Importance Of Locus Of Control

Introduction

Effective leadership is essential to a profitable, efficient and productive work environment. The literature surrounding leadership is enormous, but there is a consensus that the Locus of Control construct is an important predictor of leadership capacity. In order to understand the ramifications of the Locus of Control concept and measurement in the workplace one must first understand the construct, its importance, and the leadership characteristics that it predicts, and the implications for the career choices of individuals.

The nature and the importance of the ‘Locus of Control’ construct

The Locus of Control construct is essentially concerned with the perceived ability of the individual to control his/her personal environment (Lefcourt 1966) or the perception that ‘positive and/or negative events are a consequence of one’s own actions and thereby under personal control’ (Lefcourt 1966), and vice versa. The construct was initially developed by Rotter in 1954, and aimed to understand the extent to which individuals feel internally in control of their lives and circumstances.

The construct of Locus of Control continues to receive attention for its importance in assessing aspects of an individual’s personality and ability to accurately predict scores for other core psychological constructs such as self-esteem, self-efficacy and neuroticism (Judge et al. 2002b). Schjoedt and Shaver’s (2012, p.713) review concludes that ‘locus of control is an important construct, [as] three meta-analyses show that locus of control is an important aspect in work motivation, satisfaction and performance’. Although there has been debate over how the construct should be measured (Levenson 1981), the construct has remained remarkably re...

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... Control are predisposed to having these other leadership traits. To the extent that that is true, I am likely to make an effective leader in the workplace and will be suited to both executive and entrepreneurial roles.

Conclusion

While Judge’s comment that ‘no single trait or group of characteristics has been isolated which sets off the leader from members of his group’ (Judge et al. 2002b) holds true, the Locus of Control construct is important as it has been shown to have strong capacity to predict effective leadership. The strong correlation between Locus of Control scores and effective leadership allows individuals to understand whether they are suited to a leadership position; however is not necessarily a definitive test of leadership. Other domains, behaviours and skills are arguably important in predicting effective leadership (Kaiser, Hogan and Craig 2008).