I've been pondering this question for quite some time now, and feel that
I'm at a point where I can formulate my issues clearly enough to ask all
of you for your input.
In developing and encouraging the growth of a learning organization,
what is the role of individual or departmental self efficacy and locus
of control? For those not familiar with these terms:
1) self efficacy is the degree to which an individual (or group) feels
he or she is capable of executing a particular objective. A person who
is not confident, regardless of how well trained, has a low measure of
self efficacy. Note that this is self perception, and not competency,
which would be measured objectively.
2) locus of control is the degree to which an individual (or group)
feels he or she has control over the outcome of any action taken. A
person who believes that fate or a deity controls the world has a low
measure of locus of control. Likewise, a person who feels completely
helpless (it doesn't matter what you do, it won't work) is low in L.O.C.
My own thoughts on this have been trying to be at peace, and integrated
holistically with my concepts of organizational culture, performance
competencies, organizational communication, and performance management
systems. All are intricately linked in a way I have not seen modeled or
explained before, and yet I know it must be out there somewhere. The
performance management model I work with attempts to explain this
relationship, but I do not believe it does it well. In particular, it
gives short shrift to the role of self-perception to an organization's
ability to achieve its goals.
My question to the group is this: is anyone aware of research that has
been conducted in this area of measuring individual and/or group self
efficacy and locus of control on predicting or influencing the outcome
of an organization's ability to achieve its goals? More to our
discussion, has anyone conducted this research for the goal of becoming
a learning organizaion?
kind regards,
Vana Prewitt
www.PraxisLearning.org
"investing in human capital"
--Vana Prewitt <vprewitt@bellsouth.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>