"This chapter examines the role of perceived self-efficacy in what people choose as their life's work, how well they prepare themselves for their chosen pursuits, and the level of success they achieve" (422).

CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND PURSUITS (422)

• In making career decisions, people must come to grips with
• uncertainties about their capabilities,
• the stability of their interests,
• the current and long range prospects of alternative occupations,
• the accessibility of potential careers,
• and the type of identity they seek to construct for themselves

Career Choice and Development (423)

• People with higher perceived self-efficacy to fulfil job functions consider a wider range of career options
• Some people eliminate entire classes of vocations based on perceived efficacy
• Perceived mathematics self-efficacy contributes more to educational and career choice than does amount preparation in high school, level of mathematical ability, prior achievement, and anxiety.
• Sex differences in fulfilling duties
• Women judge themselves less efficacious for scientific occupations than men
• Women express lower sense of efficacy for occupations requiring quantitative skills and activities
• People act on their beliefs of vocational efficacy as well as their knowledge about career options
• Perceived self-efficacy to master scientific knowledge predicts successful academic coursework and perseverance
• Perceived self-efficacy is predictive of withdrawal from other fields as well
• Perceived efficacy can also affect career pursuits through interest
• Higher perceived efficacy is related to high interest
• Efficacy beliefs raise interest (we are interested in things we think we may be good at)

Comparative Tests of Theories of Career Choice (425)

• People seek a match between their interests and occupational environments
• Artistic types seek artistic environments
• Technical types seek technical environments
• Wheeler compares the predictiveness of self-efficacy and expectancy value theory
• Outcomes included salary, security, social status, freedom to exercise initiative, chance to learn new competencies, chance to advance to leadership,
• Efficacy-beliefs contribute more heavily to occupational preferences
• Perceived efficacy is a robust contributor to career development
• It predicts the scope of career options
• Occupational interests and preferences
• Perseverance in difficult fields
• Academic success in those chosen pursuits
• Choice of cultural milieu

Exploratory Decision Making and Fulfillment of Occupational Roles (427)

• Men and women often differ in their perceived capabilities for various occupations but not in their perceived capability to arrive at decisions about which to pursue
• Men may consider a wider range of options
• Women may consider less options
• Women who enter male dominated occupations encounter considerably more obstacles and barriers than do their male counterparts

Perceived Efficacy in Employability and Reemployment (429)

• Most job openings are discovered through friends, acquaintances and circles of associates
• Successful preemployment
• Perceived self-efficacy predicts successful preemployment after job loss
• Other factors examined were
• Age
• Marital status
• Length of tenure
• Quality of job performance
• Depression
• Perceived obstacles
• Perceived efficacy emerged as the only significant predictor of subsequent preemployment (429)
• Betz and Hackett have identifies a number of skills that relate to success in occupational roles
• Ability to communicate well
• Relate effectively to others
• Plan and manage demands of one's job
• Exercise leadership
• Cope with stress effectively

Gender Differences in Occupational Self-Efficacy (430)

• Although women make up approximately 50% of the total work force not may choose technical and scientific careers
• They typically maintain clerical, service, or sales jobs
• Largely employed in traditionally female fields
• Women's beliefs about their capabilities and career aspirations are shaped by
• Family
• Parents expectations often differ by sex
• Educational system
• Mass media
• Culture at large
• Boys tend to inflate their sense of competence, girls generally disparage their capabilities
• Eccles (1989) found that parents generally subscribe to the stereotype that girls are less talented in mathematics than boys, despite equal grades.
• Although boys and girls do not differ initially in their perceived mathematical abilities, girls begin to lose confidence and diverge increasingly as time goes on
• They avoid math activities and classes creating the very gender differences parents originally presumed to exist
• Current studies reveal a smaller disparity between male a female beliefs in pursuit of occupational careers
• Gender bias in classrooms
• Teachers convey lower expectations of girls academically
• Different criticisms
• Boys disruptive behavior; failure attributed to lack of effort
• Girls intellectual aspect of girls work; attribute failures to ability
• School counselors encourage boys in scientific fields
• Peers (children) already stereotype career occupations as early as preschool
• Preschoolers ascribe to the stereotype that boys possess higher intellectual capabilities than girls
• Stereotypes
• Women are cast in non achieving roles; subordinate; emotional
• Men are cast as directive, venturesome, enterprising, recreational
• Perceived mathematical efficacy
• Prior mathematical experience and gender affect mathematical performance largely through their impact on efficacy belief
• Girls underestimate their mathematical ability whereas boys overestimate theirs
• Environment affects beliefs in mathematical competencies
• Women from single sex schools who cite males teachers as boosting their efficacy the most, have a higher sense of efficacy for nontraditional careers than those from coeducational schools
• Women's lowered sense of mathematical self-efficacy is changeable

