A study of self-efficacy in job-related context

The article stems from an attempt to transfer the Bandura's social cognitive theory into organisational praxis. Beliefs of self-efficacy, which is defined as people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances, are constructed from 4 principal sources of information: enactive mastery experiences; vicarious experiences that alter efficacy beliefs through transmission of competencies and comparison with the attainment of others; verbal persuasion and allied types of social influences that one possesses certain capabilities; and physiological and affective states from which people partly judge their capableness, strength, and vulnerability to dysfunction. The study of self-efficacy in job-related context involved 295 employees from 3companies belonging to the same business group. Self-efficacy was assed using Schwarzer's scale, while rating scales were used for assessing the 4 principal sources of influence upon it. First, differences between companies regarding demographic characteristics of the employees, job characteristics and self-efficacy were analyzed. Dependence of employee's self-efficacy on his/her age, gender, education, work experience, employment status, job type and the four principal influence sources was tested using a regression model. Finally, we identified typical employee profiles with respect to the studied factors. We hope that our study will help human-resources specialists design appropriate interventions for developing a resilient sense of self-efficacy in the employees