“Too Much” Self-Efficacy? Understanding the Curvilinear Consequences of Between-Person Self-Efficacy through a Moderated-Mediation Model of Perceived Proximity and Employee Effort

Building from a paradox frame, we argue that at the between-person level the relationship between self-efficacy and effort may be nonlinear. We bound our conceptual model with a focus on perceived proximity, reflecting employees’ perceptions of how close they feel to their organization and colleagues. We test our model in a lagged, multi-source field study, with matching employee survey data from 1502 employees, and archival effort, and performance, metrics collected several months later. The results from our analyses reveal a curvilinear association between self-efficacy and effort, which is moderated by perceived proximity. We also find that the relationship between self-efficacy and performance is mediated by effort for individuals with low self-efficacy (Low SEs), but not for individuals with moderate (Moderate SEs) or high self-efficacy (High SEs). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.