HOW DOES JOB SIGNIFICANCE AFFECT THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-EFFICACY AND
PROCRASTINATION?
Master thesis, Msc in Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
Abstract
Introduction
Procrastination is a common and detrimental phenomenon (Steel, 2007). According to Ellis and Knaus (1977), 80 to 95 percent of college students showed procrastination in academic life (also see O’Brien, 2002) and furthermore, this percentage appeared to be growing (Kachgal et al., 2001). Academic procrastinators have poorer academic outcomes, lower self-reported GPAs and class grades (Klassen et al., 2008). This phenomenon always appears to be troubling and pernicious, and according to O’Brien (2002), over 95% of the procrastinators want to diminish it.Quite some research has been devoted to procrastination. For instance, a book by Ferrari et al (1995) largely focuses on the aspects of theory and measurement of procrastination, and Schouwenburg et al’s (2004) book pays attention to the treatment programs of procrastination for academic counselors. Van Eerde (2003) performed a meta-analysis which consisted of 121 studies analyzing the relationship between procrastination and personality variables, causes, effectsand performance. She found out that self-efficacy and conscientiousness have the biggest negative effect on procrastination whereas self-handicapping has the largest positive influence (Van Eerde, 2003).
2000; Fritzsche et al., 2003; Lay & Schouwenburg, 1993; Lee, 2005; Midgley & Urdan, 2001).
Self-efficacy is one of the most consistent predictors of procrastination (Steel, 2007). An inverse relationship between self-efficacy and procrastination has been revealed in several previous procrastination studies (Ferrari, Parker, & Ware, 1992; Haycock et al., 1998; Steel, 2007; Tuckman, 1991; Wolters, 2003). Steel (2007) and van Eerde (2003) also performed a meta-analytic and theoretical review of procrastination and found that self-efficacy had a negative correlation with academic procrastination. In this paper, the relation between self-efficacy and procrastination is further investigated. First, I propose that this relationship might not only belinear but also curvilinear. In particular,extreme levels of self-efficacy might lead to a premature belief that the goal is easy to reach, resulting in reduced effort and performance (Moores & Chang, 2009). Therefore, it is possible that extremely high level of self-efficacy lead to increased procrastination. Second, the curvilinear relationship between self-efficacy and procrastination might also be moderated by other factors, such as job significance. Job significance is animportant factor related to procrastination. It is a key element in one's pursuit of meaningfulness in work (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003). Scholars have proposedthat perceptions of task significance can increase intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1990) and intrinsic motivation and procrastinationare negatively related (Lee,2005). Therefore, a higher sense of job significance may enhance intrinsic motivation and thus reduce the probability of procrastination. Furthermore, I propose that the curvilinear relation between self-efficacy and procrastination may only hold when job significance is low. When job significance is high, the relation between self-efficacy and procrastination is expected to be linear and negative. The research question of this paper is therefore is: How does job
significance affect the relationship between self-efficacy and procrastination?
Theory and hypothesis
an avoidance of rashly doing something (Bernstein, 1998). For instance, Bernstein (1998) illustrated that the higher the uncertainty of the outcome, the greater the value of procrastination might be. The reason is that not acting has value if the waiting could bring new information to the decision or action (Bernstein, 1998, p. 15). Thus delay can be a wise and diplomatic strategy and deliberately planned (van Eerde, 2003). However, negative aspects of procrastination have seen the primary concern in usage (Steel, 2007).
Like numerous common-language terms which have flowed into scientific study, procrastination has almost as many definitions as the people delving into this topic. The definitional variation might first seem to make the nature of procrastination unclear, but may also partially illuminate the term (Steel, 2007). In line with the term’s Latin origins - the word
procrastination has two parts: pro, meaning “forward, forth or in favor of” and crastinus,
meaning “of tomorrow” (Klein, 1971) - all conceptualizations of procrastination realize that this behavioral term must include a process of delaying, deferring, postponing or putting off a task or decision (Steel, 2007). According to Steel, “to procrastinate is to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay”. Like most definitions, this definition focuses on the negative consequences of procrastination. One procrastinates when one postpones starting or finishing an intended action (Beswick & Mann, 1994; Ferrari, 1993; Lay & Silverman, 1996; Milgram, 1991; Silver & Sabini, 1981). This definition makes the term distinct from decision avoidance (C. J. Anderson, 2003), in which people intentionally delay making decisions (Steel, 2007).
