Effect of Locus of Control on Job Performance: Evidence from Australian Panel Data
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper aims to examine the importance of locus of control for job performance. We draw on Australian panel data and use the fixed effects panel data analysis technique to estimate the causal effect of locus of control on working people’s job performance. Our findings reveal that locus of control positively affects the adaptive performance dimension of job performance. Employees with a more internal locus of control tend to be better able to adapt to conditions and events in the workplace, leading to better performance on their jobs.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The paper is published under CC BY-NC-ND, in which the article is freely downloaded and shared in its original form non-commercially and its citation details are identified.
References
Attanasio, O., Cattan, S., Fitzsimons, E., Meghir, C., & Rubio-Codina, M. (2020). Estimating the production function for human capital: Results from a randomized controlled trial in Colombia. American Economic Review, 110(1), 48–85.
Bartlett, M. S. (1937). The statistical conception of mental factors. British Journal of Psychology. General Section, 28(1), 97–104.
Baum, C. F., & Schaffer, M. E. (2012). IVREG2H: Stata module to perform instrumental variables estimation using heteroskedasticity-based instruments (Statistical Software Components S457555). Boston: Boston College Department of Economics.
Baumeister, R., Campbell, J., Krueger, J., & Vohs, K. (2003). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(1), 1–44.
Blekesaune, M., & Solem, P. E. (2005). Working conditions and early retirement. Research on Aging, 27(1), 3–30.
Borghans, L., Golsteyn, B. H. H., Heckman, J., & Humphries, J. E. (2011). Identification problems in personality psychology. Personality and Individual Differences, 51(3), 315–320.
Borman, W. C., & Motowidlo, S. J. (1997). Task performance and contextual performance: The meaning for personnel selection research. Human Performance, 10(2), 99–109.
Bowles, S., Gintis, H., & Osborne, M. (2001). The determinants of earnings: A behavioral approach. Journal of Economic Literature, 39(4), 1137–1176.
Brockner, J., Gardner, M., Bierman, J., Mahan, T., Thomas, B., Weiss, W., & Mitchell, A. (1983). The roles of self-esteem and self-consciousness in the Wortman-Brehm model of reactance and learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(1), 199–209.
Brown, C. (1982). Estimating the determinants of employee performance. The Journal of Human Resources, 17(2), 178-194.
Brown, C., & Corcoran, M. (1997). Sex-based differences in school content and the male-female wage gap. Journal of Labor Economics, 15(3), 431–465.
Campbell, J. P. (1999). The definition and measurement of performance in the new age. In D. R. Ilgen, & E. D. Pulakos (Eds.), The changing nature of performance: Implications for staffing, motivation, and development (pp. 399-429). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Carlos, V. S., & Rodrigues, R. G. (2016). Development and validation of a self-reported measure of job performance. Social Indicators Research, 126(1), 279–307.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1982). Control theory: A useful conceptual framework for personality-social, clinical, and health psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 92(1), 111–135.
Chen, J. C., & Silverthorne, C. (2008). The impact of locus of control on job stress, job performance and job satisfaction in Taiwan. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 29(7), 572–582.
Cobb-Clark, D. A., Kassenboehmer, S. C., & Schurer, S. (2014). Healthy habits: The connection between diet, exercise, and locus of control. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 98, 1–28.
Cobb-Clark, D. A., & Schurer, S. (2012). Two economists’ musings on the stability of locus of control (Melbourne Institute Working Paper No. 9/11). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1804017
Coleman, M., & DeLeire, T. (2003). An economic model of locus of control and the human capital investment decision. Journal of Human Resources, 38(3), 701–721.
Cropanzano, R., & Wright, T. A. (1999). A 5-year study of change in the relationship between well-being and job performance. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 51(4), 252–265.
Cuesta, M. B., & Budría, S. (2017). Unemployment persistence: How important are non-cognitive skills? Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics , 69, 1339–1351.
Cunha, F., & Heckman, J. J. (2008). Formulating, identifying and estimating the technology of cognitive and noncognitive skill formation. Journal of Human Resources, 43(4), 738–782.
Emran, M. S., & Shilpi, F. (2012). The extent of the market and stages of agricultural specialization. The Canadian Journal of Economics, 45, 1125–1153.
Fiske, D. W. (1949). Consistency of the factorial structures of personality ratings from different sources. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44(3), 329–344.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
Gorsuch, R. (1983). Factor analysis (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Griffin, M. A., Neal, A., & Parker, S. K. (2007). A new model of work role performance: Positive behavior in uncertain and interdependent contexts. Academy of Management Journal, 50(2), 327–347.
Groves, M. O. (2005). How important is your personality? Labor market returns to personality for women in the US and UK. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26(6), 827–841.
Halkos, G., & Bousinakis, D. (2010). The effect of stress and satisfaction on productivity. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 59(5), 415–431.
Heckman, J., Pinto, R., & Savelyev, P. (2013). Understanding the mechanisms through which an Influential early childhood program boosted adult outcomes. The American Economic Review, 103(6), 2052–2086.
Hershberger, S. L. (2005). Factor score estimation. In B.S. Everitt and D.C. Howell (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Statistics in Behavioral Science (pp. 636–644). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Heywood, J., Jirjahn, U., & Struewing, C. (2017). Locus of control and performance appraisal. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 142(C), 205-225.
Hochschild, A. R. (1997). The time bind: When work becomes home and home becomes work. New York: Henry Holt.
Hogan, J., & Holland, B. (2003). Using theory to evaluate personality and job-performance relations: A socioanalytic perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1), 100–112.
Hollenbeck, J., Noe, R., & Gerhart, B. (1994). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. Burr Ridge, Illinois: Irwin.
