John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does.
For example, sales might slump due to economic conditions, changes in customer preferences, production bottlenecks, etc.
In other words, productivity is the ratio of outputs to inputs—those inputs being effort, monetary costs, resources, etc.
Utility, another related construct, is defined as the value of a particular level of performance, effectiveness, or productivity.
[citation needed] Utilities of performance, effectiveness, and productivity are value judgments.
For example, the effort put toward the goal of getting to work in the shortest amount of time is not performance (except where it is concerned with avoiding lateness).
Despite the emphasis on defining and predicting job performance, it is not a single unified construct.
[6] Counterproductive behaviors, on the other hand, are intentional actions by employees which circumvent the aims of the organization.
[8] Campbell (1990) emphasized that the only way to discuss motivation as a direct determinant of behavior is as one or more of these choices.
Regular work situations reflect varying levels of motivation which result in typical performance.
Additionally, the impact of organizational justice perceptions on performance is believed to stem from Equity Theory.
[13] While intelligence (general mental ability) is the strongest known predictor of job performance, that is less true for fields that are information-rich and require much instructional learning.
The American Psychological Association's Research in Action[14] article on personnel selection recounts evidence indicating that general cognitive ability and conscientiousness account for 20-30% of the variance in job performance, with more complex jobs falling into the upper portion of that range.
That article states that other psychological factors are also related to job performance, namely: creativity, leadership, integrity, attendance and cooperation.
Social skills, a good mentor and interpersonal virtues predict career success, a concept related to job performance, and happiness, better than high education, IQ or cerebral virtues, except for certain occupations like theoretical physics.
[20][21][22][23] The concept of core self-evaluations was first examined by Judge, Locke, and Durham (1997) as a dispositional predictor of job satisfaction,[24] and involves four personality dimensions; locus of control, neuroticism, self-efficacy, and self-esteem.
[20] Motivation is generally the most accepted mediator of the core self-evaluations and job performance relationship.
[21] These relationships have inspired increasing amounts of research on core self-evaluations and suggest valuable implications about the importance this trait may have for organizations.
Workers who might have lost a degree of power may feel like they lost their authority and begin to lash out at other employees by being verbally abusive, purposefully withholding work related items, or sometimes even physically to withhold their status.
This led researchers Cote and Miners (2006)[27] to offer a compensatory model between EI and IQ, that posits that the association between EI and job performance becomes more positive as cognitive intelligence decreases, an idea first proposed in the context of academic performance (Petrides, Frederickson, & Furnham, 2004).
[29] They found a negative correlation between EI and managerial work demands; while under low levels of managerial work demands, they found a negative relationship between EI and teamwork effectiveness.
An explanation for this may suggest gender differences in EI, as women tend to score higher levels than men.