HUMAN PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
(PSY4024)
TASK 1 – RESOURCES AND EFFORT
VAN IDDEKINGE ET AL. (2022) – WORK EFFORT: A CONCEPTUAL AND META -
ANALYTIC REVIEW
Work effort = ill-defined
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF WORK EFFORT
• Effort’s relation to motivation & performance
o Some researchers have referred to effort as motivation
▪ Motivation = the amount of effort the salesman desires to expend on each of the
activities or tasks associated with his job
▪ (1) Perspective of effort as an outcome of motivation (i.e., motivation → effort)
▪ (2) Theories viewing effort as an antecedent of performance (i.e., effort → performance)
▪ (3) Theories position effort as a mediating construct that links motivation to
performance (i.e., motivation → effort → performance)
• Integrated definition of work effort
o Suggested that effort is related to, but different from, both motivation and performance
o Theory of planned behavior: Although workers may desire to act (i.e., be motivated), external
factors may make action impossible or undermine the instrumentality of actions, such that
motivation never results in “trying” → motivation is a necessary but insufficient condition for
effort
o Effort does not reflect the efficiency or effectiveness of behavior → how hard a person works
(effort) is different from how well he works (proficiency)
o Researchers have defined performance as behavior, results, or a combination of both
▪ Effort is a direct outcome of motivation and a direct antecedent of performance
▪ Key distinction between effort & performance: Unlike performance, effort does not
reflect the efficiency or effectiveness of behavior
▪ Effort is a necessary but insufficient condition of performance
OPERATIONALIZATIONS OF WORK EFFORT
• Effort dimension
o Effort comprises 3 dimensions
▪ (1) Direction
▪ (2) Intensity
▪ (3) Persistence
o Effort intensity = how hard workers try to carry out a chosen behavior
▪ Measured as: Number of customer calls, amount of effort workers devotes to specific
activities, asking workers (or supervisors, peers) to assess their amount of effort
o Effort persistence = How long workers keep trying until the behavior is accomplished
1
, ▪ Measured as: Coding video recordings to determine the percentage of time employees
were working vs. not working, how many hours employees’ work
o Effort direction = Where workers devote their effort or what they choose to do
▪ Not much research, perhaps because of uncertainty about how to operationalize the
dimension
▪ Direction is about choosing a strategy, whereas intensity and persistence are about
working hard to implement that strategy
▪ Measures of effort direction (i.e., working smart) focus on steps workers take to plan and
set goals as well as to adapt to the situation
o General effort
▪ E.g., Bono (2001) used a 3-item measure that included items such as “I put my best
effort into this task”
• Effort time span
o Lab studies often measure how much effort participants devote to a set of simulated job tasks
during a few hours or less
o Field studies typically measure effort over longer periods
• Effort level of analysis
o Whether effort is measured on a between-person level or within-person level
o Findings suggest that the relationship between effort and performance on short-term tasks often
is curvilinear, such that the relation is positive at the start and then weakens, or even becomes
negative, once participants learn how to perform the task
o As workers gain experience, they can maintain high levels of performance with less effort
• Effort subjectivity
o Distinguishes between subjective perceptions of effort and more objective measures.
