The Connection Between Self-Efficacy And Work Engagement

Self-efficacy is defined as “the judgement of people’s capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required in order to achieve specified types of performance”. It is also the individual’s belief of what he or she can achieve in a particular situation. It concentrates on the dynamic, mutual, causal relationship between cognition, behaviour and the environment. While work engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption. Vigor is portrayed by large amounts of energy and mental flexibility while working, the willingness to put the effort in ones work and diligence even with trouble. Dedication is a kind of feeling of significance, passion, motivation, pride and challenge. Absorption refers to the state in which one is highly focused and happy to work so that individual feels the time is fast and it is hard to leave the work. In essence, work engagement describes how employees experience their work. It has been reported that individual difference variables play an important role in determining the level of work engagement. Self-efficacy is one of the personal variables because it is considered as “one of the most theoretically, heuristically and practically valuable concepts figured in modern psychology”.

There are some previous studies have shown that self-efficacy and work engagement are positively related as well as the work engagement and personal resources such as self-efficacy, organizational-based self-esteem and optimism, are positively associated. Efficacy beliefs foresee motivational responses such as effort and diligence, while self-efficacy is negatively related to stress and worry. Therefore, there is a positive relationship between self-efficacy and work engagement. Prieto (2009) expanded Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R) and treated self-efficacy as a personal resource to predict the work engagement. The results showed that self-efficacy significantly predicted work engagement as measured by the UWES (Prieto 2009). A study which examined the relationship between personal resources (self-efficacy, organizational-based self-esteem and optimism) and work engagement, showed that engaged employees are highly self-efficacious and believe they can meet the needs they face in a wide range of environment. According to the social cognitive theory, efficacy beliefs are the foundation of the human agency that affects a person’s inspiration to take part in specific positive behaviors related to high performance. This not only helps us to understand positive behaviors but also helps to understand its background and effects. Furthermore, occupational self-efficacy refers to “the belief in one’s capacity and ability to perform a job”. According to social learning theory, self-efficacy affects the selection of activities people may take part in, the amount of effort people put in work, how deeply people may be involved and how long people may persist when facing trouble. This seems to be very closely related to the three engagement dimensions which are vigor, dedication and absorption. Therefore, high level of self-efficacy could be expected to relate to positive work outcomes. A

ccording to Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, personal resources (self-efficacy) help individuals effectively deal with intimidating circumstances means that personal resources defense the negative effect of emotional needs and emotion-rule dissonance on engagement. When employees have less control over the environment and the related requirements, then emotional demands and dissonance will constrain engagement. Those with lower personal resources cannot successfully control the environment, view demands as an obstacle (Crawford et al, 2010), and may respond in a helpless way that invigorates the negative effect of emotional demands and dissonance on engagement has shown that work engagement and disengagement relates to a person’s affective state at the end of a working week. Disengagement is possible to come to mind for workers with inadequate personal resources. Low cognitive self-efficacy and optimism employees are less likely to recognize that dissonance may actually prevent more demanding conditions. Reciprocal relationships between efficacy beliefs and work engagement have been reported. This relationship may also exist between positive affect and work engagement. The positive affect will promote approach behavior, which encourages people to participate in particular activities. In contrast to affect, which reflects direct adaptive responses to the environment, engagement is defined as a relatively more stable work related motivational state.

A study confirmed the theoretical claim that positive affect intervenes the connection between the work environment and work-related motivational states such as work engagement. Therefore, positive affect is expected to also intervene the relationship between personal resources such as self-efficacy and work engagement. This implies that when self-efficacious employees feel proficient at work, they will probably show more interest in their work, therefore may end up feeling more incentivized and engaged. Employees will feel more efficacious when they are engaging at work, thus establishing a reciprocal relationship over time.