An Analysis Of Computer Self-Efficacy In Organizational IT Research Projects

The following course learning outcomes are assessed by completing this assessment:

Utilise effective communication practice in organisations.

Demonstrate expert English language skills in academic and professional contexts.

Evaluate the quality and utility of literature sourced.

Undertake a literature review for an organisational IT research project.

Compose a research proposal and report on a topic related to an organisational IT research project.

Present written and oral reports to academic and organisational audiences.

Importance of Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy has its roots stem up from the Social Cognitive Theory where it has been defined as the confidence of an individual’s ability for performing a task effectively. Social Cognitive Theory proposes that individuals having more confidence in their skill set and abilities tend to exert more effort while performing a task. They incline to persist longer to overcome upcoming hurdles than those having less confidence in their abilities. Based on the general concept of self-efficacy, (Baker et al., 2014) defined the idea of Computer Self-Efficacy as an individual’s confidence about his or her abilities to perform a computer related task successfully.

Bandura (1986) introduced the concept of the triadic reciprocality in the context of social cognitive theory. The theory referred to the interaction between personal and behavioral factors. According to the theory, an individual's behavior can be determined with the interconnection between the above mentioned factors(Kulviwat, Bruner II &  Neelankavil, 2014) In the theory, the author considered the individuals as self regulatory, proactive, self-organizing and self-reflecting. He considered that individuals are not reactive ones and are not directed by external environmental forces.

Self–efficacy is commonly known as the optimistic self-belief in the competence or probability of a successful accomplishment of a task to produce a favorable outcome (Clum et al., 2014). It plays a important role in determining the chances for success. Setting goals for making sure that efficacy beliefs are in line with the aims is something to be attentive about. Self-efficacy theory is one of the most recent in a longer tradition of efficiency theories, which has generated much research in personality, clinical and social psychology through the past decades.

According to (Bandara, 1994), the originator of the theory, there are four sources of efficacy beliefs:

Experiences in Mastery: Nothing is expected to be more powerful than a direct mastery experience for increasing self-efficiency. Achieving a success in a task builds self believes in that area whereas failure threatens the efficacy belief (Karwowski, 2016).A flexible approach towards the concept of self-efficacy requires encounter with hurdles with effort and determination.

Vicarious Experience: Sources of self-efficacy also comes from people around and role models (Pellas, 2014).The success of similar natured people by sustained effort raises the self-belief and the belief of being capable to master activities to achieve success.

Verbal Persuasion: Influential people like Teachers, parents and coaches in and around everyone’s life helps to strengthen, the self believes which motivates for a successful future.

Four Sources of Efficacy Beliefs

States of emotion and physiology:  Judgment of individual self–efficacy influences a person. Depression dampens self confidence and reduces capabilities (Ross, Perkins & Bodey, 2016).  Tension and reaction of stress are some of the major signs of vulnerability to poor performances whereas positive flow of emotions uplifts skill confidences The art of visualizing effective behavior is also another route to self efficiency.

In general, the term efficacy means the ability for the production of a desired result. Efficacy of something is related to its effectiveness and the ability to do its requirement (Zimmerman, 2000).Self –efficacy on the other hand is a self-belief in an individual’s ability to deal with upcoming problems and challenges. In the light of importance and benefit, self –efficacy tends to impact largely on an individual’s thought, behavior and plays an important role in motivating a person(Ben-Ami et al., 2014).People having heightened senses of self-efficacy welcome problems as challenges and prefer to master it rather than avoiding it. Development of greater intrinsic interests in personal activities and setting goals to demonstrate a solid sense of commitment to them are some of the major effect (Hajli & Lin, 2016). People  having lower sense of self-efficacy generally tends to have weak commitment to their targets and often questions their capabilities. They tend to lose faith in their personal abilities and fall easy prey to depression, stress and more.

This section presents an idea over the existing literature in consideration to the Information and technology.

