Development of a Theoretical Framework and a Measure of General Organizational Means-Efficacy

ABSTRACT

Means-efficacy was introduced by Eden as one’s perception of available organizational resources, a form of external efficacy which, together with internal (i.e., self) efficacy comprises a larger subjective efficacy construct. We further develop means-efficacy, elucidate its place in motivational theory, and present three studies to construct and validate the General Organizational Means-Efficacy Scale (GMES), the first such measure to date. Results support a general means-efficacy construct and provide convincing psychometric support for the GMES. We argue motivation theory will be advanced by adopting a general form of means-efficacy, and that the GMES provides a useful tool for future validation and other studies.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Amy Unckless for her assistance with the initial development of the instrument, and we thank Ken Shultz and Matt Riggs for helpful review and comments on this manuscript. We also thank Renee Tasker and Rebecca Price for their assistance with data collection and entry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, MA, upon reasonable request.

Notes

¹ Although our approach presents the parallel roles of means-efficacy and self-efficacy within SCT, we acknowledge the work of Vancouver and others (e.g., Powers, 1991; Vancouver & Purl, 2017; Vancouver, Thompson, & Williams, 2001), who have demonstrated that the articulation of efficacy belief effects within SCT may be incomplete. We hope the construct refinement and scale development of means-efficacy affords continued consideration of this question about an expanded conceptualization of efficacy.

² In all three studies, snowball methodology was used for recruitment. Consequently, the percentage return rates could not be calculated.

³ In HTMT, a ratio is created of the mean of the correlations of the items of different constructs compared to the means of the correlations of the items of the same constructs (Henseler, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2015). An HTMT value below .85 provides sufficient evidence of the discriminant validity of a pair of constructs (Voorhees et al., 2016).