𝑈𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 =E × V ΓD
Utility signifies an individual’s preference for a task or choice. Usually, preference
increases as utility increases. E indicates a person’s belief that he or she has the capacity to successfully accomplish a task, which in another word, reveals self-efficacy (Steel & König, 2006; Steel, 2007). According to Bandura (1997), expectancy is closely related to and strongly represented by self-efficacy. V signifies three aspects: task aversiveness, need for achievement and boredom proneness. According to Steel (2007), undesirable or boring tasks have low value, but the people with a high need for achievement nevertheless value performing these tasks.According to Steel (2007), the higher the unpleasantness of a task, the less value it has and the more likely that it will be postponed because people tend to avoid doing tasks they do not like to do. The need for achievement has a negative effect on procrastination because people are more likely to enjoy work that could lead to high sense of achievement. By the same token, boredom proneness should result in a relatively higher level of procrastination because it enhances the unpleasantness of a task (Steel, 2007).D indicates the level of realization of the enjoyable activities, which stands for procrastination - the failure to act upon an intention. Delay is directly influenced by the timing of rewards and punishments. For instance, procrastinators can work hard just before the deadline (Steel, 2007).Γ refers to people’s sensitivity to delay and is related to individual difference such asdistractibility, impulsiveness, lack of self-control or even age. The larger Γ is the greater one’s sensitivity to postpone will be (Steel & König, 2006).For example, people with high level of distractibility are more likely to postpone their work.
choice, level of effort, persistence, and resilience, and how we subsequently perform”. Evidence from other meta-analyses also shows that efficacy beliefs affect the level of motivation and performance (Bandura & Locke, 2003). According to Klassen and Kuzucu (2009), self-efficacy for self-regulation is the strongest predictor of procrastination. Self-efficacy for self-regulation reflects a person’s belief in his or her abilities to perform a variety of learning strategies and has been proved to influence academic achievement (Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992). A study by Klassen et al. (2008) also revealed that self-efficacy for self-regulation has a strong negative influence of procrastination. The most significant relationship found in this study was between self-efficacy and procrastination, and the authors suggested that students who have the highest level of self-confidence in their abilities showed the lowest level of delaying behaviors.In TMT theory, expectancy (E) is represented by self-efficacy and it has a negative effect on procrastination (Steel, 2007). Therefore, it is likely that higher levels of self-efficacy can reduce procrastination.
However, anextremely high level of self-efficacy may sometimes lead to an inflated sense of self-confidence and thus lead to an underestimation of the difficulty and the importance of the task or an overly optimistic estimation of the time needed to perform a task. This notion may decrease one’s attention to the tasks and thus in turn increase procrastination. Extreme levels of self-efficacy have been found to have a negative influence on performance, and may lead to a premature belief that the goal is easy to reach, resulting in reduced effort and performance (Moores & Chang, 2009). Prior research has shown that people with high self-admiration tend to react poorly to threats and show poor self-regulation (Jordan, Spencer, & Zanna, 2003). According to Lambird and Maan (2006), high self-esteem individuals are more likely to overestimate their skills and capacities, leading to self-regulatory failure, which could result in procrastination. Due to this logic, I propose the first hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: To a certain extent, as one’s perception of self-efficacy increases, procrastination decreases; but beyond that, the effect of self-efficacy on procrastination is positive. The relation between self-efficacy and procrastination is curvilinear (U-shaped).
other people or tasks either within or outside an organization (Buelens et al, 2011). In this paper, I refer to the perceived value of one’s job. Job significance is a key element in one's pursuit of meaningfulness in work (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003). Therefore, task significance increases intrinsic motivation (Deci& Ryan, 1990), which refers to an individual’s pleasure and satisfaction about the engagement in an activity. According to a study by Lee (2005), there is a negative correlation between intrinsic motivation and procrastination.Therefore, higher sense of job significance may enhance one’s intrinsic motivation and thus reduce the probability of procrastination. Moreover, employees might find it difficult to perform their jobs efficiently if they think their efforts are insignificant or feel that their jobs are not important (Folami & Bline, 2012). Due to this reason, job significance can also enhance employees’ efficiency of performing the jobs, leading to a decrease in procrastination.
