LITERATURE REVIEW - Relationship between Self-efficacy and Individual Performance: Mentoring as

This section provides a review of previous studies which is relevant to this research.

Firstly, the definition and concept of self-efficacy will be discussed. In the second part, will discuss about the mentoring’s history and the detail content of mentoring function. After that, will talk about the moderator effect in this study. In the last portion, will illustrates the definition and relative content of in-role performance and extra role performance. In addition, the hypothesis will be developed as well in this chapter.

Early-career Employees

This study defines early-career period as previous 5 years of personal career age. This definition was adapted from past researches. Early-career employee has been studied in lots of researches, whereas there is no formal definition for it. Below are some of the researcher’s definition which treated early-career employee as their sample. List was arranged by published year.

Table 2.1.

Samples of Early-career Employee

Sample Year Author

During the 10 years following their 1957 high school graduation

1975 Sewell, W. H., &

Hauser, R. M Using alumni records at the Universities of Kansas,

Missouri, and Oklahoma, surveyed all graduates of the M.B.A. programs from the classes of 1980, 1981, and 1982.

Table 2.1. (continued)

Sample Year Author

Respondents' careers are observed during the 7 years from age 24 to age 30.

1995 Light, A., & Ureta, M.

Continuous work experience in the ﬁrst 3 years of labor market participation.

1998 Claes, R., & Ruiz-Quintanilla, S. A.

Collect from Anon U's administrative records, and describe students from the cohorts that entered between 1995 and 2002.

2011 Rothstein, J., &

Rouse, C. E.

According to the list, it can be categorized in two major kinds. One is sorted by tenure, employee’s working experience. For example, Sewell and Hauser (1975) and Cox and Harquail (1991) used previous 10 years of respondent’s career as their distinguished criteria.

Claes and Ruiz-Quintanilla (1998) investigated employee who has work experience in the ﬁrst-3-year. The reason was that they thought the one who has continuous work experience in the first 3 years of labor market has more motivated behavior to learn (Claes & Ruiz-Quintanilla, 1998). Another way is sorted by particular year and age. According to Whitely et al. (1991) and Rothstein and Rouse’s (2011) articles, both of them distinguished their respondents based on particular year. Whitely et al. (1991) focused on the graduated students of 1980, 1981, and 1982, tried to figure out the career mentoring’s effect on early-career employee. Light and Ureta (1995) choose the different way for choosing their sample, they used age as criteria. Collected data from age 24 to age 30 respondents, in order to describe individual’s differ in their work experience. They regarded this age as a reasonably long, and fixed portion of respondents’ life.

In conclusion, there is no specific definition or limitation for the early-career employee, most of the researchers based on their needs to define the sample. There is no discipline to follow by reviewing the literature. This study focuses on the early-career employees who just entered into society. As just-graduated students, self-efficacy and

mentoring might be the most important element which will affect their career development.

For this study’s purpose, it will focus on the one who are not so familiar with the career development and career path. This study defined early-career employees as one who graduated from school and with a work experience in the ﬁrst 5 years of labor market participation.

Previous studies of the early-career employee have provided some findings on career processes (Dreher, Dougherty, & Whitely, 1985; Weinstein & Srinivasan, 1974). Both of these articles emphasized the careers of graduates from Master's in business administration (MBA) programs. Weinstein and Srinivasan (1974) found that the respondents’ graduate grades were significantly correlated to both line and staff earnings. Furthermore, Dreher et al. (1985) studied more about the MBA degreed students, and found that possession of the MBA degree was positively related to current salary, but only for lower-class backgrounds.

However, there are three particular perspectives for researchers to study in early-career employee. First, according to previous researches, researchers used salary as the measurement of early-career progress, but less of them focus on career outcomes (Whitely et al., 1991). In order to understand the work life of early-career professionals and managers, it is important to investigate their outcomes though additional measurements.

Second, researchers need to study on additional influences which will affect early-career outcomes. For example, mentoring is a process which has been recognized as an interpersonal influence. Most of organizations would prefer to use mentor as a training program, help the early-career employee to adapt the culture or working process of the company. Another influence is social stratification, especially socioeconomic status, which has been investigated broadly in sociology. Last one, some suggest researchers should test the moderatos of career progress and their determined factors. Evidences had already illustrated that manager’s characteristic is a factor of employee’s career progress (Dreher et al., 1985).

