Disentangling the role of the supervisor in transfer of training

• The study reviews the literature on the role of the supervisor in training transfer.
• 24 specific supervisor support behaviours and attitudes are discerned.
• A more holistic definition of the role of the supervisor in transfer is provided.
• More research is needed to identify which facets most clearly impact transfer.

Literature has indicated that support of the supervisor is critical for an employee to apply the competences developed during a training programme in the job. Typically in training transfer studies this is referred to as ‘supervisor support’. A close examination of supervisor support in training transfer studies shows that, although many studies consider it a similar construct, the content does differ from one study to another. The purpose of this systematic literature study is to elucidate this notion of supervisor support by conceptualising and operationalising the role of the supervisor in training transfer at a deeper level of specificity: in terms of particular behaviours and attitudes adopted by supervisors. Ninety-nine articles were retrieved and examined. As a result, a more holistic definition of the construct is proposed and 24 specific behaviours and attitudes that a supervisor can adopt to support training transfer, were discerned.