Organisational learning and employee engagement: The mediating role of supervisory support

Abstract This study examined the effect of organisational learning on employee engagement and the mediating influence of supervisory support in some selected pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria. The survey research design was adopted to assess the subject matter. Five hundred and forty-one hundred (541) respondents were surveyed across all the selected pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria with the usage of purposive and stratified sampling technique. Only four hundred and thirty-four (434) copies of questionnaire representing (80.2%) response rate were correctly filled, returned and analysed for this study. Structural Equation Model (AMOS 23) was adopted for the analysis of the mediating influence of supervisory support on organisational learning and efficacy of employee engagement to work and job task. The results from the test of hypotheses showed that supervisory supports significantly influence organisational learning and employee engagement (R2 = 0.813 p-value = 0.000). The study emphasised continuous supervisory training programs for employee’s effective delivery of their roles should be given priority because of its role in mediating the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement. The insights from this study would be of great value to the management of the pharmaceutical industry, and other stakeholders to develop and invest in organisational learning that will enhance job commitment and engagement of employees.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Organisational learning is the capacity of the organisation in acquiring, utilising and sharing information that allows them gain to have control in the global market place. Organisational learning occurs when a unit in an organisation acquires information that is potentially useful to the organisation. Organisational learning emphasizes a well-designed process that allows for continuous improvement on working capabilities, dexterity of ideas and information crossfertilization as shared between individuals in the organisation. This study addresses the fundamental gap in the literature by taking a deeper look at the mediating role of supervisory support in facilitating the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement in the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry.

Introduction
Organisations are currently faced with the central environmental forces of economic globalisation.
To survive with these current external threats and opportunities, and to have a competitive edge over others, firms have to learn, acquire new skills and knowledge that will advance their performance mediates. This process is known as organisational learning which is the organisation's capacity to obtain, utilise, and share information that would ensure competitive advantage (Argyris & Schon, 1978). Organisations can create, transfer and integrate new skills and knowledge through learning. Extant studies have shown that the unique skills and knowledge gained through learning motivates the dedication and engagement of employees with their job roles and functions (Edmonstone, 2018: Nonaka, 1998. Employee engagement concept is a significant enabler of competitive advantage that has gained popularity over the years. According to Apontea and Zapata (2013), engaged employees are aware of the organisational business environment and work well with colleagues to improve job output for the organisational benefit. The organisation, in turn, must nurture and develop engagement which is a two-way relationship between employee and employer. Organisational learning could foster employee engagement because the continuous improvement of employee skill and knowledge makes them feel valued and appreciated (Edmonstone, 2018). However, when employees get adequate information, material and emotional support from supervisors, it fosters the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement.
Supervisors as agents of the organisation are responsible for evaluating and directing the job performance of employees. According to Mohammed and Ali (2016), supervisory support can be in three forms, such as emotional support (acceptance, showing care and empathy) material support such as (labour, money, environmental modification and time to help improve the employees) and instrumental support (information, advice, giving guidance in work, directives and feedback). Supervisory support plays a vital role in the work environment structuring by providing adequate feedback and information to employees. Supervisory support plays a role in the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement. This is consequent upon the fact that supervisory support in organisations foster employees' confidence in their skill and knowledge development and also motivate the development of innovative ideas for rapid changes within an organisation. (Qureshi & Hamid, 2017).
Other researchers have suggested that when supervisors value employee contributions, organisational learning will be achieved (Hussain & Ishak, 2017;Vushe, 2018). Oguegbe et al. (2017) and Mohammed and Ali (2016) likewise argue that when employees receive great instrumental support, they experience a high level of interaction between their achievement of organisational goals and employee capabilities. Understanding the dynamics between supervisory support and organisational learning has been established by extant studies Mohammed and Ali (2016) and Odour and Samuel (2018) nonetheless, the extent to which supervisory support foster the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement has to be adequately addressed. It is believed that organisational learning creates the platform for engagement of the employee. This is because employees are fully included as members of the team, focused on clear goals, empowered, trusted and supported in developing new skills (Hussain & Ishak, 2017). However, the extent to which leaders provides the necessary support and value employees' contributions largely determine employees' level of engagement (Amah, 2018). Nevertheless, trends in the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry reveal that there are issues of supervisors not having the necessary expertise to offer support and not providing clear advice and guidance to employees. Evidence also shows that supervisors are slow in providing feedback on procedural documentation as regards drug usage (Achour et al., 2017).
There are lacunas in the existing studies on the subject matter of organisational learning, supervisory support and employee engagement in the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry. It must be established these existing studies focused is on the relationship between organisational learning and employee performance in the educational industry as well as the mediating influence of supervisory support in enhancing the relationship between organisational learning and employee performance. However, this present study's focus is on the extent to which supervisory support mediates the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement. This has not been fully addressed in Nigeria. Furthermore, most of the existing literature made use of correlation and regression analysis in analysing the information obtained. However, this study adopted Structural Equation Modelling to analyse the structural relationship of the latent constructs. Factor model was adopted, these reveal the degree of fitness, level of reliability and the construct validity was carried out through discriminant and convergent analyses. This study discourses the fundamental gap in the literature by deeply exploring the mediating role of supervisory support in facilitating the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement in the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry. An upgraded methodology was used to analyse the data collected. Similarly, this study provides a basis for the management of the pharmaceutical industry to formulate and implement policies that will promote continuous supervisory training programs for employee's effective delivery of their roles. Therefore, in other to achieve this study's objective, section one emphases the background to the study, section two concentrates on the review of related literature in line with this study's objectives while section three showed the theoretical review of this paper. The methodology was clearly explained in the fourth section while the fifth section concisely discussed the findings, conclusions, limitations and suggestions for further studies.