In TMT theory, value (V) is characterized by three important variables: task aversiveness, need for achievement and boredom proneness. A job with high significance is more important, and value (V) will also be affected by job significance, which in turn has a negative effect on procrastination. The second hypothesis can be raised:
Hypothesis 2: There is a negative relation between job significance and procrastination.
As one’s perception of job significance changes, the effect of self-efficacy on procrastination might change as well. High significance of a job could increase attention to and emphasis on this job. If job significance is high, no matter how self-efficacy varies, it is crucial to start the work as early as possible, because an important task deserves to be chosen as priority. Therefore, a high level of job significance might lower the influence that self-efficacy has on procrastination, which will lead to a linear and flatter relationship between self-efficacy and procrastination.Under low job significance, however, overconfidence, resulting from high levels of self-efficacy, is more likely and may result in less effort, decreased performance and increased procrastination. This is also consistent with TMT. As shown in TMT formulation, E and V jointly affect Utility because it is the multiplication of these two elements that influence the Utility of a task.This means E and V interact with each other. For example, if E increases but V is low, the E×V term would still be low. Thus I propose the last hypothesis:
self-efficacy and procrastination. With high job significance, there is a linear and negative relation between self-efficacy and procrastination; however, with low job significance, the relationship is curvilinear (U-shape) which means as self-efficacy increases, procrastination decreases first but then begins to increase after a certain level.
Figure 1 illustrates the expected relations among the three factors. Procrastination
Low job significance
High job significance
Self-efficacy
Figure 1: Relations among self-efficacy, job significance and procrastination
Methodology Overview & participants
An online study was conducted among students at the University of Groningen and consisted of two parts. A questionnaire was administered in the first part, which elicited self-reported evaluation from participants regarding their perceived academic self-efficacy, significance of academic assignments (which represents job significance), academic procrastination and self-evaluated performance. The second part was a scenario study, in which self-efficacy and job significance were manipulated and procrastination wasmeasured.There were 98 participants in total, and 38 were male and 60 were female. The mean age was 22.28 with a SD of 2.71. As for the education levels of the participants, 46 of them are currently pursuing a Bachelor degree and 52 a Master degree. All the participants who have a SONA account got 2 research points for their contribution.
Part 1
At the beginning of the questionnaire study, participants were asked to recall a group assignment and indicate what the assignment entailed, what their responsibilities were and what grade they had received.Then, they were asked to rate on 7-point scales (1=completely disagree, 7=completely agree) about their self-confidence in performing the academic task, their perceived significance of the assignment, and their habits of procrastination in that specific assignment.
Measures:
Seven questionswere used to assess self-efficacy of the participants when they did the specific group assignmentand these questions were derived from Chen et al’s New General
Self-efficacy Scale(2001). Example questions are “I was sure from the beginning that I would
be able to complete my tasks successfully” “Even when the task was difficult, I was certain that I could accomplish it”. Cronbach’s Alpha of self-efficacy items was .83and the seven items were averaged into one variable.
Six questions on perceived significance of the group assignment were assessed to measure job significance and were based on The Job Diagnostic Survey (Hackman & Oldham, 1974).Example questions are “In this assignment, I thought that I could obtain outcomes that were important to me” “How well other people in my group could do their jobs was affected by how well my job got done”. Cronbach’s Alpha of job significance items was .65. Although it should be noted that the reliability of this measure was relatively low, the six items were still averaged into one variable.
Nine questions about procrastination in doing this academic assignment were based on Tuckman’s procrastination scale (1991). Exampleitems are “When the tasks got too tough to tackle, I postponed them”“I promised myself that I would do something for this assignment, and then put it off anyway”. Cronbach’s Alpha was .90 and the nine items were averagedinto one variable.
Procedures:
In the scenario study, self-efficacy and job significance were manipulated. At first, participants were asked to read a scenario in which they worked for a company and were asked to do a task which needed to be done within 20 days.According to three levels of self-efficacy (low, moderate and high) and two levels of job significance (low and high), six different conditions were created. Every participant was randomlyassignedtoonesituation.