Performance

In this research, based on organizational citizenship behavior theory, the performance can be extended to extra role behavior (Van Dyne, Cummings, & Parks, 1995) and in-role performance. In-role performance is defined as the behavior toward formal tasks and duty written in the job description (Williams & Anderson, 1991). By contrast, extra role performance is characterized as the essential activities that are beyond the formal role, but have good effectiveness for organization; the actions are not done by command but in voluntary (Moorman, Niehoff, & Organ, 1993; Organ, 1988). Researchers regarded extra role performance as organizational citizenship behavior, and they noted the importance of this kind of activities to all function of an organization (Organ, 1988). It is important to distinguish these two kinds of performance for some explanation. First, according to the previous researches, it shows that when managers assess the employees, they will consider both type of performance. By evaluating overall performance, a better decision can be made (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Hui, 1993). Second, both types of performance have contribution to the financial performance and the organization (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994). Third, these two type of performance have been hypothesized to have different causes and effects (Organ, 1988, 1990). There is an example to explain about the different antecedents and consequences, that is, in-role performance can be seen as a cause of organizational commitment, while extra-role performance as an effect of it (Munene, 1995).

However, in this study, both kind of performance are tested as the dependent variables which are affected by self-efficacy.

In-role Performance

To a manager, individual’s performance is an important evaluation index, by essential performance data, attendance rate, and behavior observation. These are normal standard of assessing employees, through the assessment, managers can judge employees, to see who is not qualified for the company, and give some advice to them. In-role performance has

been valued specifically, it represents how employee do their responsibilities. Key performance indicators (KPI) and objectives and key results (OKRs) as two methods which has been used frequently. For example, the biggest technical company “Google”, use OKRs as their goal management system (Steiber & Alänge, 2013). By reviewing employee’s objective achievement rate, managers could see them in-role performance.

In-role performance was first being studied in 1964, which investigated the college students, trainees, and delinquents (Katz, 1964). However, the variables had different name from this study, it was called “role-performance”. The study emphasized the sample’s community involvement, mental health and role performance (Hansell, Smith, & English, 1964). After years, the variable in-role performance has popped up with extra-role performance at the same time. In 1998, MacKenzie, Podsakoff, and Ahearne tried to see the possible cause and effect of salesperson’s performance. They studied in-role performance and extra role performance to see the thread.

In-role performance has been proved that it has positive relationship with employee satisfaction (Brown & Peterson, 1993). Furthermore, there are several researches which investigated the relationship between in-role performance and organizational setting, such as Becker and Kernan (2003), who proved that in-role performance has significantly effect on affective commitment to supervisors by investigating 187 MBA students. In another research, Tremblay, Cloutier, Simard, Chênvert, and Vandenberghe (2010), based on the sample of employees from a Canadian hospital, found that if HRM practices has been regard as the signs of support and procedural justice, it can stimulate employees’ in-role and extra-role performance. From manager’s perspective, in-role performance is a critical issue which will affect the relationship of employees and the employer; it has also been affirmed that leader-member exchange has significant effects on in-role performance (Hui, Law, & Chen, 1999). In-role performance is a common topic in every organization, and managers and supervisors heavily rely on it.

Extra-role Performance

Extra-role performance is an extend concept of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). According to Bateman and Organ (1983), the “extra work” is defined as the behaviors that are beyond the job descriptions. Furthermore, extra behavior has another meaning, that is, employees do the tasks which they are not told to. In fact, OCB cannot be forced (Organ, 1988), all of the behavior are voluntary, if employees don’t want to do so, they won’t get punished (Van Dyne et al., 1995). Extra-role performance is a synthesis review of these behavior, but it won’t affect individual’s performance assessment.

Compared to in-role performance, more researches focus on extra role performance recently, because researchers have found that extra role performance has influence on salespeople’s assessment, in that it might affect the manger’s decision about subordinate’s promotion and training program (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994). The ones who have more extra-role behavior, will have more opportunity getting a promotion. This factor might be the cause to explain why the extra-role performance become popular recently, since 2010 the articles published on Scopus keeps increasing.

Based on Van Dyne et al.’s (1995) research, extra-role performance has four dimensions, helping, voice, stewardship, and whistle-blowing. Although this categorization was useful because it combined lots of haphazard literature, it was not assessed empirically. As a result, according to Van Dyne and LePine (1998), they emphasized two promotive behaviors: helping and voice. Helping is an affiliative promotable behavior. It is a cooperative behavior; it builds and preserves relationships. It also represents the interpersonal harmony. Voice is defined as a challenging promotable behavior, which provides innovative and useful suggestions for organizational improvement. Helping and voice behavior are important to organizations, especially when it is a cooperation oriented company.

