The impact of efficacy on work attitudes across cultures

Authors

Fred Luthans, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
Weichun Zhu, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Bruce Avolio, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

2006

Citation

Published in Journal of World Business, vol. 41, iss. 2 (June 2006), pp. 121–132.

Comments

Copyright © 2005 Elsevier Inc. Used by permission.

Abstract

To answer the call for more cross-cultural research, this study analyzed the efficacy and work attitudes of employee samples from the U.S. and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand). The results showed that across these two samples, general efficacy had a significant positive relationship with organizational commitment and a significant negative relationship with intention to turnover. Further analysis also indicated that job satisfaction mediated the relationship between general efficacy and organizational commitment and intention to quit in the U.S. sample. The relationship between general efficacy and organizational commitment was stronger in the U.S. than in the three combined countries sampled in Southeast Asia. Over the years, considerable research, summarized in meta-analytic reviews, have clearly demonstrated that a significant relationship exists between various psychological capacities, such as Big Five personality traits (Barrick & Mount, 1991), self-evaluation traits (Judge & Bono, 2001), specific self-efficacy (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998a), and desirable employee work attitudes and performance. But for a few exceptions (e.g., Born & Iwawaki, 1997; Markus & Kitayama, 1991), this relationship has not been tested to see if it generalizes across cultures. In addition, neither the complexity nor theoretical richness of the relationship has been tested for possible mediators. Thus, the two-fold purpose of this study was to begin to fill these gaps by first examining whether U.S. and Southeast Asian employees’ job satisfaction mediated the relationship between general self-efficacy and work attitudes (organizational commitment and turnover intention). Secondly, we examined whether the relationship between general self-efficacy and employee attitudes/outcomes, in terms of organizational commitment and turnover intentions, differs between U.S. and Southeast Asian samples.