Low self-efficacy was described as “it is the first time you have to performthis task and thus you do not have much experience. In addition, the task requires new skills which are challenging for you and you do not feel very confident that you can accomplish the task successfully”. Moderate self-efficacy was described as “the task you have been assigned is not completely new to you and you thus have some experience. In addition, you already possess some of the skills that are needed for this task, but the task also requires some new skills. You therefore feel moderately confident that you can perform the task successfully”. High self-efficacy was described as “you have done this task many times before and thus you have sufficient experience. In addition, you have all the skills that needed for the task. You therefore feel very confident that you can perform the task successfully”.
The description of low job significance was “the task does not seem very important. The task is not of high value to the whole scheme of the organization and coworkers do not depend on how well you do your job. It has only very limited influence on what can be achieved in the next stage of the whole project. Therefore, the task is not very important to you or to the whole organization”. High job significance was characterized as “the task is very important. The task is of high value to the whole scheme of the organization and a lot of co-workers depend on how well you will do your job. It directly influences what can be achieved in the next stage of the whole project. Therefore, it is important both to you and to the whole organization”.
Measures:
included. Participants were told that they had 20 days to finish the task and they were required to choose one point to indicate the following questions: 1)“when you will start working on the new task”; 2) “when you expect to finish the task”.
Then participants were asked questions about self-efficacy, job significance and procrastination. Example questions about self-efficacy were “I am confident about completing this task”“I am sure that I can finish this task timely”. Example questions about job significance were “I think this task is important”“I think this task is important to my organization”. Example questions about procrastination were “when the task will get tough, I will postpone it” “I will try to find an excuse for not doing this task”. All the questions were measured on 7-point scales (1=completely disagree, 7= completely agree). Cronbach’s Alpha of self-efficacy, job significance and procrastination were .90, .96 and .88, respectively, therefore they were all averaged into single variables.
Results Part 1
In part 1 of the study, participants were asked to recall a group assignment they had done recently and then rated self-efficacy, task significance, and procrastination on a 7-point scale. In this part of the study, task significance was used to signify job significance.
Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations of all study variables – control variables, two independent variables and one dependent variable – examined in Part 1 of the study. As for the control variables, the correlation between age and level of education was high and also statistically significant (r=.79; p<.01), which meant that older students pursued a higher degree. The correlation between gender and grades was not high but statistically significant (r=.22; p<.05), meaning that female participants on average had higher grades than male students. The control variables were not correlated with the dependent variable (procrastination) and the independent variables (self-efficacy and task significance).
were statistically significant. Specifically, self-efficacy was correlated positively with task significance (r=.48; p<.01) and grades (r=.24; p<.05) and negatively with procrastination (r=-.41; p<.01), meaning that participants with higher self-efficacy recognized higher task significance, had higher grades, and procrastinated less. Task significance was also associated positively with grades (r=.22; p<.05) and negatively with procrastination (r=-.23; p<.05). Although the correlation was not very high, it did indicate that participants with a higher perception of task significance had higher grades and procrastinated less.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations
Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. Gender 1.61 .49 1 2. Age 22.28 2.71 .02 1 3. Level of education 1.53 .50 .13 .79** 1 4. Grades 7.39 1.11 .22* .09 .05 1 5. Self-efficacy 5.33 .74 -.04 -.18 -.19 .24* 1 6. Task significance 5.15 .79 .01 .16 .13 .22* .48** 1 7. Procrastination 2.50 1.06 -.08 -.01 -.03 -.10 -.41** -.23* 1
Notes: N=98; Gender: males=1, females=2; Level of education: bachelor=1, master=2; ** p<.01; * p <.05
Hypotheses Tests
Results are shown in Table 2.
Hypothesis 1 stated that there isa curvilinear relationship between self-efficacy and procrastination, meaning that to a certain extent, self-efficacy has a negative influence on procrastination, but beyond that, the effect of self-efficacy on procrastination is positive. As shown in Table 2, the control variables were not significantly related toprocrastination. In model 2, we can see that self-efficacy was significantly related to procrastination (β=-.43,
p<.001) and the relationship was negative, which meant procrastination decreased when
self-efficacy increased. This explained 19% of the variance (R²=.19). However, the square of self-efficacy had little effect on procrastination and the effect was not significant (β=-.06,
p>.05 in Model 3). Therefore, hypothesis 1 was not supported, suggesting that self-efficacy
only had linear and negative effect on procrastination and the curvilinear effect was not found.
