Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2023

Abstract

Work effort has been a key concept in management theories and research for more than a century. Maintaining and increasing employee effort also is a persistent concern to managers. The goal of the present conceptual and meta-analytic review was to increase clarity and consensus regarding what effort is and how to measure it. First, we reviewed conceptualizations of effort and provided an integrated definition that views effort as a direct outcome of motivation that captures (a) what employees work on, (b) how hard they work, and (c) how long they persist in that work. Second, we identified four main ways researchers have operationalized effort and meta-analytically studied the effects of each operationalization on effort–job performance relationships. For example, measures that assessed multiple dimensions of effort (ρ = .37) tended to relate more strongly to performance than measures that focused on only one dimension (e.g., effort intensity) or on effort more generally (ρ = .18 to .29). Third, we developed and meta-analytically tested a nomological network to gain a better understanding of effort's antecedents (e.g., intrinsic motivation, ρ = .46; performance orientation, ρ = .12) and outcomes (e.g., job performance, ρ = .34; exhaustion, ρ = .04) as well as constructs that appear to overlap with effort (e.g., work engagement, ρ = .48; grit, ρ = .51). Finally, on the basis of our conceptual and meta-analytic reviews, we delineated an agenda for future research on this central, yet often misunderstood, construct.

Keywords

effort, engagement, meta-analysis, motivation, performance

Discipline

Industrial and Organizational Psychology | Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Journal of Management

Volume

49

Issue

1

First Page

125

Last Page

157

ISSN

0149-2063

Identifier

10.1177/01492063221087641

Publisher

SAGE Publications (UK and US)

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1177/014920632210876

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