o Examples of potentially more objective measures include the percentage of time employees are
working based on video recordings and the amount of time participants spend studying training
materials
NOMOLOGICAL NETWORK OF WORK EFFORT
• Person-focused antecedents
o Conscientiousness is the personality factor most relevant to work effort
▪ People high in C tend to be achievement oriented, hardworking, and have high
expectations of themselves
2
, ▪ Tend to set goals & exert effort to achieve those goals
▪ Includes additional dimensions such as order, dependability, and self-control
o Achievement striving = dimension of conscientiousness that seems to be most relevant to effort
o Self-efficacy = individual’s confidence in their ability to perform in a specific domain
▪ General self-efficacy = individuals’ perception of their ability to perform across various
situations
▪ Specific self-efficacy = individuals’ beliefs about their ability to perform a particular task
▪ Social-cognitive theory proposes that workers who possess higher task-specific self-
efficacy will devote greater effort to performing their jobs
o Goal-orientation = what motivates workers
▪ Individuals with a mastery or learning goal orientation (LGO) are motivated to increase their
competence by acquiring their knowledge/skills
▪ Individuals with a performance goal orientation (PGO) are motivated to demonstrate
competence compared with others
▪ LGO tends to covary with other motivational constructs, whereas PGO does not
▪ Thus, they anticipate that only LGO will correlate positively with effort
o Intrinsic motivation = The desire to expend effort based on interest in and enjoyment of the
work itself
o Extrinsic motivation = Desire to obtain external outcomes, such as rewards or recognition
▪ Expected that intrinsic motivation may be more strongly related to effort than extrinsic
motivation
o Strongest relations to work effort and performance for intrinsic motivation & self-efficacy
• Job- and organization-focused antecedents
o Person-environment fit
▪ Job attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment)
▪ Match between workers’ knowledge, skills, and abilities and the characteristics required
for successful job performance (i.e., abilities-demands fit)
▪ Match between what workers want or need in a job (e.g., flexibility) and what the job
supplies regarding those needs (i.e., needs-supplies fit)
o Person-organization fit
▪ Match between workers and the organization overall, ex. the fit between what workers
value and the values of the organization
o JCM → certain job characteristics have a positive effect on workers by making jobs more
challenging, meaningful, and autonomous
▪ Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback
▪ These characteristics are thought to increase performance by motivating employees to
invest time and energy to complete assigned tasks
o Goal attainment
▪ Goal-setting theory: Workers who set specific goals devote greater effort to their work
than workers who set more general goals or no goals at all
▪ Goals may help workers persist despite difficulty and setbacks
▪ Workers with higher levels of goal commitment should exert greater effort than those who
are less committed
o Job involvement
▪ = Degree of psychological identification with work
▪ Workers with high levels of job involvement identify with their job and think about it
even when outside of work
o Job satisfaction
▪ = antecedent of effort, mediates the relation between satisfaction and performance
▪ Workers who are more satisfied with their jobs devote more effort, which, in turn, leads
to higher performance
▪ Other research suggests that effort is an antecedent of satisfaction
o Organizational commitment
▪ Includes 3 dimensions:
3
, • Affective commitment = workers’ emotional attachment to, identification
with, and involvement in the organization → workers with a strong affective
commitment may exert greater effort because they are attached to the
organization and want it to be successful
• Continuance commitment = focuses on the potential costs of leaving an
organization → employees with a strong continuance commitment remain with
the organization because they must and thus, may exert more effort to avoid
losing their job
• Normative commitment = Reflects a feeling of obligation to stay with an
organization → workers with a high level of normative commitment feel that
they ought to remain with the organization, such as to reciprocate goodwill to
the organization for providing them a job
o Person-focused antecedents and organization-focused antecedents are almost equal
• Constructs that overlap with effort
o Work engagement
▪ = simultaneous employment and expression of a person’s ‘preferred self’ in task
behaviors that promote connections to work and to others, personal presence (physical,
cognitive & emotional), and active, full performances
▪ = a multi-dimensional motivational concept reflecting the simultaneous investment of an
individual’s physical, cognitive, and emotional energy in active, full work performance
▪ Engagement seems to be a broad & ambiguous concept that includes elements of effort
but also other constructs (e.g., job involvement)
