The Role Of Self-Efficacy In Organizational Behavior

Self-Efficacy: Implications for Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management is an article by Marilyn E. Gist. The aim of this paper revolves around ‘self-efficacy’ and how it is related to organizational behavior additionally it explores ‘self-efficacy’ and how it’s related to some theories by reviewing previous studies. Moreover it discusses the results obtained theoretically as well as the practical test that was executed of self-efficacy for human resources management and organizational behavior.

Self-efficacy is defined as a person’s belief in themselves and their capability of performing a task and is considered vital. The three dimensions of ‘self-efficacy’ include magnitude, strength and generality. Moreover an important aspect

Self-efficacy might be part of the Pygmalion effect by “persuasive influence” of others with “positive expectations”. Persuasion is a crucial source of information related to efficacy and is affected by credibility, agreement of multiple sources and knowledge of the source. Persuasive input can include ‘leader’s expectations’ of the efficacy of employees and is considered strong depending on the leader’s credibility. Therefore an employees’ self-efficacy can increase/decrease by the leader’s expectations. Locus of control, a motivational theory consists of both internal and external. However self-efficacy has only been compared to internal locus of control (a person believing that their success is from their own work). When it comes to performing tasks the difference between self-efficacy and internal locus of control is that self-efficacy is specific but internal locus of control is broad. Results of a study portrays that people who had internal locus of control and high self-efficacy performed better at the given

A person with internal locus of control may respond more to modeling rather than enactive mastery because like modeling they believe they are in control of their environment. However a person with external locus of control believes that enactive mastery experiences are by luck and also tend to reject modeling. For people with external locus of control, internal locus of control can be increased by enactive mastery and verbal persuasion. But more research is needed to determine what produces the highest self-efficacy and performance improvement. Equal employment opportunity (EEO) is relevant to self-efficacy, in context of EEO general self esteem (not task specific) is different than self-efficacy (task specific). Moreover in the past it was thought that the disadvantaged groups had low general self-esteem however after reviewing the literature it’s portrayed that when it comes to self-esteem there is no difference between the groups. Furthermore research may expose that if the disadvantaged group had efficacy training this might help them to overcome/minimize the barriers to