| In today’s work environment, increasing the motivation of employees has become almost like a human resources (HR) norm. Many organizations are trying to develop, maintain and improve their HR strategies so that their employees become more motivated, therefore high performing and successful in both the short and the long run. In terms of research, many predictor variables, including organizations themselves and related support systems were in focus. As obvious examples, we can list increasing the quality of feedback systems (Fleming and Sulzer-Azaroff, 1989; Whitaker and Levy, 2012) improving the performance management process (Lakshman, 2014), enabling autonomous work environments (Hackman and Oldham, 1980), applying job enrichment methods (Pan and Werblow, 2012; Parker, 1998), introducing job rotation programs and many others. In terms of research, recent years have shown an increasing interest in the role of personal variables on human motivation, performance and related outcomes. As an example, Barrick and Mount (2005) suggested that personality as an individual factor has gained popularity as a predictor of work outcomes such as performance. Here, they have strongly argued that motivation has a major mediating role between personality (as a distal motivational actor) and performance meaning that personality influences behavior through performance motivation (proximal) agents such as goals, self-efficacy and expectancies. By definition, occupational self-efficacy represents judgments made regarding individual capabilities necessary to perform in their jobs (Jungert et al., 2013). In their analysis, that explored the roles of self-efficacy and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation over competence, Bandura and Schunk (1981) put forward that personal efficacy is possibly able to generate greater interest in the activity itself, compared to when the person feels the opposite, meaning perceived inefficacy. Gist (1987), in her analysis of the role of self-efficacy considering organizational behavior research and HR management, also stated that shortterm goals might have a role in interest development. In the current study, we are approaching self-efficacy as a critical resource for individuals in workplaces that might provide a possible internal environment for intrinsic motivation to take place. We have designed the current study based on the available research that includes selfefficacy and motivation as processes, which result in related performance outcomes. Operationally, we have picked occupational self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation and perceived organizational performance as variables for our research model while using a longitudinal design composed of ten consecutive weekly measures. In addition to conducting our study with the strength of a longitudinal design, we are aiming to demonstrate the importance of occupational self-efficacy for job performance through increase in intrinsic motivation. Our sample is composed of Turkish blue-collar employees. As majority of research around selfefficacy and motivation concentrate on the Western populations, we are hoping we can prove suggested model relationship in a non-Western population. In addition, as the maintenance and the motivation of high-performing employees are very crucial in today’s business environment, we are thinking that with the help of our findings we would bring the importance of our study constructs to the attention of organizational managers and leaders. |