Ethnicity and Occupational Self-Efficacy (436)

• Ethnic minorities are also under represented in the science and engineering
• %age of non-Asian minorities has been decreasing
• Minority students generally have a low sense of efficacy for scientific and technological careers

Enhancement of Occupational Self-Efficacy (438)

• Solutions to restricted aspirations require personal and social remedies
• Programs to support minorities in occupations
• Exposure to appropriate models
• Eliminating self-belittling biases

MASTERY OF OCCUPATIONAL ROLES (439)

Development of Competencies through Mastery Modeling (440)

• Humans have an advanced capacity for observational learning
• Direct experience (tutorial) is often overused
• Models portray values, thinking patterns, and behavior
• Skills can be
• Fixed
• Generative

Instructive Modeling (441)

• Modeling is the first step in developing competencies
• Skills are broken down into subskills
• Skills are then modeled on videotape
• Modeling ought also include the development and articulation of requisite beliefs in personal efficacy
• "Mastery modeling works much better than lectures" (441)
• People learn thinking skills by observing models think aloud
• Verbal models verbalize their thought processes as they evaluate the problem, seek information, and generate alternative solutions
• Verbal models hold attention better
• Produce faster learning

Guided Skill Perfection (443)

• Practice and role rehearsal
• People need feedback how they are doing
• Videotape replays combined with instructional feedback are useful to show people how they are doing
• Performance feedback mus include corrective changes that need to be made
• Corrective modeling is most informative and achieves the greatest improvements
• An important aspect of occupational training includes training to be resilient to difficulty

Transfer Training by Self-Directed Success (444)

• New skills are unlikely to be used for ling unless they are put into practice (444)
• New skills ought be tried in job situations likely to produce good results
• These successful experiences are followed up by discussions about difficulties and successes
• Training programs ought to provide ample practice and success experiences to gain proficiency
• "When instructive modeling is combined with guided role rehearsal and a guided transfer program, this mode of organizational training usually produces excellent results" (444)

Self-efficacy in Occupational Socialization (445)

• Newcomers come with varied beliefs in personal efficacy
• Training strategies ought to be focused on confidence and competence
• Reduces anxiety
• Structures guidance lowered anxiety whereas self-study tutorials made them more anxious
• Training contributed to growth of occupational self-efficacy

Efficacious Adaptability (448)

• people experience a high rate of change across vocations over the ful course of their working lives
• Technological change is fast
• Slow changers can become big losers
• People must take charge of their own self-development
• Any insecurities people have about their learning capabilities are reacted when they have to learn new ways of thinking and doing things
• Perceived self-inefficacy contributes to occupations transition problems
• There are three (3) types of changes that require different forms of efficacy
• Reactive efficacy requires close monitoring of trends in the marketplace
• Efficacy to create incremental improvements in existing products and services
• Innovative efficacy is when knowledge is synthesized into new ways of thinking and doing things.

SELF-EFFICACY IN ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION MAKING (450)

• Decision making is neither a dispassionate process nor one driven solely by the desire to maximize self-interest
• Emotional factors favor and foreclose certain options
• People do not merely seek utility
• Since they have to live with themselves they tend to choose courses of action bring them self-satisfaction and a sense of self worth and reject those that are self-devaluating

Managerial Decision Making (451)

• Managers must understand how their decisions affect the motivations and performance of others
• They must link short term goals with distal organizational objectives
• Effective decision making requires a generative capability
• People who judge themselves inefficacious in managing environmental demands tend to become ore self-diagnostic than task diagnostic

Appraising Opportunities and Risks and Managing Constraints (455)

• Managers beliefs in their decisional efficacy affect their appraisal orientations
• Perceived self-efficacy affects risk taking
• Entrepreneurship rests heavily on a robust sense of efficacy
• Having an entrpreneurial parent raises offsprings efficacy to begin and run their own business
• Visionaries who have had successful businesses
• Personality trait bore no predictiveness
• They had a vision of what they wanted to achieve
• Had a firm belief in their efficacy to achieve it
• Set challenging goals
• Innovative production and management
• "The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want." -Thomas Edison

Enhancing Resilience to Managerial Stressors (456)

• Conception of ability
• Ought to be viewed as an acquirable ability
• Those who view it as an inherent capability become beset with self doubts
• One can always match or even surpass the attainments of others by gaining more knowledge and perfecting ones skills
• The debilitating effects of social comparisons can be reduced by judging ones accomplishments against personal standards of self improvement rather than against the attainments of others
• Self-comparative focuses develops persona l challenges without being haunted by how others do
• Self comparison is not an unmitigated benefit however
• Improvement does not follow an ever rising course
• It is characterized by spurts improvement, setback, plateaus and variations in rate of progress
• Hence, self comparisons can be self demoralizing or self enhancing