As for task significance, hypothesis 2 predicted that there was a negative relation between task significance and procrastination. However, this was not the case in the statistical analysis. According to the data in Table 2, there was no significant relationship between task significance and procrastination (β=.00, p>.05 in Model 2), meaning that hypothesis 2 was rejected.
Table2. Regression results of the dependent variable: procrastination
β(t) Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Gender -.07(-.71) -.08(-.85) -.08(-.79) -.07(-.68) -.07(-.68) Age .00(.02) -.03(-.17) -.02(-.10) -.01(-.06) -.01(-.07) Level -.02(-.11) -.08(-.50) -.08(-.53) -.09(-.56) -.09(-.54) Self-efficacy -.43(-3.87)*** -.46(-3.82)*** -.46(-3.80)*** -.46(-3.62)*** Task significance -.00(-.04) -.01(-.09) -.01(-.08) -.01(-.12) Se² -.06(-.55) -.01(-.07) -.01(-.05) Se*js -.06(-.33) -.05(-.24) Se²*js .02(.11) R² .01 .19** .19** .19** .19* ∆R² .01 .18*** .00 .00 .00
Notes: se=self-efficacy; js=job significance;*p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001;
Part 2
Part 2 consisted of a scenario study in which self-efficacy and job significance were manipulated, and procrastination was assessed. Univariate ANOVAs were performed to assess the adequacyof the manipulations and to test the hypotheses.
Manipulation Checks
A first univariate ANOVA was used to check the manipulation of self-efficacy. This analysis showed a main effect of the self-efficacy manipulation on experienced self-efficacy,
F (5, 92) = 6.32, p<.001. Participants in the high self-efficacy condition reported higher
levels of self-efficacy (M = 5.95) than those in the moderate self-efficacy condition (M = 5.55) and those in the low self-efficacy condition (M = 5.21). No further effects were significant (p>.05). This result indicates that the manipulation of self-efficacy was successful, although it should be noted that even in the condition of low self-efficacy, experienced self-efficacy still was relatively high.
analysis yielded a main effect of the job significance manipulation on experienced job significance, F (5, 92) = 6.16, p< .001. Participants in the condition of lowjob significance reported lowerlevels of experienced job significance (M = 4.09) than those in the highjob significance condition (M = 6.18). No further effects were significant (p>.05). This result meant that job significance was successfully manipulated in the scenario.
Descriptive statistics of each variable are shown in Table 3.
Table 3. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) in different conditions
Variables
Low JS High JS
Low SE Moderate SE High SE Low SE Moderate SE High SE Self-efficacy 5.49(1.15) 5.73(.91) 6.00(.72) 4.92(1.52) 5.35(1.00) 5.89(.59) Job significance 4.12(1.37) 3.92(1.61) 4.22(1.55) 6.21(.58) 6.29(.53) 6.02(.91) Procrastination 3.06(1.06) 2.75(1.17) 2.58(1.17) 2.46(1.19) 2.54(1.17) 2.65(1.20) Starting point 6.06(5.23) 5.38(5.15) 6.65(5.79) 1.94(3.47) 3.65(3.94) 3.07(3.28) Finishing point 17.12(2.87) 14.75(5.34) 15.18(4.97) 15.25(3.49) 17.76(2.02) 17.33(3.24) Duration 11.06(4.63) 9.38(4.83) 8.53(5.37) 13.31(4.73) 14.12(4.50) 14.27(4.51)
Notes: N=98; JS=job significance; SE=self-efficacy
Test of Hypotheses
Table 4. F-values for ANOVA results
Dependent variables
Independent variables Procrastination Starting point Finishing point Duration Self-efficacy Job significance Interaction .14 .29 .00 .222 1.07 11.39*** 2.02 19.30*** .69 .61 3.81* 1.15 R² .03 .13 .10 .19
Notes: interaction=self-efficacy*job significance;*p<.05; ***p<.001
As shown in Table 4, only threeeffects were significant.
First, the effect of job significance on starting point was significant, F (1, 92) =11.39,
p<.001. Combining with Table 3, it could be seen that the starting point decreased when job
significance increased – with low job significance, the mean of starting point was 6.04 but with high job significance, the mean was 2.90. This result showed that participants with high perceived job significance started earlier on the job. Therefore, hypothesis 2 was partly supported.
