Personal development and self-efficacy in public administration : limitations and challenges.

Abstract

Over the last decade, civil servants in Greece have been hit by the effects of the economic crisis, such as wage cuts, hurdles in the hierarchy due to the lack of evaluation and possible discriminations, more workload and greater insecurity. These impacts above pose a threat to their personal development, which may be reinforced by employees' personal perceptions and emotional abilities. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the personal development of public administration officers and their perceptions of self-efficacy, in combination to their emotional intelligence capabilities. The sample consisted of 120 public administration officers, who completed a self-reported questionnaire consisting of three scales: The Personal Self-Efficacy Scale and Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale. The results of the correlation analyses have shown that both the concepts of self-efficacy and the emotional intelligence capabilities enhance the perceptions of personal development of employees. The results are significant and encouraging because they demonstrate the importance of individual perceptions and emotional capacities for the perception of personal development, regardless of the aggravating and negative environment in which civil servants in Greece live and work during the crisis.