The Effect of Big Five Personality, Happiness at Work, and Self-Efficacy on Em-ployee Performance with Work Motivation as a Mediating Variable: Evidence from Indonesian Local Government Agencies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61132/greeninflation.v3i4.770Keywords:
Big Five Personality, Employee Performance, Happiness at Work, Partial Least Squares, Public SectorAbstract
Employee performance in local government agencies remains a central concern of public sector human resource management, yet evidence on its psychological antecedents in Indonesian district-level bureaucracies is still limited and inconsistent. This study examines the effect of the Big Five Personality, Happiness at Work, and Self-Efficacy on Employee Performance, both directly and indirectly through Work Motivation, at the Manpower Office and the Office of Cooperatives, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, and Trade of Pemalang Regency. A quantitative approach was applied to 100 civil servants drawn by purposive sampling from a population of 388 employees, using a closed-ended Likert-scale questionnaire. The data were analysed with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 4, and the hypotheses were tested using 5,000 bootstrap resamples. The measurement model satisfied all convergent validity, internal consistency, and discriminant validity criteria. The structural model explained 67.5% of the variance in Work Motivation and 72.0% of the variance in Employee Performance, with Q-square values of 0.597 and 0.617 indicating strong predictive relevance. All ten hypotheses were supported: the three exogenous constructs significantly affected both Work Motivation and Employee Performance, Work Motivation significantly affected Employee Performance, and Work Motivation significantly mediated all three indirect paths. Work Motivation emerged as the dominant predictor and the principal transmission mechanism, suggesting that performance programmes in local government should combine person-job fit, workplace well-being, and confidence building with explicit motivational reinforcement.
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