Self-efficacy Self-efficacy, defined as an individual’s belief in his/her capability to perform a task, is a key element of Bandura’s (1997, 2001) social cognitive theory. It arises from people’s experiences as they weigh, integrate, and evaluate information about their capabilities. Based on this information processing, people make decisions about what they think they can do and how much effort it will take for them to do it. The determination of self-efficacy for a specific task has three dimensions: magnitude, strength, and generality (Gist, 1987). Magnitude refers to the level of task difficulty the person believes he/she can attain. Strength refers to the level of conviction the person holds about that belief in task attainment. Generality refers to the degree to which that belief can be generalized to define the ability to perform other tasks. A person’s sustained effort to perform a specific task is influenced by the degree to which that person sees him- or herself succeeding. If the person is low on selfefficacy, that individual will not expend much effort to perform the task. Conversely, if that person is high on self-efficacy, that individual will expend considerable sustained effort to perform. Moreover, if the high self-efficacy person fails, that individual will be more likely to try again while the low self-efficacy individual will not (Bandura & Locke, 2003. If high self-efficacy is important, the tools for enhancing it should represent the foundation of strategies for cultivating customer self-efficacy in service co-production. There are four ways to promote self-efficacy; from most to least influential, these are: enactive mastery, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological arousal (Gist, 1987). Enactive mastery is learned through repeated experiences via which a person discovers his/her level of performance capability. Mastery is gained as repeated success in performing a task changes the perception of the individual to believe in his/her ability to perform.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:52:05 +0000
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