Based on Psychologist Albert Bandura’s principle of self-efficacy, Computer self-efficacy (CSE) as quoted by (Al-Haderi, 2013) is “The judgement of the user’s ability to perform computer related task.”. Computer self-efficacy doesn’t concern over the past experiences that an individual has had with the systems but with one’s perception towards computer related tasks (John, 2013). In this paper four scholarly articles related to computer self-efficacy are going to be analyzed.  In their respective articles Lee& Lee (2014), have discussed about the computer self-efficacy and its application in different sectors like pre service teachers’, technology integration, consumer information, IT adoption and education.

In the article “Enhancing pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs for technology integration through lesson planning practice” (Lee & Lee, 2014) is trying to establish a relation between technological integration inside classrooms and the teachers’ computer self-efficacy. The author believes that teachers’ self-efficacy for technological integration is the most dominant factor for the use of technology in the classrooms. To prove the provided thesis, the author conducted field tests on students at Teacher Education university of South Korea. The author of the above-mentioned article analyzed the collected data by use of SETI (Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs for technology integration). TAC (teacher’s attitude towards computers) method was also used in the paper to get an idea of the proposed teachers towards the computer or IT (Shank & Cotten, 2014).  From the research the authors concluded that self-efficacy of the participants as measured by the SETI did improved after the competition of their course.

Scholarly Articles Related to Computer Self-Efficacy

“Attitudes to technology, perceived computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety as predictors of computer supported education” discusses the importance of computer self-efficacy for a teacher (Celik & Yesilyurt, 2013). The author also supports the idea that technology should be implemented at every level of education system, from pre-schooling to higher education. Dominance of ICT (Information and Communication Technology)at the elementary schooling acted as the motivation for the author to carry out the research.“Technology attitude scale” was implemented to measure the attitude of the participating pre-teaching subjects. The computer self-efficacy of the participating candidates was measured using Perceived computer self-efficacy scale. “Computer anxiety scale” was adopted to analyse the collected computer anxiety level along with “The Attitude Scale toward Applying Computer Supported Education” to evaluate their support for ICT in the education system. The paper put forth a model to show the attitude of the variables towards the elements (Computer anxiety, perceived computer self-efficacy and attitude) of the paper and elements ratio to each other.

Keith et al., (2015) were inspired by the surge in use of smart phones and its impact on the consumer market to publish their paper “The role of mobile-computing self-efficacy in consumer information disclosure”. The research’s base is established over two principles in general namely “privacy calculus” and “trust theory”. Privacy theory was used to analyze the perceived risk for privacy while transaction or with the technology itself. In contradiction, the trust theory was used to establish between the trusting belief and self-efficacy. The paper hypothesizes that “mobile computing self-efficacy has a direct positive effect on the coping efforts made by consumers in the app adoption process”. This leads to generation of the trust for the app provider. In contradiction the authors using privacy calculus models perceives that it is having a negative impact on the consumers’ perception over privacy concerns.

John (2013) through his paper “Influence of Computer Self-Efficacy On Information Technology Adoption” wished to analyze the effect that self-efficacy has had on the adaptation of the Information and technology. The author underwent through different scholarly articles and a survey of 255 business management undergraduate’s students from Bangkok metropolitan area to put forth the paper’s hypothesized statements (Schwarzer, 2014). The most important hypothesis that the author offers is “Social factors positively influence computer self-efficacy in the context of Social networking adoption.”. The author in the paper have proposed 8 hypotheses on self-efficacy in the IT, most of which are contradictory to other. The author has concluded the paper by rejecting 3 of his own hypothesized statements and holding on to the remaining hypothesized statements. The limitation of the participating subjects (limited to Thai people only) also raises questions over the reliability of the paper.

Applications of Computer Self-Efficacy in Different Sectors

Conclusion:

The impact of IT on individual with high level of efficacy seems to recognize the impact as more pronounced than individual with low efficacy believes. Attitude towards IT as a communication tool reveals that individual with higher level of computer self efficacy uses e-mail more frequently and carries a more positive attitude compared with individuals with lower level of computer literacy. The relationship between efficacy levels, attitudes and usages might be reciprocal in the light of social cognitive theory. The assumed level of self efficacy of an individual are not stable, instead experiences and verbal support from other sources readily influences the beliefs regarding efficacy level.The concept of self-efficacy has significant and positive relationship with the new e-learning services which entails announcements postings, uploading course modules, discussion in forums, checking out the class lists and more. It is clear that these online activities require internet savvy skills to carry forward these assignments and the utilization of the services can be achieved regardless of education, age numbers, and familiarity and skill levels. Understanding the notion of the self efficacy is thus important for the successful implementation of systems in organizations. The existence of valid measures and reliability of self efficacy implies possibilities of valid assessments and further intimations for training and support.

