ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the notion of training as an organizational episode. In most organizational training contexts, trainees and trainers consider a training episode to include stimuli associated with the introduction of a training initiative, determination of a training cohort, the delivery of training content, and the return of the trainee to the work situation. The chapter focuses on identifying and developing a framework of those pretraining contextual factors that may influence trainee motivation. It examines training researchers to gather more information from the perspective of the trainee, lest the results of training initiatives be misinterpreted. It also presents a framework of pre training contextual variables imposed on an abbreviated model of social cognitive theory. The chapter discusses each of the contextual variables identified in the framework, and generates research propositions regarding the relationship of pretraining context to self-efficacy and outcome expectations.
