea that there is a positive
significant link between workplace learning (formal, informal, and incidental) and employee job satisfaction. This survey, conducted in Malaysia targeting small to mid-sized businesses, found evidence that employees with opportunities to develop and learn at their jobs express higher levels of overall job
satisfaction. The empirical results also confirmed that the promotion of an organizational learning culture can enhance job satisfaction. Both of these factors influence organizational outcome variables such as motivation to transfer learning and turnover intention.found evidence that organizational learning culture has a direct and indirect impact, through the mediator of job satisfaction, on employee turnover intention. They noted that despite the high correlation between the organizational learning culture and job satisfaction, these two constructs tend to be distinct both conceptually and in terms of measurement , also using both qualitative and quantitative methods, showed that two criteriafor job satisfaction (relationship with colleagues and relationship with the family) significantly related to employees’ learning commitment.found that a positive learning climate reduces job stress and also had a direct and positive
impact on job satisfaction and employee commitment.conducted quantitative research targeting different industries in Taiwan and found that the operation of learning organizations has a significantly positive effect on employees’ job satisfaction. provided empirical evidence of the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction by taking organizational learning capability into consideration. A significant positive association was also proposed between organizational learning, job satisfaction and staff empowerment related to after-school programs proposed that one the job facet of general training increases job satisfaction and subsequent intentions to stay. The impact of an organizational learning culture on a firm’s financial performance and overall assessment approaches has received considerable attention in different fields such as management, marketing, accounting, and strategy. For example, conducted research that suggests the existence of a positive association between the seven dimensions of the organizational learning culture, as articulated and both the perceptual and objective measures of firms’ financial performance, explaining 10 percent of its variance also found evidence that the measures of these seven dimensions of the learning culture have statistically significant effects on organizational outcomes. using market financial and accounting financial data, showed that learning companies demonstrated stronger performances in financial markets over time as compared to their closest competitors. However, to the best of our knowledge, only a few studies have attempted to assess the relationship between OLC and customer satisfaction. An empirical survey based on a sample of 200 Australian organizations found that learning organization displays a moderate to strong link with three
measures of performance (knowledge performance, financial performance and customer satisfaction) at a self-managed work team level. The research, strongly supported the mediating effect of employees’ motivation/vision in the relationship between learning through service failures and the customer intent to return to the same hospitality industry. Linking the previous findings, it is hypothesized that in an organizational learning culture that encourages and supports individual learning and development, the
employees can respond more quickly and effectively to customers’ needs – thus achieving a competitive advantage that is difficult for competitors to emulate, and easily recognized by customers. proposed that long-term superior performance depends on superior learning provided by an organization. In learning
organizations, much of the training focuses on soft skills such as problem-solving, decision-making, and need analysis – all of which have a direct impact on customer satisfaction.Therefore, based on the previous literature, this study predicts the following two
hypotheses:
H1. Organizational learning culture will have a direct and positive effect on job satisfaction.
H2a. Organizational learning culture will have a direct and positive effect on customer satisfaction.
H2b. Organizational learning culture will have an indirect and positive effect on customer satisfaction through job satisfaction.
2.2 Job satisfaction and customer satisfaction
It is argued that a worker’s level of job satisfaction can be used as a measure of a worker’s relative utility on the job and, as such, is an important indicator of a worker’s attitude and behaviour. Specifically, it has been confirmed that employee job satisfaction has an important influence on customer satisfaction. Satisfied employees tend to be more productive, provide better services to customers, and hence, can
significantly enhance business profitability. The cycle of success, suggests that satisfied employees will deliver high service quality. In a similar vein, the service-profit chain establishes a relationship among profitability and growth due to customer loyalty and satisfaction – which is, in turn, due to services provided by satisfied employees reformulation of the ECSI model, establishing that perceived employee satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment have an important impact on perceived product quality and perceived service quality. Apart from the aforementioned studies, there are other empirical studies that have
tested the relationship between employee job satisfaction and customer service quality
to service businesses. Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that some studies claim that the measurement of customer satisfaction should be based exclusively on the interactive quality, since employees cannot affect customer satisfaction in regard to physical quality; that is determined by
the administration and budget. More specifically, proved that some job satisfaction facets, such as satisfaction with customers, satisfaction with benefits and satisfaction with the work itself, may have a larger effect on service quality than others. Their study focused on items that represented the employee-related aspects of service quality.Taking into consideration the previous review on the relationship between job satisfaction and customer satisfaction, this study predicts the third hypothesis:
H3. Job satisfaction will have a direct and positive effect on customer satisfaction.
The conceptual framework of this study, as summarised in hypotheses H1, H2 and H3
is depicted in Figure 1.
The present study aims also at exploring the moderating effect of employees’
education on the relationship between organizational learning culture, job satisfaction
and customer satisfaction. based on the empirical findings of their research, concluded that “educational level of the employees plays a significant role in developing the professional attitude and behavior of employees supports employees and provides platform for quality learning and behavior modification with
an increasing performance and creativity” that employees with higher levels of schooling tend to be more sensitive and predisposed to learning in the workplace. Thus organizations with a more highly
educated workforce tend to have greater orientation toward learning. These
observations are explored in H4.
H4. The organizational learning culture’s effect on customer satisfaction will be mediated by employee job satisfaction, and this relationship will be moderated by employee educational level. Specifically, the indirect effect of organizational learning culture on customer satisfaction via employee job satisfaction will be stronger when employee education is high than when employee education is low.