Define locus of control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Explain how a manager might manage employees with each of these personality traits. Describe how you would rate yourself on each of these dimensions, and explain your answers.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

1. Locus of control indicates how much people believe they control their own fate. Employees with internal locus of control exhibit less anxiety, greater work motivation, and stronger expectations that effort leads to performance. They will probably resist close managerial supervision and would prefer and respond more productively to incentives such as merit pay or sales commissions. In contrast, employees with external locus of control might do better in highly structured jobs requiring greater compliance.

2. Self-efficacy is belief in one's personal ability to do a task. A large-scale meta-analysis found a significant correlation between self-efficacy and job performance. Self-efficacy is a quality that can be nurtured. Employees with low self-efficacy need lots of constructive pointers and positive feedback. Small successes need to be rewarded. Employees' expectations can be improved through guided experiences, mentoring, and role modeling. Whenever possible, try to make a job complex, challenging, and autonomous; all of these characteristics tend to enhance employees' perceptions of their self-efficacy. Boring, tedious jobs tend to have the opposite effect. Therefore, it is important that managers of workers who perform rote tasks (for example, on an assembly line) find ways to give employees a break from the routine and an opportunity to share ideas, best practices, and frustrations.

3. Self-esteem is the degree to which a person likes himself or herself—that is, his or her overall self-evaluation. Managers can improve self-esteem in the following ways: Reinforce employees' positive attributes and skills, provide positive feedback whenever possible, break larger projects into smaller tasks and projects, express confidence in employees' abilities to complete their tasks, and provide coaching whenever employees are seen to be struggling to complete tasks.

Students should then explain how they think they score on each dimension.