Organizational learning concept
Organisational learning is the process by which organisations acquire new skills, information, opinions and attitudes that will keep them competitive and up-to-date (Arshad & Mahmood, 2016). Organisational learning is considered to have three sub-processes: creating, retaining and transferring of information. The information created through organisational learning allows organisations to re-conceptualise and reframe issues. The process of retaining vital information within an organisation, is the translation of such into organisational change, which means that the organisational management does not rely only on talent retention for sustainable competitive advantage (Oyeniyi et al., 2014). Lastly, information transfer is the process of disseminating knowledge from one individual to another by means of technology. Technology alone is not enough to transfer knowledge; organisational practices, structures, and culture facilitate and encourage transfers as well.
In the pharmaceutical industry organisational learning is used to build, supplement and organise information to achieve efficiency. Organisational learning is a tool used to satisfy customers better by creating new products and services. Organisations have always been engaging in learning, but fast changes in the market condition have increased the speed at which learning has to occur (Ogueyungbo, Moses & Igbinoba, 2019a). Organisations operating in the present business environment must also understand environmental changes in business and technology in order to respond as quickly as possible (Ogueyungbo, Moses & Igbinoba, 2019b). Globally, the Pharmaceutical Industry is a technologically intensive where information is the main source of competitive advantage. This industry is fast becoming more patient-centric, where patients are involved in all the stages of value creation. Chukwuma et al. (2017) affirm that new technologies like mobile application and artificial intelligence have given pharmaceutical firms enormous information on patient data, allowing for more advanced analysis and medicine precision. The Nigerian Pharmaceutical Industry has engaged in the adoption of radio frequency identification technology by the national agency for food and drug administration and control (NAFDAC). This technology has helped consumers to identify fake drugs by sending code at the back of the drug to a phone number or by also calling a phone number to confirm (Obukohwo et al., 2018). The information made available to the consumer will help them decide whether to purchase the drug or not. Studies have shown that organisational learning such as descriptive, normative, prescriptive and diagnostic learning will effectively achieve high employee engagement and competitive advantage (Chukwuma et al., 2017;Huber, 1991).

Normative learning
This is how organisations learn and bring themselves close to their ideals. Normative learning tends to ask questions on how to improve learning and explains what is involved in making learning a reality with proofs (Senge, 2006). The discipline of normative learning includes personal mastery, mental modelling, shared visioning and systems thinking.