Self-efficacy in the role of a teacher on other hand is seen as a powerful predictor for the action of the teacher. Self-efficacy of a Teacher comes from the belief that the individual is capable enough of dealing and exercising personal control over one’s behavior, thought and emotions. Teaching effectively can make a change in children’s lives and demonstrate the belief of teaching. A self-effective teacher holds the capability of a strong predictor and beliefs of demonstration of more commitment, job satisfaction, risk lovers, tend to motivate students and achieve better gains in their student and children’s achievements.

The most appropriate recommendation to increase one’s self-efficacy would be to associate with their respective field of work. The more association with the subject is done, the more experience is gained and with experience, confidence and command is increased hence, increasing self-efficacy. Spending time with the young generation also helps in building computer, internet and technological self-efficacy. This reason for the above-mentioned recommendation is that the young generations generally, have a high self-efficacy rate associated with the technology.

Workplace self-efficacy can be developed in the employers by introducing training and e-learning programmers. Goal setting is also a method to increase the self-efficacy rate of an individual as it motivates the subject to try to achieve the goal. However, it should be noted that the goal must be set based on the aptitude of an individual. Different research papers on self-efficacy have suggested that the rate of self-efficacy is directly proportional to goal achievement. The closure the goal gets, higher the self-efficacy of the individual rises.

Self efficacy in this study is highlighted as an optimistic self belief. I believe that an individual can develop skills for performing new or challenging targets to cope up with altering life styles, growth, functioning and health. Setting up my goals above my abilities is the key for achievement which I have realized through out. It is important to reframe the obstacles coming through out my way. As noted by (Prestwich et al., 2014) it is a psychological technique identifying the negativity and attitudes. I believe that the best characteristic any individual can have is by finding motivation in the hurdles in their lives and fight with them to keep going. According to (Conde et al., 2014),our actions and decisions are the important factors shaping our lives. I believe that it is important to take control of all the events that affects us and we should acknowledge from our actions and mistakes to perform better next time. Throughout the years I have been thinking and blaming my destiny for my not-so-good average results for my semesters from my school time. I used to believe that my consistent degradation of marks may be the resultants of any of the teachers partiality, or my friends good tutor which I couldn’t afford. But the optimistic self efficacy beliefs throughout this study has enhanced my motivation and perhaps boost some of the confidence in me to set the belief that I can, it was not the fault of any external factors but the lack of my dedication, my results were average because I studied average. The study of self-efficacy has influenced my motivation and now I have set up my goals and targets higher, with a challenge to succeed and earn higher marks because, now I believe, I can.

References:

Al-Haderi, S. M. S. (2013). The effect of self-efficacy in the acceptance of information technology in the public sector. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(9).

Baker, E. W., Thatcher, J. B., Gundlach, M., & McKnight, D. H. (2014). The influence of social aversion and institution-based trust on computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety and antecedents to IT use. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (JOEUC), 26(1), 1-26.

Bandara, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. Encyclopedia of human behavior, 4, 71-81.

Ben-Ami, M., Hornik, J., Eden, D., & Kaplan, O. (2014). Boosting consumers’ self-efficacy by repositioning the self. European Journal of Marketing, 48(11/12), 1914-1938.

Celik, V., &Yesilyurt, E. (2013). Attitudes to technology, perceived computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety as predictors of computer supported education. Computers & Education, 60(1), 148-158.

Clum, G. A., Rice, J. C., Broussard, M., Johnson, C. C., & Webber, L. S. (2014). Associations between depressive symptoms, self-efficacy, eating styles, exercise and body mass index in women. Journal of behavioral medicine, 37(4), 577-586.

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Hajli, N., & Lin, X. (2016). Exploring the security of information sharing on social networking sites: The role of perceived control of information. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(1), 111-123.

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