Second, job significance also had a significant effect on the duration of completing the job, F (1, 92) =19.30, p<.001, and the relationship was positive – with low job significance, the mean of duration was 9.66 days but with high job significance, the mean was 13.90 days. This result suggested that participants with high perceived job significance expected to use more time for doing the job. However, because there was no main effect of job significance on finishing point, the effect on duration seemed due to the fact that participants in the high job significance condition indicated that they would start the job earlier than those in the low job significance condition.
time. Under high job significance, on the other hand, participants in the low self-efficacy condition expected to finish sooner (M = 15.25 days) than those in the moderate (M = 17.76 days) and high self-efficacy conditions (M = 17.33); also see Figure 2. This finding partly supported hypothesis 3. Although the interaction effect was only found on the finishing point, it still suggested that job significance had a moderating effect on the relationship between self-efficacy and procrastination.
Figure2. Estimated marginal means of finishing point of doing the job
Discussion
Procrastination is a prevalent and detrimental phenomenon. According to Steel (2007), procrastination seems to influence the human condition and has a negative effect on outcomes. It has been suggested that self-efficacy could reduce procrastination but this paper attempts to find out whether job significance has a moderating effect on this relationship. Therefore, a survey, which consisted of a questionnaire and a scenario, was conducted among students atthe University of Groningen. Participants answered questions about self-efficacy, job significance and procrastination with regard to their most recent group assignment; and then they were asked to imagine a situation from real business environment, in which self-efficacy and job significance were manipulated, and indicated the procrastination levels.
Results found in part 1 – the questionnaire – of the survey were not identical to those
14 15 16 17 18
found in part 2, the scenario. In part 1, only a linear and negative relationship between self-efficacy and procrastination was found: participants with a higher level of self-efficacy reported less procrastination of doing the group assignment, meaning that procrastination decreasedas self-efficacy increased. However, the predicted curvilinear effect of self-efficacy on procrastination was not significant. This may result from four reasons. First, the mean of self-efficacy was 5.33 (on a 7-point scale), meaning that participants tended to have a relatively high level of self-efficacy, and restriction of range may have played a role. Second, the study was conducted based on group assignments, which may have different characteristics thanindividual assignments. The predicted curvilinear effect of self-efficacy on procrastination might not be foundin group assignments, because in group assignments, there are many other factors involved, such as relationship with other group members, which might influence a person’s motivation of doing the task. Third, in the study, specific instead of general self-efficacy and procrastination were evaluated and the measurement was limited to a specific task so that the results might be affected by the characteristics of the task. This could lead to validity problem that the measure did not completely measure the intended targets and thus led to an unexpected result. Fourth, 98 participants were not enough for such a complicated U-shaped effect. Even strong relationships might be overlooked with a small sample.
As for job significance, no main effect was found as Hypothesis 2 proposed. The most likely and important reason of this finding could be that self-efficacy (-.41) had a much stronger negative correlation with procrastination than job significance did (-.23); and therefore, when self-efficacy was controlled, the effect of job significance on procrastination disappeared.In addition, the reliability of job significance (Cronbach’s Alpha=.65) was relatively low, which might cause validity problem and may lead to weaker relations between job significance and other variables.
procrastinate on the task. Second, the sample size was not big enough for a complex interaction effect.
However, some interesting findings did exist in part 2. This might because of the manipulation of the situation of doing the tasks, which could have a more direct and reliable influence on people’s perceptions and choices.
Procrastination was found to be partly affected by job significance and the interaction between job significance and self-efficacy; and although these relationships were not completely consistent, they were significant and worthy of attention. In this part, procrastination was signified by three measures, namely the starting point, the finishing point and the duration of doing the task. It was found that the starting point and the duration were significantly affected by job significance. On the one hand, the relationship between job significance and the starting point was negative, meaning that participants who had a high perception of job significance would start earlier on the task and procrastinate less at the beginning. This finding partly supported Hypothesis 2 because the starting point could be readily interpreted as a signal of procrastination. On the other hand, the relationship between job significance and the duration was positive, indicating that higher job significance led to a longer time spent on the task. One possible explanation of this phenomenon could be that high perception of job significance might enhance the perception of the difficulty of the task and thus result in a longer time spent on doing the task or an extra time spent on double checking of the results.
