Date of Award

Fall 2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Program/Concentration

Psychology

Committee Director

Karin A. Orvis

Committee Member

Debra A. Major

Committee Member

James M. Henson

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.P65 L435 2009

Abstract

While the extant research has identified several individual and contextual factors influential on an employee's quantity of self-development participation, no prior research has examined potential multiplicative effects among these factors. The current study investigated person-situation interactions among five individual factors ( e.g., self-efficacy for self-development, learning goal orientation, and openness to experience) and the contextual factors of organizational and supervisor support ( combined to reflect overall work support). This study also sought to investigate the influence of proactive personality on self-development participation, a promising individual difference that has received little attention in the self-development literature. Using data collected from 136 full-time employees in a diverse array of jobs, a significant person-situation interaction was detected between openness to experience and work support. As hypothesized, the positive relationship between work support and quantity of self-development was stronger as openness to experience decreased. This suggests that it is possible for organizations to help such employees overcome their own propensity to avoid such voluntary development behaviors. The main effect findings in the extant literature for all the individual and contextual factors were also replicated, except conscientiousness. With respect to proactive personality, a significant bivariate relationship was observed between this trait and self-development quantity; however, when examining the individual factors simultaneously only self-efficacy for self-development and openness to experience contributed unique variance to the prediction of self-development participation. Additional practical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/jv3m-hr79

Download

Share

COinS