Descriptive learning
This has its root in neuropsychology, cognitive psychology and social psychology. This is the organisational routine way of learning. Descriptive learning entails more of the process involved in organisational learning, and these include information acquisition, distribution, interpretation and organisational memory as explained:

Prescriptive learning
Prescriptive learning is a way of creating information through the transformation of an individual's experience, i.e. experiential learning. This type of learning recognises individuals learning and life experiences actively. Studies have shown that in the process of acquiring experience, some individuals perceive information through experiencing the tangible and concrete reality (Andresen et al., 2016: Kolb, 2014. Others grasp new information through conceptualisation which is thinking through and analysing instead of the use of sensation. Similarly, in transforming others goes into active experimentation. Prescriptive learning is simply acquiring information through experience, reflection, conceptualisation and organisational experimentation (Kolb, 2014).

Diagnostic learning
Diagnostic learning is the creative way of knowing more about the hidden part of an organisation to solve its peculiar problems. In other to achieve this, organisations hire human resources practitioners to find out the root causes of the issues the organisation is going through and provide practical recommendations to improve them. The diagnostic learning model could be open or closed systems . The closed systems learning model focuses majorly on the internal components of an organisation and ignores its external environment. In contrast, the open system model applies to a continually evolving and changing world (Chiva et al., 2017). Therefore, to diagnose issues accurately, adaptability, responsiveness, flexibility, and differentiation becomes inevitable.

Supervisory support
This is the extent degree to which supervisors care about employees well-being and value their contributions. Supervisors are organisational agents that are responsible for directing and evaluating employee job performance. Due to this fact, employees often interpret their supervisor's feedback as the indication of the organisation's care toward them (Eisenberg et al., 2018). Supervisory support helps employees to reduce the job demands a negative effect on the show of care and support to their well-beings. Supervisory support is an inclusive term that combines the instrumental task and relationship-oriented actions. This includes directing and evaluating performance activities, while also caring about employee's interest, well-being, valuing their contributions (Mohammed & Ali, 2016). Supervisory support also entails supervisors helping the employees showcase the attitudes, knowledge and skills that they acquire from training programs. Supervisory support can be in three forms, including instrumental support (giving feedback, information, guidance in work, advice and directives) emotional support (empathy, showing care and acceptance) and material support such as (money, aid-in-kind, labour and time to help improve the employees) (Mohammed & Ali, 2016).

Employee engagement
Employee engagement is the degree at which employees are engrossed and concentrate on work while carrying out their roles (Saks, 2016). Engagement is also how an employee gets involved and dedicated in work (Falola, Ogueyungbo et al., 2020). According to Kahn (1990), workers are more engaged when they feel there is meaningful and safe work to be done. Employee engagement could be behavioural, cognitive and affective.

Behavioral engagement
Behavioural engagement entails the employee's willingness to work beyond the terms of the contract. This is the employee's ability to go the extra mile in other to get work done for their organisation. Macey and Schneider (2018) explained the perspectives of behavioural engagement to include role expansion, proactive behaviours and initiative. Another perspective of behavioural engagement sees it as the ability of employees to possess adaptability skills (Kahn, 1990). Behavioural engagement shows how employees have the intention to stay with energy and cognitive alertness to learn and acquire new information in the organisation (Allen & Meyer, 1997: Kahn, 1990).

Cognitive engagement
Cognitive engagement is defined as the degree at which employees are mentally alert to their job roles with the goal of the organisation in their mind (Bakker & Demerouti, 2018). An employee is said to be cognitively engaged when he has an enduring, fulfilling and positive attitude that makes him focused and psychologically present in organisational job activities (Ikon & Chika, 2017). Studies such as Chiekezie et al. (2016) and Odour and Samuel (2018) reveal that organisations with efficient and effective information distribution experience a high level of employee cognitive engagement.

Affective engagement
This form of engagement is driven by the desire of the employee to do exceedingly and effectively well in other to attain a psychological contract with the organisation that was not initially present. Emotionally engaged employees are having control over work-life balance with no traits of burnout. They have high levels of organisational citizenship as well as increased task effectiveness. They are less likely to indulge in activities that deter the organisations image or general performance. Employees that are emotionally engaged have positive feelings about work and organisation. According to Kahn (1990), emotional engagement is the ability to empathise with others at work and feel satisfaction or dissatisfaction at work. In relations with emotional engagement, there could also be negative emotions involved, e.g. exhaustion and frustration.