were willing to spend more time on it, and this does not only reflect procrastination but also motivation more generally.. People were motivated to spend more time on a task and tried to do their best in order to have a good result if the task was important for them. Therefore, finishing later did not mean that they procrastinated but they weremotivated to work hard.People with low self-efficacy expected to finish the task sooner when the task was important for them. Two possible reasons could explain this interesting phenomenon. First, with low self-efficacy, people might be easy to get bored on the task and thus want to get rid of it as soon as possible. They might doubt their abilities to perform well on the task so that they just expected to finish it at the first opportunity. Second, as noted in Table 2, job significance was also positively and significantly correlated with self-efficacy, meaning that perceived job significance increased as self-efficacy is promoted. Therefore, people with low self-efficacy might have the problem of recognizing the importance of the taskor may downplay its importance and thus spent less time doing it.
Although not all of the expected effects were found, some interesting results did exist and are worthy of attention. These findings thus have some implications, both for theory and for real working practices.
Implications for TMT theory
TMT, acts as “an excellent foothold toward furthering our knowledge of self-regulatory failure”, and indicates that four variables are related to self-regulation – expectancy, value, sensitivity to delay, and delay (Steel, 2007).In the formula of TMT, we can see that self-efficacy, signified by E, and job significance, signified by V, jointly influence Utility. However,the current studyfound that job significance and self-efficacy were positively correlated (see Table 2), and Expectancy and Value may therefore not always be independent.It is possible, for example, that perceptions of self-efficacy influence perceptions of value, and perhaps people downplay the value of tasks for which they have low self-efficacy. Furthermore, job significance, signified by Value in TMT, has not been studied systematically before, but as it was found to have significant influence on the starting point and the duration of doing a job. Future research should focus on this potential determinant of procrastination.
other hand that one delays finishing it. As it was found that beginning time was influenced by task significance and end time by the interaction between task significance and self-efficacy, it may be important to distinguish between these two forms of procrastination. For example, finishing a job late may be the result of procrastination or of wanting to do a thorough job. The current results suggest that people with relatively high self-efficacy and high task significance perhaps finish their tasks late because they want to do a good job rather than that they want to postpone working on it.
Implications for practices in real job
Several suggestions can be derived from the findings of this study.First, as self-efficacy can reduceprocrastination, methods to improve self-efficacy could be helpful to reduce procrastination and thus improve performance. One possible way is to enhance the perception of task significance because the relationship between self-efficacy and task significance is found to be significant and positive. For example, supervisors who allocate tasks to his or her subordinates could emphasize the importance of the task to the whole project, to the organization or to other fellow employees.Another effective way for the supervisors is to express their confidence in the subordinates to finish the job, through oral expressions, encouraging gestures, positive appraisals of former tasks, etc.
Second, with high job significance, people embark on a task earlier than with low job significance. Therefore, it could be an efficient and effective way to clearly indicate the importance of the tasks while assigning them. This could enhance people’s perceptions and thus motivate them to start earlier and prevent procrastination. However, it is necessary to note that emphasizing the importance of a task can lead to adverse impact because the duration of doing a task also tends to be longer with high job significance. Due to this phenomenon, strategies should be changed in the process and ways to speed up the procedures are needed instead of simply insist on emphasizing the importance.
Third, under high job significance, people with low self-efficacy tend to use less time on the task, which might lead to poor performance or incomplete results if they just want to get rid of the task due to low confidence or uncertainty of finishing the job. This situation could sound the alarm that extra support orre-allocation of the tasks should be given.
The study has at least three limitations. First is the size and nature of the sample. On the one hand, only 98 students participated and this relatively small sample size could lead to results that have low reliability or validity because with a small sample, even strong correlations might fail to be significant.Therefore, a larger sample is needed in future research.On the other hand, the study was conducted among students which might lead todifferent results than a study conducted among employees.Second, the scaledesigned to assess job significance in part 1 had a relatively low reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha=.65).Therefore, a more reliable questionnaire is needed in future research.Third, because the participants of the survey were asked first to recall a situation from their memory and then imagine a hypothetical situation which they might never come across, there was a high demand of the participants’ abilities to recall memories and to put themselves into other people’s positions. It is possible that this method could result in bias or inaccuracy and using a prospective design is needed in future research.
Conclusion
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