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The purpose of this paper is to seek a better understanding of the role of volition in the learning transfer system beyond the well-established concept of motivation to transfer.

Participants of a two-day leadership training were asked to complete two online questionnaires (t₁ directly after training, t₂ eight weeks after training). In total, 891 managers answered the first questionnaire, 465 the second.

Confirmatory factor analysis suggests that motivation and volition to transfer are perceived as two different constructs. Hierarchical linear regression shows that additional variance in training transfer can be explained when volition to transfer is taken into account. Structural equation models and bootstrap analysis suggest that both motivation and volition to transfer mediate effects of supervisor support and trainer performance on training transfer.

The results imply that besides motivation to transfer, volition to transfer may be a relevant construct in the transfer of training. It remains to be tested how far these findings can be generalized to other training settings beside leadership trainings.

Organizations aiming at improving training transfer should focus on enhancing the participants’ motivation and volition to transfer. Both trainers and supervisors seem to promote transfer of training by influencing a trainee’s motivation to transfer and volition to transfer.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine the role of volition in training transfer.

This paper aims to provide an understanding of influencing motivation and volition in the transfer of learning within the context of technical training in different countries by controlling predictors.

In six countries, employees from one automotive company’s service centres were asked to complete two online questionnaires after a blended learning training program with technical content (t1: 7 to 12 days after the training, t2: 5 to 7 weeks after). In total, 441 technical staff members participated.

Results suggest that motivation and volition mediate the effects of peer support, content validity and supervisor support on training transfer after a technical training. The outcomes show that peer support has an important influence on motivation and that national culture is less important than company culture.

The results should be tested further in different trainings, companies and countries.

This is one of the first international studies to confirm peer support and content validity as predictors for motivation to transfer after technical training. It is also the first instance of exploring possible mediation by motivation and volition on peer support and content validity after technical training in an intercultural context.

This study aims to examine how Chinese rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status was associated with their decent work.

Grounded in the psychology of working theory (PWT), this study tested the path from rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status to decent work via work volition, with this path moderated by environmental uncertainty and trade union support. 470 rural-urban migrant workers from four manufacturing enterprises were investigated.

Results indicated that rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status was positively associated with rural-urban migrant workers' decent work through work volition. In addition, environmental uncertainty weakened the impact of socio-economic status on work volition while trade union support strengthened the relationship between socio-economic status and work volition.

The study contributes to the growing research on the PWT by testing its utility among rural-urban migrant workers in the Chinese context. The study also identifies the crucial effects of environmental uncertainty and trade union support, which are distinctive characters of contemporary China, in the formation process of rural-urban migrant workers' decent work. A detailed explanation of the results and implications is discussed in the end.

This study aims to analyze the effects of goal-directed feelings on student’s performance in marketing simulations. Calculating path coefficients from data collected at two points in time, the authors tested a model consisting of four constructs personal stakes, anticipatory emotions, volitions and goal-directed behavior. The results suggest that positive and negative anticipatory emotions mediate the relationship between personal stakes and volitions and determine student motivation, behavior and actual performance independently from simulation design, simulation environment and cognitive personality characteristics of the participants. Implications for educators include the need for active pursuit of anticipatory emotion development.

The model consists of the four constructs: personal stakes, anticipatory emotions, volitions and goal-directed behavior. Personal stakes determine involvement and are perceived based on an evaluation of the degree of potential impact of one’s performance on one’s personal well-being. Anticipatory emotions, as explained before, are affected by personal stakes and can be either positive or negative. They influence volitions or wills; these are intentions consisting of both directive components (for example, strategy planning and approach selection) and motivational components (for example, the commitment to a necessary effort). Volitions are the mediators that transform anticipatory emotions into goal-directed behaviors. These goal-directed behaviors comprise the fourth construct, consisting of mental and physical efforts aimed at accomplishing a specific objective.

