to decay over time, then the changes that were seen here were likely to be at their
highest level and should disappear if no reinforcements were given to the AL
participants on return to their organization. On the other hand, there are also
researchers who have reported continuing AL effects even up to 18 months after
the original AL experiences (Hattie et al., 1997; Priest and Lesperance, 1994).
These mixed views on the decay versus continued impact of AL should raise
caution on what AL could achieve in organizations, despite the popular support
of participants (Burnett and James, 1994; McEvoy and Buller, 1997). Second, the
changes that were seen here were relatively small and raised questions on
real-life effectiveness of AL to produce meaningful benefits across a broad
spectrum of participants in a highly-collectivistic Asian environment. Perhaps,
AL programs should more specifically target people who would benefit most
from them, i.e. the high Kiasu-negative and the low Kiasu-positive individuals,
instead of putting everyone in an organization through the program. Third, this
study was based on a limited sample of participants in Singapore and, while
Singapore has been known to have a high collectivism orientation, the limited
sample suggested that more studies are needed in order to validate the
applicability of AL in such cultures. Related to this limited sample caution is the
large proportion of male participants in the study. Future studies should seek a
more balanced male-to-female ratio in their samples. An experimental design
with controlled groups will also help isolate possible external influences on
attitudinal changes that may have influenced a field-study approach