Human capital theory
The term human capital originated in 1979 by the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. According to him, every human being possesses abilities which could either be acquired or innate (Febriansyah, 2016). Human capital refers to the knowledge, skills and abilities of human beings. Human capital theory suggests that "human capital is the skills and knowledge (intellectual and physical) that employees possess that make them productive workers" (Febriansyah, 2016). It is the stock of information or the characteristics an employee has (acquired or innate) that contributes to their productivity. Human capital is the marketable skills of employees in which they make lots of investments. This aspect of human capital enables the development of capacity beyond the years of schooling, but also other characteristics as part of human capital investments which include training and employee attitude towards work. A modernised version of the Adam Smith "wage differential" between employments. This explains the differences of earnings across employees not accounted for by schooling differences alone. Scholars such as Gary S. Becker and Jacob Mincer have posited that things being equal, income differs based on the amount invested in individual and group worker's training and education. The theory moved on to explain the importance of human capital investment on a national scale, stating that the more human capital investment offered, the higher the eligibility skill-base of the labour force of the country creating an avenue for the economic growth. For example, the survival of the human-capital reservoir helped in the rapid reconstruction of the defeated powers after the second world war.
Human capital investment is geared toward the increase in worker's productivity and performance. Human capital investment such as training and coaching and guidance is a great opportunity that builds an engaged workforce and increases organisational market position. Training as a vital aspect of human capital is acquired by workers and often associated with a particular set of technologies or skills necessary for a specific industry. Training can be a little bit complex because it is difficult for an employee to make the training investments all by himself (Febriansyah, 2016). The organisation needs to make training investment in workers, and often bear a significant fraction of the training costs. Employees usually weigh the attractiveness of alternative future income streams with that of the present to decide whether to invest in the high cost of training and deferred consumption of the present. However, the theory is being criticised as its difficulty in measurement of its significant concepts like future earnings and even human capital itself. It was also criticised since there was no justification that investment in education can result in advanced productivity. The issue of quantifying employee productivity and imminent income attached to career positions, excluded in a similar way by allusion to actual remuneration dissimilarities that the theory wishes to explain. Empirical studies have proposed that, though some of the perceived gaps in remunerations are as a result of skills that are learned, the fraction of unsolved difference is still high, and is a basic feature of the imperfect structure and running of the labour-market, rather than of the productivities of the individuals creating the labour supply.
This theory applies to employee engagement because human capital is the essential assets in an organisation and further investment in training increases the quality of organisations workforce. As a result of human capital investment employees are exposed to personal development which fosters their unique contribution in response to the business changing environment. Furthermore, the organisation is perceived as an excellent place to work when employee engagement is enhanced.

