Macquarie Graduate School of Management Mgsm Working Papers in Management Self-efficacy, Work Motivation and Employee Engagement: Using Forum Theatre Techniques to Improve Customer Service in Australia

Self-efficacy is a social psychological construct that is conceptualized from an agentic perspective and refers to the motivation to perceive oneself as a causal agent. Numerous studies have shown a strong positive relationship between self-efficacy and organization performance. A recent work place intervention within a division of a large Australian retail organization was designed to improve customer service on a sustainable basis using the 4 sources of self-efficacy information: enactive attainment, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and emotional arousal. This information was delivered via a Forum Theatre setting, a technique traditionally used as a catalyst for political action amongst oppressed groups. Preliminary results suggest the intervention‟s format has lead to an increase in employee self-efficacy as well as improved organizational performance, demonstrating that concern for the improvement and well being of employees leads to better organizational results – doing well by doing good. This paper describes a proposed field experiment to formally investigate whether this intervention approach to improved customer service performance can be generalized to other organizations. Correspondence Details Richard Carter Macquarie Graduate School of Management Macquarie University NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA Phone: + 61 414 782 182 Fax: + 61 2 9850 9019 Email: [email protected]