A Production Self-Efficacy Scale: An Exploratory Study

Self-efficacy is defined as people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances (Bandura, 1986). Self-efficacy perceptions, in concert with self-regulatory behaviors, influence the goals people set, strategies people choose, effort people expend, and perseverance people display (Bandura, 1991). Thus, successful performance requires that a person possess both the appropriate skills and abilities and strong feelings of efficacy (Lent et al., 1994). Past research has established the importance of task, domain-specific, and general self-efficacy in determining human behavior (e.g. Ackerman and Kanfer, 1993; Bono and Colbert, 2005; Erez and Judge, 2001; Judge and Bono, 2001; Judge et al., 2000; Judge et al., 2002; Judge et al., 2004; Judge et al., 2005; Lent et al., 1994; Saks, 1995; Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998), but researchers have issued a call for additional studies to further our understanding of the relationship between domain-specific self-efficacy and a broader array of work processes and outcomes (Harrison et al., 1997). Task and general self-efficacy, while important levels of analyses, do not completely address today's complex business environments in which employees are continually challenged within their job domains; domain-specific measures allow for a rich, contextualized assessment of individual serf-efficacy. Efficient and effective performance across a variety of tasks within a given work domain is necessary in order for individuals to remain viably employed. Multitasking, role, work and family, and stress management are not only challenges for employees, but for human resource professionals and managers as well. Today's management and staff need tools to assist them in making effective developmental and evaluative decisions. To date, no measure exists to assess applicants or employees' perceptions of job self-efficacy within production environments, such as automobile manufacturing, shipbuilding, and computer assembly. Considering recent workforce trends, such as the declining competence of the U.S. labor force, the migration of many highly skilled manufacturing jobs abroad, and the influx of foreign-born workers in the U.S. (Latham, 1998; Mosisa, 2006), developing additional tools to assist organizations' in managing their human capital seems a worthwhile endeavor. Therefore, in order to contribute to our understanding of the manifestation of individual job self-efficacy in more diverse settings, a production self-efficacy (PSE) scale is developed in our study. Given the fact that very little exploration regarding job applicants' self-efficacy perceptions and post-hire outcomes has been conducted, we utilized two separate organizations' staffing processes as a means of developing and assessing the PSE scale for reliability and validity. Next, we provide an overview of the self-efficacy selection and testing literatures. Then, the Methodology and Results section details our efforts of item generation and purification as well as the respondents and procedures used, and reliability and discriminant validity tests for two samples. The Discussion section addresses study limitations and potential future directions for research, and ends with our conclusions based on the study results. Self-efficacy and Selection Few studies have explored the influence of self-efficacy during recruitment and selection from either the applicants' or firm's perspective, but two such recruiting studies focused on job applicants' serf-efficacy beliefs during the re-employment process. One found that for job seekers with initially low self-efficacy beliefs, job search training led to increased job search self-efficacy perceptions, thereby resulting in more intense job search activities (Eden and Aviram, 1993). Unemployed job seekers with high job search motives and strong feelings of search competence also were found to conduct more intense job searches (Wanberg et al. …