The relationship between self efficacy, project leadership outcome and future intentions to engage in organizational business process improvement opportunities: A survey analysis

Most experienced managers know at the gut level that employees with higher confidence and a positive belief in their abilities will perform better than those without them. As Henry Ford put it, "If you think you can or think you can't, you are right. Six Sigma is but one in a long line of programs (e.g. quality circles, kaizen, TQM, etc) to support to development of a culture of continuous improvement. The reality is that arming individuals with increasingly more robust approaches to identify new opportunities, at a cost of billions annually (Bandura, 1997), has failed to eliminate the gap between knowing what needs to be done and making it happen. Investigation of employee behavior and motivation within the construct of social cognitive theory, more specifically the concept of self-efficacy, provides evidence for the importance of one's resilient self-belief as a predictor of success.;This researcher's position is that a mastery experience influences one's level of motivation to engage in organizational business process improvement. This is consistent with "mastery experience" as the most important source of self efficacy development. The central hypotheses of this study investigated the relationship between the outcome of one's most recent project leadership attempt and future intent to: (a) use the methodology, (b) lead a project, or (c) participate on a project team. The first research question had three hypotheses that investigated the relationship between the outcome of a project leadership attempt and future intention to use BPI again. Future project leadership was the only hypothesis that conflicted with what was theorized; though directionally consistent, the results lacked statistical significance. The hypotheses for the second and third research questions, investigating the relationship of the BPI Skill Self Efficacy measure to project leadership outcome and future intentions, supported validity (discriminate and predictive) for researcher developed BPI Skill Appraisal. The hypotheses for the fourth and fifth research questions further support the importance of a mastery experience by demonstrating the importance of a mastery experience in the past.