The hypotheses were tested calculating path coefficients. All hypotheses were supported and statistically significant (p < 0.01; one-tailed significance test). With regard to H1, personal stakes were positively related to both positive and negative anticipatory emotions, with a particularly strong relation to positive emotions. Consistent with H2, anticipatory emotions were strongly related to volitions and, thus, heavily influencing the extent to which students would engage in planning and compare their own effort against that of their fellow students. Fueled by the anticipatory emotions, the volitions, in turn, were strongly related to the actually exhibited behavior, supporting H3. In other words, the students put their intentions into practice and engaged in careful simulation planning as well as in an effort that they perceived to be superior to the one of their peers. It is then no surprise that H4 was also supported. The more the students attempted to be carefully prepared and the harder they tried to outperform their fellow students, the more likely the achievement of the desired objectives became. Finally, H5 was supported, even though only weakly with regard to negative outcome emotions. This indicates that successful performance leads to positive emotions, but a failure in the marketing simulation (measured by a non-achievement of objectives set) does not necessarily make the students feel bad.

In conclusion, the study provides the rising number of marketing educators using computerized simulations with an approach to increase student motivation and performance. It has become obvious that personal stakes alone are not sufficient to fully develop commitment on the side of students. Rather, anticipatory emotions serve as the mediator between those stakes and students’ volitions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model that investigates volition and self-efficacy as antecedents, and work engagement and job satisfaction as outcomes of perceived employability. It also evaluates the moderating role of job insecurity on the relationships between perceived employability and the two employee outcomes.

The data were collected via a random sampling survey on living conditions of Hong Kong citizens in 2014. The final sample consists of 414 Chinese working adults. The authors employ structural equation modeling and moderated regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

Results show that volition and self-efficacy are positively related to perceived employability, and perceived employability in turn positively relates to work engagement and job satisfaction. Besides, perceived employability fully mediates the effect of volition and partially mediates the effect of self-efficacy, on the two outcome variables. The authors also find that job insecurity acts as a significant moderator on the relationships between perceived employability and the outcomes.

Limitations of this study include self-reported data, cross-sectional research design, and selected respondents with a large proportion of recent immigrants. By delineating the process through which perceived employability affects employees’ work engagement and job satisfaction, this study provides some implications for research and practice.

This study introduces a conceptual model that includes both antecedents and consequences of perceived employability. It examines the relationships among volition, perceived employability, and work engagement, which has not been studied before. By identifying job insecurity as an important moderator, it reveals a boundary condition of perceived employability on employee outcomes.

Intentions are often included in service research, but researchers have paid little attention to a discussion in psychology in which different intention constructs are distinguished. This study is based on the belief that different intention constructs capture different aspects of the customer's assessments of his or her future repatronizing behavior – and that intentions measures based on different intention constructs are not equally correlated with firstly, the customer's global evaluation of the supplier, such as satisfaction, and secondly, his or her overt repatronizing behavior. The specific purpose is to examine if such variation is at hand in with regards to two specific intention constructs: intentions‐as‐expectations and intentions‐as‐wants.

A first questionnaire was used to collect data on satisfaction and intentions in a restaurant setting, and a second questionnaire – distributed to the respondents one month after the first questionnaire – captured behavioral data. These data were used to assess associations between the main variables (satisfaction, intentions, and behavior).

The analysis shows that the two intention constructs produced different strength in the association with customer satisfaction and with repatronizing behavior. In addition, the findings suggest that the two constructs are characterized by different levels of assessment volition, and this also serve as our main explanation of the results.

The findings imply that service researchers should pay careful attention to how intentions are conceptualized and operationalized, because an incautious selection of one intention construct over another may affect the role of intentions as mediators of the link between satisfaction and behavior.

The literature on volition indicates that the only dichotomous measure that differentiates voluntary from involuntary temporary workers is unable to fully explain temporary workers’ attitudes. There are more detailed explanations of why workers choose temporary work. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale of reasons for choosing temporary employment.

The study is divided into two parts. In the first part, 32 items were selected based on the literature. They were administered to a sample of 337 Italian temporary agency workers. Then, an exploratory factor analysis was used. In the second part of the study, previous findings were subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) considering a sample of 325 Italian temporary agency workers.

A two-factor solution (i.e. integrated regulation and identified regulation) emerged from the CFA. The authors present the scale with means and standard deviations for the measurement of the constructs. The integrated regulation subscale appears sensitive enough to differentiate the contract preference.