o Measures of work engagement also appear to overlap with effort
o Grit = the perseverance and passion for long-term goals and comprises two dimensions
▪ Consistency-of-interests dimension = focuses on whether people maintain or change
their interests and goals over time
▪ Perseverance-of-effort dimension overlaps with effort
• Outcomes of effort
o Better job performance
o Negatively related to CWB
o Effort should be more strongly related to performance than its antecedents
o Exerting high levels of effort could lead to emotional exhaustion → only under certain conditions;
not found in this present meta-analysis
o Negatively related to turnover
o Effort predicts performance more strongly than performance behavior
DISCUSSION
IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY
• Effort has been a somewhat overlooked construct empirically… Reasons:
o Uncertainty regarding what effort is and where it fits into theoretical models
▪ Findings suggest that effort has been conceptualized as motivation, an outcome of
motivation, an antecedent of performance, and a component of performance
▪ Without a clear definition, it is difficult to understand the role of effort in various
theories
▪ This review provided an integrated definition of effort that clarifies what it is and how it
is similar to, but different from, motivation and performance
• Motivation =. An unobservable force that causes workers to exert effort to
accomplish their work
• Effort = what workers do and how hard they try to do those things
4
(PSY4024)
TASK 1 – RESOURCES AND EFFORT
VAN IDDEKINGE ET AL. (2022) – WORK EFFORT: A CONCEPTUAL AND META -
ANALYTIC REVIEW
Work effort = ill-defined
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF WORK EFFORT
• Effort’s relation to motivation & performance
o Some researchers have referred to effort as motivation
▪ Motivation = the amount of effort the salesman desires to expend on each of the
activities or tasks associated with his job
▪ (1) Perspective of effort as an outcome of motivation (i.e., motivation → effort)
▪ (2) Theories viewing effort as an antecedent of performance (i.e., effort → performance)
▪ (3) Theories position effort as a mediating construct that links motivation to
performance (i.e., motivation → effort → performance)
• Integrated definition of work effort
o Suggested that effort is related to, but different from, both motivation and performance
o Theory of planned behavior: Although workers may desire to act (i.e., be motivated), external
factors may make action impossible or undermine the instrumentality of actions, such that
motivation never results in “trying” → motivation is a necessary but insufficient condition for
effort
o Effort does not reflect the efficiency or effectiveness of behavior → how hard a person works
(effort) is different from how well he works (proficiency)
o Researchers have defined performance as behavior, results, or a combination of both
▪ Effort is a direct outcome of motivation and a direct antecedent of performance
▪ Key distinction between effort & performance: Unlike performance, effort does not
reflect the efficiency or effectiveness of behavior
▪ Effort is a necessary but insufficient condition of performance
OPERATIONALIZATIONS OF WORK EFFORT
• Effort dimension
o Effort comprises 3 dimensions
▪ (1) Direction
▪ (2) Intensity
▪ (3) Persistence
o Effort intensity = how hard workers try to carry out a chosen behavior
▪ Measured as: Number of customer calls, amount of effort workers devotes to specific
activities, asking workers (or supervisors, peers) to assess their amount of effort
o Effort persistence = How long workers keep trying until the behavior is accomplished
1
, ▪ Measured as: Coding video recordings to determine the percentage of time employees
were working vs. not working, how many hours employees’ work
o Effort direction = Where workers devote their effort or what they choose to do
▪ Not much research, perhaps because of uncertainty about how to operationalize the
dimension
▪ Direction is about choosing a strategy, whereas intensity and persistence are about
working hard to implement that strategy
▪ Measures of effort direction (i.e., working smart) focus on steps workers take to plan and
set goals as well as to adapt to the situation
o General effort
▪ E.g., Bono (2001) used a 3-item measure that included items such as “I put my best
effort into this task”
• Effort time span
o Lab studies often measure how much effort participants devote to a set of simulated job tasks
during a few hours or less
o Field studies typically measure effort over longer periods
• Effort level of analysis
o Whether effort is measured on a between-person level or within-person level
o Findings suggest that the relationship between effort and performance on short-term tasks often
is curvilinear, such that the relation is positive at the start and then weakens, or even becomes
negative, once participants learn how to perform the task
o As workers gain experience, they can maintain high levels of performance with less effort
• Effort subjectivity
o Distinguishes between subjective perceptions of effort and more objective measures.
