Work Effort: A Conceptual and Meta-Analytic Review

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.

Communal narcissism, self-motives, and work effort

“…Researchers have defined effort in several ways, which has led to a lack of consistency and clarity regarding the conceptualization of work effort (De Cooman et al, 2009). In their meta-analytic review, Iddekinge, Arnold and Lievens (2022) explained that effort can be understood as a direct outcome of motivation, highlighting three key components of work effort, namely what individuals work on, how hard they work and how long they persist in the task. Work effort "captures the behavioral energy that motivation represents cognitively, which is then translated into an accomplished output" (De Cooman et al, 2011, p. 301-302).…”

“…Thus, work effort represents a determinant of future performance because an individual who puts more effort into a job will increase his/her chances of obtaining a good performance. In this paper, we operationalize work effort as the behavioral manifestation of work motivation, considering the effort direction (i.e., what an individual wants to do by choosing a strategy), effort intensity (i.e., how hard an individual works to implement the chosen behavior or strategy) and effort persistence (how long an individual tries to work in order to implement the strategy) (Iddekinge et al, 2022).…”