The two samples were from a single temporary work agency, thus they did not represent the entire heterogeneous population of temporary workers.

This study proposes a first attempt to construct a questionnaire about the reasons for choosing temporary employment in Italy that raises questions about how institutional factors within various labor markets influence issues of volition and employment contract choice.

Although the role of reflections in entrepreneurship education is undeniable, the research has focused mainly on their advantages and consequences for learning process, whereas their dynamics and interrelations with other mental processes remain unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to better understand how personality and intelligence constructs: cognition, conation, and affection evolve and change along the learning process during entrepreneurship education.

To better understand reflective processes in entrepreneurial learning this paper adopts the tripartite constructs of personality and intelligence. By employing longitudinal explorative research approach and self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm, the authors follow students’ reflections during their two-year learning processes. First, the authors try to identify how the interplay between the cognitive, conative, and affective aspects emerges in students’ reflections. Then, the authors investigate how this interplay evolves during the individual learning process and finally, by looking for similarities in these learning pathways, the authors aim to identify patterns of students’ reflective learning process.

All constructs are present during the learning process and all are prone to change. The individual constructs alone shed no light on the interplay between different constructs, but rather that the interplay between sub-constructs should be taken into consideration as well. This seems to be particularly true for cognition, as procedural and declarative knowledge have very different profiles. Procedural knowledge emerges together with emotions, motivation, and volition, whereas the profile of declarative knowledge is individual. The unique profile of declarative knowledge in students’ reflections is an important finding as declarative knowledge is regarded as the center of current pedagogic practices.

The study broadens the understanding of reflective practices in the entrepreneurial learning process and the interplay between affective, cognitive, and conative sub-constructs and reflective practices in entrepreneurship education. The findings clearly indicate the need for further research on the interplay between sub-constructs and students’ reflection profiles. The authors see the study as an attempt to apply an exploratory statistical method for the problem in question.

The results are able to advise pedagogy. Practical implications concern the need to develop reflective practises in entrepreneurial learning interventions to enhance all three meta-competencies, even though there are so far no irrefutable findings to indicate that some types of reflection may be better than others.

The results of the analysis indicate that it is possible to study the complex and dynamic interplay between sub-constructs of cognitive, conative and affective constructs. Moreover, the research succeeded in identifying both individual variations and general reflection patterns and changes in these during the learning process. This was possible by adopting a longitudinal explorative research approach with SOM analyses.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the psychological constructs volition and motivation influence successful and unsuccessful weight maintainers’ experiences during the difficult period following an intensive lifestyle intervention.

Post lifestyle intervention semi-structured interviews with 11 successful and four unsuccessful weight maintainers were conducted.

The eight themes that emerged and the differences between successful and unsuccessful maintainers were theoretically explained applying the self-determination theory (motivation) and the personal systems interaction (volition).

The study validates and coheres with previous findings on the importance of self-regulation and autonomous motivation for weight loss maintenance. Additionally, the study’s findings expand the literature by explaining both empirically and theoretically how the quality of motivation concerning an activity influences the level of volitional intensity needed when wanting to either engage in goal oriented or refrain from goal opposing activities.

Developing effective obesity interventions has become essential, as obesity is a growing health threat in most countries in the world. However, there is a gap in the literature with regards to qualitative psychological studies with a clear theoretical framework informing intervention development.

The purpose of the present study is to examine how perceived employability relates to job exhaustion, psychological symptoms and self‐rated job performance in involuntary and voluntary temporary employees compared to permanent employees.

The study is based on a cross‐sectional design using a sample of university teachers and researchers (n=1,014) from two Finnish universities. Of the sample, 40 percent (n=408) are permanent employees, 49 percent (n=495) involuntary and 11 percent (n=111) voluntary temporary employees. Most respondents (54 percent) have education above a Master's degree, the average age is 43 years, and 58 percent are women.

The results of general linear model analyses show that perceived employability promotes favorable outcomes among all respondents. However, the negative relationship between perceived employability and job exhaustion and psychological symptoms is stronger among voluntary than among involuntary temporary employees.

The study indicates that although perceived employability seems to be important to all employees, involuntary temporary employees benefit least from high perceived employability in terms of individual well‐being.