Self-Efficacy In Human Resource Management

In a dynamic work context, where ongoing learning and performance improvement is needed, high self-efficacy helps librarians to react less defensively when they receive negative feedback. In areas where their self-efficacy is low, people often see a negative outcome as confirming the incompetence they perceive in themselves. This can set up a vicious cycle, whereby ambiguous results are considered as evidence of perceived inability, further lowering librarian’s self-efficacy, effort, and subsequent performance. When people have low self-efficacy, they also tend to blame either the situation or another person when things go wrong. Denial of any responsibility for poor performance inhibits the chance that an individual will learn how to perform

Gist, (1987) in an article addressing the implications of self-efficacy for organizational behaviour and human resources management, further points out that there is little evidence that much attention has been paid to organizational applications. Considering the empirical evidence, however, it would seem that the application of social cognition theory is a future trend in these areas and, by extension, an important area to be considered by human resources management. The matching of incentives and rewards to individual preferences has also been shown to enhance motivation and performance (Eden 1998). Performance appraisal systems and compensation schemes have therefore embraced some aspects of current motivation theory, yet have overlooked the measurement and modification of subjective evaluations of task competence (self-efficacy) and outcome

According to Appelbaum and Hare (1996) the most extensive application of self-efficacy has been in the area of training. In addressing needs assessment initially, it can be demonstrated that knowledge of an employee’s self-efficacy expectations may help to identify specific training needs which might otherwise go unnoticed and which possibly hinder improved performance. Social learning theory contends that people develop expectancies about their capacity to behave in certain ways and the probability that such behaviour will result in rewards. The first of these expectancies relates to how they perceive their own competence, while the second pertains to outcomes and is analogous to the concepts of expectancy theory. Therefore, organizational training programmes that rely on films, lectures and role playing techniques (i.e. the vast majority of organization-sponsored training programmes) are using an approach based on social learning theory principles. The self-administration of rewards is also an important part of social learning