The Effects of Individual and Situational Factors on Self-learning Activities

Abstract

Self-learning is one of the most typical activities of self-development. Although self-development has been regarded as a type of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), it has rarely been examined in OCB literature. This study focuses on selflearning activities and empirically examines whether they are influenced by job satisfaction, stress, and life happiness. After a discussion on whether self-learning activities can be viewed as a form of OCB, the effects of these variables on various kinds of self-learning activities are analyzed using data collected from more than 30,000 workers. While the positive impacts of job satisfaction and life happiness are empirically revealed, as expected, a positive effect of stress on these activities is demonstrated, contrary to the hypothesis. Some discussion in response to the empirical results is also proposed.