Job Performance of Forest Guards in India:Understanding the Personal and Behavioral Antecedents

Performance of employees has been the direct or indirect focus on much of management research. In this paper, we examine the impact of goal orientation (task and success orientation), motivation (intrinsic motivation and hygiene factors), job satisfaction and job stress on job performance (task and contextual performance) of forest guards in India. Forest guards play a crucial role in the protection, conservation and management of forests, but very little attention has been provided to understand the personal and behavioral antecedents of their performance. In this study, we found that task orientation and intrinsic motivation had a strong positive impact, while job stress had a strong negative impact, and hygiene factors had a moderate negative impact on task performance. We also found that task orientation and intrinsic motivation had a strong positive impact, success orientation had a moderate positive impact, and job stress had a weak negative impact on contextual performance. Ironically, job satisfaction did not seem to have an impact on either task or contextual performance. The implication of the findings on further research and practice are also presented.