Self -Efficacy in Policy Making and Receptivity to Innovations (458)

• Effective leadership requires receptivity to innovations that can improve the quality and production of organizations

SELF-EFFICACY IN ENACTMENT OF OCCUPATIONAL ROLES (460)

• Perceived self-efficacy affects how well individuals manage requirements and challenges of occupational pursuits

Self-Efficacy in Management by Goal Setting (460)

• Goals improve the level of functioning in several ways
• Sense of purpose and direction
• String motivational effect
• Raise and sustain levels of effort needed to succeed
• Build and strengthen a sense of efficacy
• Create self satisfaction and interest
• "Motivation through aspiration"
• How to design and implement goal systems
• Good measures of performance
• Should include only aspects of the work over which workers have control
• Should provide an overall index of organizational productivity
• Assess where the system is working well and where improvements are needed

Participative Goal Setting (462)

• When people have a say in the goals that are selected, they hold themselves responsible for fulfilling them and thereby self-evaluative motivators in the process
• When goals are imposed by others, individuals do not necessarily accept them or feel obligated to meet them
• People perform better with goals
• Collaborative decision making involves more than goal setting

Contribution of Self-Efficacy to Creative Productivity (463)

• Success in academia rests heavily on research productivity
• Scientific discovery is usually a tortuous one with uncertain outcomes
• It requires creativity, staying power, good fortune
• Perceived self-efficacy contributes to productivity both directly and indirectly by influencing goals of scholarship
• High productivity harvests citations in professional journals and commands, good salaries and promotions
• Publish or Perish
• Why should the quest for knowledge require social coercion?
• Faculty hold lower perceived self-efficacy for research than for teaching

Occupational Stress and Dysfunction (464)

• Perceived self-efficacy to fulfill occupational demands affects level of stress and the physical health of employees
• Those with low self-efficacy
• Suffer anxiety
• Health problems
• Health impairing habits
• Occupational stress
• Work places are often structured in a way to breed stress
• Computers provide tracking of employee performance
• Stress is when task demands exceed perceived ability to do them
• Employees with a low sense of efficacy are stressed by heavy work demands
• Those with high self-efficacy are stressed by limited opportunities to make full use of their talents
• Some strategies for relieving stress rely on cognitive reappraisals of situations
• View problems as challenges
• Focus on positive aspects in otherwise negative situations
• Considering how things could be much worse
• Placing petty problems in larger perspective
• Reexamining priorities
• Seeking solace form others

COLLECTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL EFFICACY (468)

• Effective exercise of collective action involves more complex socially mediated paths of influence then individual self-direction
• People have to depend on one another
• Interdependent linkage of tasks, skills and roles
• People are affected by the beliefs, quality of performance, and motivations of others

Individualistic versus Collective Efficacy (470)

• Some societies encourage individualism, others a collective ethic
• The effects of a collective orientation on efficacy beliefs are more complex than saying "collectivists work better in groups than independently
• American managers represent individualistic culture
• Chinese managers represent a collectivist culture
• Regardless of background, employees achieve the greatest sense of personal self-efficacy and productivity gains when training s congruent with their personal orientations than when it is discordant
• Both at the cultural and personal levels, a strong sense of efficacy fosters high effort and productivity

Organizational Learning (472)

• There are fundamental differences between individual and organizational learning
• At the individual level, the same person performs each subjunction
• At the organizational level, it depends on different subgroups
• Viewed from the perspective of Social Cognitive Theory, organizational learning occurs through interactive psychosocial processes rather than through reified organizational attributes operating independently of individual's behavior
• Radical innovations encounter more problems in product development than do incremental improvements in existing products
• Missteps are the part and parcel of experimentation with new ideas
• Learning from failure is a critical part of organizational learning that requires allowance in creative work life
• Thomas Edison tested 1600 different filaments before finding one suitable for light bulbs, and then continued to search for the best filament by testing 6000 novel materials
• The second type of creativity largely involves synthesizing existing knowledge into new ways of thinking and doing things
• Many innovations are achieved by modeling (reverse engineering)
• Organizations do not have the time and money to keep reinventing core characteristics of good products, services, and systems
• The third process of creativity is serendipity
• It gives birth, from time to time, to innovations
• New products and major industries often spring from happenstance
• The Kellogg brothers made cereal because they neglected to return to the over on time. Instead of biscuits, they had dried crust that became flakes and gave rise to the cereal industry (474)
• Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by neglecting to discard old culture dishes, thus giving the penicillin mold sufficient time to develop