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to one’s belief in his/her ability or skill to accomplish the task or succeed in specific condition and difficulties and the belief that future actions will be successful (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Bandura sees self-efficacy as a main element in social cognitive theory. A low sense of self-efficacy will associate with depression, anxiety, and helplessness. Moreover, self-efficacy related to physical, emotional well-being and stress resistance (Bandura, 1997). In social cognitive theory, he discussed employee’s motivation which is the basis of outcome expectations. In fact, there are little research about self-efficacy expectations, instead, researchers contributed on the correlates or outcomes of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1982). Social self-efficacy expectation has been seen as a potential element which has significant influence on individual and career development. It was defined as the confidence in one’s ability to engage in a society or a workplace, including social networking, interaction, and maintaining the relationship with others (Anderson & Betz, 2001). Although most research had emphasized the prediction of the performance and the importance of behavior of specific fields, nevertheless, the cause and the process of self-efficacy are still unclear (Renko, Carsrud, & Brännback, 2009).

Self-efficacy first appeared in Bandura’s self-efficacy expectation theory (Bandura, 1977) as a mediator of behavior change. In Bandura’s research (1982), he claimed that self-efficacy has powerful effects on learning, motivation, and performance. The reason is that people try to learn and operate the tasks they believe they could accomplish successfully.

Self-efficacy affects learning and performance in three ways (Bandura, 1982). First, self-efficacy influences the goals that employees set for themselves. Low esteem employees are likely to choose low personal goals. By contrast, high self-efficacy employees would set relatively difficult goals for themselves. Second, self-efficacy influences the effort of people’s contribution on their job. High esteem employees work hard on learning and

implementing the tasks due to the belief that their ability can help accomplish any given tasks successfully. Last, self-efficacy influences the persistence of people in their attempt in taking on new tasks and overcoming difficulties. Employees with high self-efficacy are confident with their problem-solving ability. Hence, they are more willing to persist and learn until the problems are solved. By comparison, low self-efficacy employees would more easily give up when they face problems.

The concept of self-efficacy has become more important in social psychology research.

It has also been involved in organizational cognition (Bandura, 1993), human resource and behavioral (Ajzen, 2002; Bandura, 1977) theories. Moreover, in addition to the relationship of self-efficacy and social expectation, researchers have started to investigate work/career-related efficacy (Betz & Hackett, 1981). Bandura and Locke (2003) concluded that self-efficacy is a powerful influential factor of job performance.

Self-efficacy and Work-related Performance

Self-efficacy has been studied for years, so does performance. Both of these two variables are popular. According to pervious research, it showed that self-efficacy is significantly related to work performance, for instance, skill acquisition (Mitchell, Hopper, Daniels, George-Falvy, & James, 1994), and newcomer adjustment (Feldman, 1981).

Basing on the concept of social cognitive (Bandura, 1986), and self-efficacy theories (Bandura, 1997), there are some research that focus on organizational performance, such as, managerial idea generating (Gist, 1989).

According to a meta-analysis (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998), which investigated 114 studies on the relationship between self-efficacy and work-related performance, the result showed that there is a significant correlation between these two variables. Based on the literary evidences, this research hypothesized that there is an overall positive relationship between self-efficacy and work-related performance (Hypothesis 1).

H1: Self-efficacy has a positive relationship with in-role performance.

Previous scholars claimed that high self-efficacy individuals can make good use of adaptive behavioral strategies (Raghuram, Wiesenfeld, & Garud, 2003). The reason that lead to this result is not only they have knowledge of citizenship behaviors but also they know that these behavior can benefit particular work place. Due to Speier and Frese (1997) and Morrison and Phelps (1999)’s research, they found that self-efficacy predicted personal initiative and ‘taking charge’ behavior. Furthermore, Motowildo, Borman, and Schmit (1997) conceived individual’s degree of self-efficacy as predictors of organizational citizenship behavior. Therefore, this study puts forth the hypothesis that there is positive relationship between self-efficacy and helping behavior.

H2: Self-efficacy has a positive relationship with helping.