Methodology
This study's main objective is to examine the mediating effect of supervisory support between organisational learning and employee engagement. Organisational learning was measured using descriptive, prescriptive, normative and diagnostic learning. In contrast, supervisory support was measured with the material, instrumental, and information support and employee engagement with cognitive, behavioural and affective commitment. It is also important to know that the descriptive research design was employed for this paper. This design provides a clear, detailed and vivid description of the situation without any form of manipulation. In other to harmonise and analyse the data, SPSS and AMOS 23(SEM) was employed to examine the degree of goodness-of-fit and the mediating influence of supervisory support on organisational learning and employee engagement. Meanwhile, the factor model was carried out to show the level of reliability while the degree of fitness was revealed and construct validity was carried out through discriminant and convergent analyses.
The study population comprises six pharmaceutical companies that were regarded as "the best" in terms of scientific research, innovativeness and quality. These companies were selected based on the fact that they export pharmaceutical products to Ecowas countries (Bratianu, 2018). The innovative culture of these companies that fosters export is considered a function of corporate learning and engagement. Due to a large number of employees in the selected pharmaceutical companies, administering a questionnaire to them all becomes extremely difficult, therefore, a sample of 541 respondents was chosen. The sample size was arrived at using sample size determination table as cited in Teherdoost (2017). The multiple sampling techniques, which comprise the stratified, purposeful and convenience techniques, were used for the study. Purposeful sampling was used because this study considered only the employee of the selected pharmaceutical companies. This is line with relevant literature that emphasises the purposive nature of sample which allows a realistic pursuit of information. Stratified sampling was also adopted due to the grouping of the population to different strata, and within each stratum, every employee was given equal opportunity of been selected. The sampling frame for this study includes all the employee working in the six (6) selected pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria. The ethical issues were considered. All the respondents were informed about this study's objective, and they were given the opportunity to withdraw from the research process if they are not willing to continue without giving any reason or reasons for such action. It is equally important to note that this type of research which is categorised as exempt research (low or no risk) does not require written consent. However, implied consent is equally sufficient for this type of research, particularly when the respondents are given the opportunity to hide their identity. In addition, the sample was taken from all groups of the employee for their view on the extent of influence of organisational learning on employee engagement, mediating role of supervisory support. A structured questionnaire and used to get information based on the relevant studies on the subject matter. The questionnaire was developed on a 5-point Likert scale. This assisted in knowing the level of participant's agreement with items in the instrument. So as to ensure the adequacy and precision of the data presented, the measures analysis assumptions recommended by were followed carefully. As a result, the values accepted and values of the variance inflation factor were within the benchmark >0.2 and >5.0, respectively. The linearity and normality were analysed, and 107 respondents from the initial sample of 541 were eliminated using Mahalanobis Distance Criterion. Listwise deletion technique was used to remove the missing data that was lower than 5%. The final sample for the study was four hundred and thirty-four (434) representing (80.2%) of respondents which are considered to be accurate. The unidimensionality, validity and reliability were evaluated after the final measurement model was amendment. The reliability was carried out using CFA loading, construct composite reliability, error variance, construct average variance extracted estimate. CFA loading, and construct composite reliability are within the minimum yardstick of 0.70 and 0.80, respectively. Figure 1 depicts the structural equation modelling of the study with standardised estimates that indicates the moderating role of supervisory supports (SS) on the relationship between organisational learning (OL) and employees' engagement (EE). The organisational learning, which is the independent variable, was measured with four (4) constructs such as descriptive learning, normative learning, prescriptive learning and diagnostic learning. Supervisory supports which is the moderating variable was measured with three (3) constructs which are instructional support, emotional support and material support, while employee engagement which is the dependent variable was measured with three (3) constructs, i.e. affective engagement, cognitive engagement and behavioural engagement. The path model of the study is depicted in Figure 1, while the standardised and unstandardised maximum likelihood estimates that shows the level of relationship and significant values between the observed variables and are depicted in Table 1. Table 2 shows various forms of Goodness-of-fit indicators in assessing specified model of the study. This shows that the constructs fit the data agreeing to the complete, incremental, and mean model fit measures, comprising chi-square per degree of freedom ratio (x2/df) and other indicators presented in the table. However, Table 1 also depicts the outcomes of the Goodness-of-fit of various indicators; the findings show that the formulated hypothesis, as shown in the model to a large extent, fit the sample data. This suggests that the predictive capability of supervisory supports, to a large extent, mediate the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement. However, all the indices for the determination of goodness of fit are above the recommended thresholds, as shown in Table 2.  Figure 1 depict the level of structure model and measurement model for standardised and unstandardised model. The structural path coefficient organisational learning and supervisory support (OL→SS) for standardised and unstandardised model accounted for 0.519 and 0.546, respectively, while structural path coefficient organisational learning an employee engagement (OL→EE) for standardised and unstandardised original model accounted for 0.425 and 0.239. It must be noted that when the supervisory support was introduced as the mediating variable, the structural path was improved. The structural path coefficient (SS→EE) for standardised and unstandardised model accounted for 0.813 and 0.482, respectively, as depicted in Table 1.

