Training participation among Malaysian higher learning institutions’ academia: a systematic review

Attainment of the Malaysian Education Blueprint depends on effective training strategies and continuous professional development among academicians. In retrospect, the effectiveness of these programs depends on the degree of participation of employees’ and hence, reflects in the quality of Malaysian Higher Education system. Preliminary interviews conducted with several public universities’ training officers highlighted that low training participation as one of the most pressing challenges. There is lack of motivation among academicians to participate in training programs since they are not properly linked with vital human resources functions such as successive planning, promotion and annual performance appraisal. Since training programs are costly investment, participation to completion is therefore a precondition for such investment to be worthy. This paper presents a systematic review of existing training participation literatures to establish the empirical gaps and gain in-depth understanding on factors affecting training participation. Our reviews indicate that factors affecting training participation could be grouped into several recurring themes which are training-related factors, individual-related factors and organizational-related factors and job-related factors. Learning theories, training models, Theory of Human Capital and Theory of Planned Behaviors are commonly used as the basis of these factors. Direction of future studies is discussed