Despite the fact that over the recent years, a rapidly growing body of research has focused on human capital development, we still know little about factors that arouse employees’ motivation to undertake development activities. The study investigates the role of positive orientation in relation to training motivation. Positive orientation is conceptualised as a basic disposition to view life, self and experience from a positive outlook. It is identified as the common latent factor that captures the core of self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism. Training motivation is understood as a goal realization process and explained using goal theories. There are three stages of the goal realization process: goal evaluation, intention to undertake training and plan formulation. The data was collected in 2013 and finally the data of 155 employees (51,0% were women) was analysed. Correlation and mediation analyses were applied to identify significant antecedents of the stages of training undertaking. Findings suggest that positive orientation is correlated to motivation to training undertaking. Mediation analysis proved that evaluation of expectancy of goal attainment and intention are mediators between positive orientation and further stages of goal realization process.