Discussion of the findings
It should be noted that the structural path coefficient and R-square were used as criteria for assessing the structural model as well as the predictive validity power of the model. However, going by the R 2 value of standardised model, which is 0.30 and P-value of 0.000, it suggests that 30% of the variation in the supervisory support is explained by organisational learning.
Findings revealed that supervisory support significantly mediates the relationship between organisational learning and employee engagement (β = 0.546, R 2 = 0.300 and p-value of 0.000 < 0.05). This implies that supervisory support significantly moderately mediates the relationship between the observed variables. The implication is that if the management of pharmaceutical firms gives required attention to supervisory support initiatives, it will help to enhance the employee engagement in their job. This finding validates the submission of Falola, Oludayo et al. (2018). They posited that the level of engagement of employees of any organisation is a function of institutional supports received by the employees. This was also reiterated by Falola, Adeniji et al. (2020) and Chiekezie et al. (2016). They submitted that workplace management initiative, which includes supervisory role, enhance work engagement and high performance of the employees. The findings are also in line with the study of Mohammed and Ali (2016) and Qureshi and Hamid (2017). They found out that if organisational learning is greatly enhanced by supervisory support such as the emotional, cognitive and behavioural support, it can create an environment that  motivates employees to be dedicated to working and less likely to leave the organisation. Conversely, Edmonstone (2018) queries the impact of the organisational support on organisational learning. However, the findings of this study have shown that supervisory support is relevant to organisational learning and how it promotes employee engagement and commitment to the organisation.

Conclusion and recommendations
Every organisation endeavors to achieve competitive advantage. Thus, the influence of supervisory support between organisational learning and employee engagement cannot be over emphasised.
The need for increased employee involvement and commitment to work is becoming more imperative. The employees in the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry are faced with issues and concerns surrounding unsatisfactory working conditions and inadequate work-related information, among others. Most of the employees are eager to be efficient and effective in carrying out their responsibilities. Organisational learning can be used to encourage employee in becoming highly engaged with their core job responsibilities which include dealing with ailing patients, dispensing of drugs and managing teamwork. Organisational learning in terms of descriptive, prescriptive, normative and diagnostic learning will make the employee to be productive, creative and strive favourably with the other employees around the globe. It is therefore vital for pharmaceutical industry management and the national agency for food and drug administration and control (NAFDAC) to formulate and implement policies that will promote organisational learning and supervisory support to drive outstanding and productive employee job engagement. It is highly imperative to note that the extent to which leaders value their employees' contributions and provide the required and necessary support largely determine employees' level of engagement. It is therefore inevitable for organisations to provide supervisory support such as material, instrumental and informational support that will stimulate employee involvement and commitment to work. Also, the management of the pharmaceutical industry in Nigeria should endeavor to offer adequate work-related information supports to motivate employees to be more engaged and productive. This is because of the fact that the value of the supervisory support will likely influence commitment and job engagement of the employees. It is therefore recommended that pharmaceutical firms should leverage supervisory supports to derive employee engagement, particularly in this period that the very organisation is pugnacious for relevance and survival in the highly competitive business environment. However, employees must also understand their statutory roles and strive to be effective and actively engaged. This will help the pharmaceutical firms to stand the test of time. It is also important to state that the level of work engagement of employees is a function of the well-structured supervisory support. Therefore, management of the pharmaceutical firms should endeavour to provide the atmosphere that will encourage purposeful supervisory support towards ensuring high work engagement of the employees. However, the model developed as depicted in Figure 1 serves as a springboard for future study across developed and developing nations of the world.

Limitations and suggestions for further studies
This study examined perceptions of organisational learning, employee engagement and the mediating effect of supervisory support in some selected Nigerian pharmaceutical companies. The study covers only six pharmaceutical firms in Nigeria. Although the objective of the study was achieved, however, the study is limited in scope. To this end, the future studies may widen the study scope to other five geo-political zones in Nigeria. The study also used only the quantitative method; however, future research may consider the use of a mixed-method. The qualitative aspect of the method will provide additional information that can be leveraged for decision-making purpose. This study also used a cross-sectional survey data collection method; further studies can consider conducting a study that involves a longitudinal data collection procedure to deliver an accurate confirmation of the identified relationships. Four components each of organisational learning was identified, while three components of employee engagement and supervisory support were identified. Further studies could be carried out considering other elements of the aforementioned constructs.