Voice is a behavior of making suggestions or recommending organizational change and modification. Moreover, the ability of voice requires an individual’s belief in the possibilities to cope with the situational demands (Van Dyne, Graham, & Dienesch, 1994), the ability to speak up and express oneself, and the personality of extraversion. As a result, the individual differences are major element which will influence voice behavior. LePine and Van Dyne (2001) suggested that it requires a stable and secure environment to speak up. They also argued that there is a positive relationship between self-esteem and voice behavior (LePine & Van Dyne, 1998). Therefore, this research hypothesizes a positive relationship between self-efficacy and voice behavior.

H3: Self-efficacy has a positive relationship with voice.

Mentorship

The description of mentor has a long history, it can be traced back to ancient Greek mythology. In 800 B.C, King Odysseus entrusted a friend as mentor to guide his son, Telemachus, to become a great leader of kingdom (Carruthers, 1992). After that, goddess of wisdom, Athena, responded to lead him, helped him to go through the difficult (Henderson, 1985). Mentor has been defined as an interpersonal relationship between a

senior or expert person (mentor) who willing to teach, support, and lead a less experiences individual (protégé) to advance the personal and professional development (Kram, 1983).

First, mentor has been clearly identified by Kram. He found that mentor has strong related to protégés behavior (Kram & Isabella, 1985). He claimed that via direct learning and observation, protégés are easier to imitate and enhance the ability to perform tasks at the same time.

Nowadays, mentor has become a popular variable in research, with more than 1,000 articles published every year since 2006. There are several ways to separate the dimensions of mentoring, such as Rhodes (2002) who separates mentor into three dimensions, youth mentoring, academic mentoring, and workplace mentoring, respectively (Rhodes, 2002).

This functional concept is based on personal experience in different life stages, which can be separated into childhood, student and employee, three of the most important roles in life.

It assumes that there have supportive relationships with personal experience and emotional, cognitive, and psychological growth (Rhodes, 2002). By the change of personal role identify, mentoring will have different effect on protégés.

Academic mentoring is a classic model in education, teachers offer knowledge, guidance and support to student (Jacobi, 1991). In addition, this way of mentoring may have effect on psychological adjustment and train student’s sense of professional identity (Austin, 2002).

When it goes to workplace mentoring, as the word indicated, it associates with organizational setting and the professional ability and skill to complete the task (Kram &

Isabella, 1985). Researchers have revolved around some related issues with organizational setting and human resource (Petrick, Ayala-Fierro, Cullen, Carter, & Aposhian, 2000). For instance, Scandura (1992) found that mentorship is related to career mobility, in addition, mentoring has been proved to have positive effect on protégés’ promotions, incomes and satisfaction with their pay and benefits (Dreher & Ash, 1990). There is another research

which studied the relationship of mentorship and personal career development, such as Wright and Wright (1987) who pointed out that mentoring has benefit to both mentor’s and protégé’s professional career development. When mentors provide mentoring to their protégés’, at the same time, mentors will increase professional visibility and reputation in the organization. The study of mentoring not only focused on formal employees but also focused on international interns (Feldman, Folks, & Turnley, 1999). Moreover, criterion variables are considered about mentoring relationship with gender, age, race, and perceived similarity (Ensher & Murphy, 1997).

Mentoring Function

According to Kram and Isabella 's mentor role theory (1985), mentor provided two categories of functions, career development, which is to provide protégés guidance and suggestion to achieve the organization goal, and psychological support, which deals with the interpersonal relationship in order to enhance the protégés’ ability, self-efficacy, professional and individual development (Ragins & Cotton, 1999). About the career development function, Kram and Isabella (1985) provided five specific functions:

sponsorship, coaching, protection, challenging assignments, and exposure. All of the functions above depend on the mentor’s authority and position in the organization; it emphasizes the organization goal and personal career path. The other function, psychological support, can be provided as four functions: acceptance and confirmation, counseling, friendship, and role modeling. The opposite of career development, the psychosocial function pays more attention on individual position, to extend to the personal level (Kram & Isabella, 1985). One function is not suitable for every situation; a good mentor should provide these functions appropriately.

Career Development

There is another way to see mentoring functions, Scandura (1992) separated it into three factors. The first one is “career development”, which demonstrates the one on one

mentorship, similar to coaching, which focuses on performance and professional behavior and skills. The career development mentor may be a supervisor in the same organization but may not be in the same working team with protégés (Eby, 1997). This factor is similar with Kram (1983)’s career development function, the mentor emphasizes the work-related

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