Hurtz, G. M., & Donovan, J. J. (2000). Personality and job performance: The big five revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(6), 869–879.
Johnson, J. W. (2001). The relative importance of task and contextual performance dimensions to supervisor judgments of overall performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(5), 984–996.
Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2001). Relationship of core self-evaluations traits - Self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability - With job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 80–92.
Kalbers, L. P., & Fogarty, T. J. (2005). Antecedents to internal auditor burnout. Journal of Managerial Issues, 17, 101–118.
Kelly, I. R., Dave, D. M., Sindelar, J. L., & Gallo, W. T. (2014). The impact of early occupational choice on health behaviors. Review of Economics of the Household, 12(4), 737–770.
Kesavayuth, D., Ko, K. M., & Zikos, V. (2018). Locus of control and financial risk attitudes. Economic Modelling, 72, 122–131.
Kesavayuth, D., & Zikos, V. (2018). Happy people are less likely to be unemployed: Psychological evidence from panel data. Contemporary Economic Policy, 36(2), 277–291.
Lee, W. S., & McKinnish, T. (2019). Locus of control and marital satisfaction: Couple perspectives using Australian data. Journal of Economic Psychology, 74, 102205.
Lewbel, A. (2012). Using heteroscedasticity to identify and estimate mismeasured and endogenous regressor models. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 30(1), 67–80.
Lindqvist, E., & Vestman, R. (2011). The labor market returns to cognitive and noncognitive ability: Evidence from the swedish enlistment. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(1), 101–128.
Lord, R. G., & Hanges, P. J. (1987). A control system model of organizational motivation: Theoretical development and applied implications. Behavioral Science, 32(3), 161–178.
Lyness, K. S., & Thompson, D. E. (1997). Above the glass ceiling? A comparison of matched samples of female and male executives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(3), 359–375.
Maadal, A. (2020). The relationship between locus of control and conformity. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 20(1–2), 100–115.
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1976). Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence. Journal ol Experimental Psychology: General, 105(1), 3-46.
Martin, R., Thomas, G., Charles, K., Epitropaki, O., & McNamara, R. (2005). The role of leader-member exchanges in mediating the relationship between locus of control and work reactions. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78, 141–147.
Mishra, V., & Smyth, R. (2013). Are more senior academics really more research productive than junior academics? Evidence from Australian law schools. Scientometrics, 96(2), 411–425.
Mishra, V., & Smyth, R. (2014). It pays to be happy (if you are a man): Subjective wellbeing and the gender wage gap in Urban China. International Journal of Manpower, 35(3), 392–414.
Motowidlo, S. J., Borman, W. C., & Schmit, M. J. (1997). A theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance. Human Performance, 10(2), 71–83.
Mueller, G., & Plug, E. (2006). Estimating the effect of personality on male and female earnings. ILR Review, 60(1), 3–22.
Ng, T. W. H., & Feldman, D. C. (2008). The relationship of age to ten dimensions of job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 392–423.
Ornstein, S., & Isabella, L. (1990). Age vs stage models of career attitudes of women: A partial replication and extension. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 36(1), 1–19.
Ottley, A., Crouser, R. J., Ziemkiewicz, C., & Chang, R. (2012). Priming locus of control to affect performance. IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology 2012, VAST 2012 - Proceedings, 237–238.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (1984). Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence. Psychological Review, 91(3), 347–374.
Plümper, T., & Troeger, V. E. (2007). Efficient estimation of time-invariant and rarely changing variables in finite sample panel analyses with unit fixed effects. Political Analysis, 15(2), 124–139.
Powell, G. N., Butterfield, D. A., & Parent, J. D. (2002). Gender and managerial stereotypes: Have the times changed? Journal of Management, 28(2), 177–193.
Powell, M., & Ansic, D. (1997). Gender differences in risk behaviour in financial decision-making: An experimental analysis. Journal of Economic Psychology, 18(6), 605–628.
Pulakos, E. D., Schmitt, N., Dorsey, D. W., Arad, S., Hedge, J. W., & Borman, W. C. (2002). Predicting adaptive performance: Further tests of a model of adaptability. Human Performance, 15(4), 299–323.
Rose, R. L., & Vega, J. F. (1984). Assessing the sustained effects of a stress management intervention on anxiety and locus of control. Academy of Management Journal, 27(1), 190–198.
Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80, 1–28.
Salgado, J. F. (1997). The five factor model of personality and job performance in the European Community. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(1), 30–43.
Sarmiento, R., Beale, J., & Knowles, G. (2007). Determinants of performance amongst shop-floor employees: A preliminary investigation. Management Research News, 30(12), 915–927.
Sharifzadeh, M. (2013). Does fitness and exercises increase productivity? Assessing health, fitness and productivity relationship. American Journal of Management, 13(1), 32–52.
Sherman, A. C., Higgs, G. E., & Williams, R. L. (1997). Gender differences in the locus of control construct. Psychology and Health, 12(2), 239–248.
Sonnentag, S., & Frese, M. (2002). Performance: concept, theory, and predictors. In S. Sonnentag (Ed.), Psychological Management of Individual Performance (pp. 1–24). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sturman, M. (2003). Searching for the inverted U-shaped relationship between time and performance: Meta-analyses of the experience/performance, tenure/performance, and age/performance relationships. Journal of Management, 29(5), 609–640.
Viinikainen, J., Kokko, K., Pulkkinen, L., & Pehkonen, J. (2014). Labor market performance of dropouts: The role of personality. Journal of Economic Studies, 41(3), 453–468.
Watson, N., & Wooden, M. (2012). The HILDA Survey: A case study in the design and development of a successful household panel study. Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, 3, 369–381.
Weiner, N. (1948). Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine. Cambridge: MIT Press.