Dissertation Defense

Department of Organizational Behavior

Dissertation Defense

of

Kylie Rochford

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

3:00 – 5:00pm in PBL Room 121

TITLE: INTENTIONALITY IN WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS: THE ROLE OF WORKPLACE RELATIONAL SELF EFFICACY

ABSTRACT

In this dissertation, I build theory to support the introduction of a new construct  – workplace relational self-efficacy – defined as a person’s belief in their ability to initiate, develop, and maintain desired workplace relationships. Across a series of four field studies, I develop and validate an 8-item scale to measure workplace relational self-efficacy. In Study 1 I use interview data to guide the development of a comprehensive item pool. In Study 2 I assess the items in the item pool for content adequacy relative to generalized self-efficacy and social self-efficacy. Study 3 further reduces the item pool using exploratory factor analysis. Additionally, I examine the psychometric structure of the proposed scale, including the assessment of convergent and discriminant validity, with hypothesized related constructs. Finally, in Study 4, I assess the concurrent and predictive validity of workplace relational self-efficacy using self- and supervisor-report data collected across three time points. As hypothesized, extraversion, proactive personality, optimism, and three facets of political skill significantly predicted workplace relational self-efficacy. Further, workplace relational self-efficacy significantly predicted workplace loneliness and workplace relationship satisfaction when controlling for the influence of a number of other variables such as political skill.  Implications for research, practice, and future research are discussed.

Committee:

Richard Boyatzis (Chair)

Diane Bergeron

Melvin Smith

Chris Burant