o Examples of potentially more objective measures include the percentage of time employees are
working based on video recordings and the amount of time participants spend studying training
materials
NOMOLOGICAL NETWORK OF WORK EFFORT
• Person-focused antecedents
o Conscientiousness is the personality factor most relevant to work effort
▪ People high in C tend to be achievement oriented, hardworking, and have high
expectations of themselves
2
, ▪ Tend to set goals & exert effort to achieve those goals
▪ Includes additional dimensions such as order, dependability, and self-control
o Achievement striving = dimension of conscientiousness that seems to be most relevant to effort
o Self-efficacy = individual’s confidence in their ability to perform in a specific domain
▪ General self-efficacy = individuals’ perception of their ability to perform across various
situations
▪ Specific self-efficacy = individuals’ beliefs about their ability to perform a particular task
▪ Social-cognitive theory proposes that workers who possess higher task-specific self-
efficacy will devote greater effort to performing their jobs
o Goal-orientation = what motivates workers
▪ Individuals with a mastery or learning goal orientation (LGO) are motivated to increase their
competence by acquiring their knowledge/skills
▪ Individuals with a performance goal orientation (PGO) are motivated to demonstrate
competence compared with others
▪ LGO tends to covary with other motivational constructs, whereas PGO does not
▪ Thus, they anticipate that only LGO will correlate positively with effort
o Intrinsic motivation = The desire to expend effort based on interest in and enjoyment of the
work itself
o Extrinsic motivation = Desire to obtain external outcomes, such as rewards or recognition
▪ Expected that intrinsic motivation may be more strongly related to effort than extrinsic
motivation
o Strongest relations to work effort and performance for intrinsic motivation & self-efficacy
• Job- and organization-focused antecedents
o Person-environment fit
▪ Job attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment)
▪ Match between workers’ knowledge, skills, and abilities and the characteristics required
for successful job performance (i.e., abilities-demands fit)
▪ Match between what workers want or need in a job (e.g., flexibility) and what the job
supplies regarding those needs (i.e., needs-supplies fit)
o Person-organization fit
▪ Match between workers and the organization overall, ex. the fit between what workers
value and the values of the organization
o JCM → certain job characteristics have a positive effect on workers by making jobs more
challenging, meaningful, and autonomous
▪ Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback
▪ These characteristics are thought to increase performance by motivating employees to
invest time and energy to complete assigned tasks
o Goal attainment
▪ Goal-setting theory: Workers who set specific goals devote greater effort to their work
than workers who set more general goals or no goals at all
▪ Goals may help workers persist despite difficulty and setbacks
▪ Workers with higher levels of goal commitment should exert greater effort than those who
are less committed
o Job involvement
▪ = Degree of psychological identification with work
▪ Workers with high levels of job involvement identify with their job and think about it
even when outside of work
o Job satisfaction
▪ = antecedent of effort, mediates the relation between satisfaction and performance
▪ Workers who are more satisfied with their jobs devote more effort, which, in turn, leads
to higher performance
▪ Other research suggests that effort is an antecedent of satisfaction
o Organizational commitment
▪ Includes 3 dimensions:
3
, • Affective commitment = workers’ emotional attachment to, identification
with, and involvement in the organization → workers with a strong affective
commitment may exert greater effort because they are attached to the
organization and want it to be successful
• Continuance commitment = focuses on the potential costs of leaving an
organization → employees with a strong continuance commitment remain with
the organization because they must and thus, may exert more effort to avoid
losing their job
• Normative commitment = Reflects a feeling of obligation to stay with an
organization → workers with a high level of normative commitment feel that
they ought to remain with the organization, such as to reciprocate goodwill to
the organization for providing them a job
o Person-focused antecedents and organization-focused antecedents are almost equal
• Constructs that overlap with effort
o Work engagement
▪ = simultaneous employment and expression of a person’s ‘preferred self’ in task
behaviors that promote connections to work and to others, personal presence (physical,
cognitive & emotional), and active, full performances
▪ = a multi-dimensional motivational concept reflecting the simultaneous investment of an
individual’s physical, cognitive, and emotional energy in active, full work performance
▪ Engagement seems to be a broad & ambiguous concept that includes elements of effort
but also other constructs (e.g., job involvement)
o Measures of work engagement also appear to overlap with effort
o Grit = the perseverance and passion for long-term goals and comprises two dimensions
▪ Consistency-of-interests dimension = focuses on whether people maintain or change
their interests and goals over time
▪ Perseverance-of-effort dimension overlaps with effort
• Outcomes of effort
o Better job performance
o Negatively related to CWB
o Effort should be more strongly related to performance than its antecedents
o Exerting high levels of effort could lead to emotional exhaustion → only under certain conditions;
not found in this present meta-analysis
o Negatively related to turnover
o Effort predicts performance more strongly than performance behavior
DISCUSSION
IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY
• Effort has been a somewhat overlooked construct empirically… Reasons:
o Uncertainty regarding what effort is and where it fits into theoretical models
▪ Findings suggest that effort has been conceptualized as motivation, an outcome of
motivation, an antecedent of performance, and a component of performance
▪ Without a clear definition, it is difficult to understand the role of effort in various
theories
▪ This review provided an integrated definition of effort that clarifies what it is and how it
is similar to, but different from, motivation and performance
• Motivation =. An unobservable force that causes workers to exert effort to
accomplish their work
• Effort = what workers do and how hard they try to do those things
4
