Alex Stajkovic

Alex Stajkovic is an Organizational Behavior (OB) professor who has conducted research on confidence and goal priming. He holds the Dean's Professorship in Business at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. His research bears on self-efficacy, confidence, and primed goals. Stajkovic co-authored papers with Albert Bandura, Edwin Locke, and Fred Luthans. Stajkovic is a contributing editor to the Journal of Applied Psychology , as well as a member of the Midwestern Psychological Association and Society for Science of Motivation.

Early life Born in 1965 to Yugoslavian parents, Stajkovic grew up in Belgrade. He enrolled in the University of Belgrade in 1985, studying economics. He was president of Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (AIESEC) for the Economics Faculty in Belgrade in 1987-1988.

Education Stajkovic graduated with a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in December 1996. Luthans was Stajkovic's dissertation chair. Stajkovic also earned a Master of Arts in Management from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1993. His undergraduate education was completed at the University of Belgrade where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics in 1991. In 2006 he became an associate professor. conducted in 2018 placed Stajkovic in the top one percent of most-cited textbook authors in the field of organizational behavior.

Theories Core confidence Stajkovic developed core confidence theory to help better understand employee motivation. Trait core confidence has also been shown to mitigate stress, anxiety, and depression of aspiring entrepreneurs.

To support these claims, Stajkovic conducted a series of studies to analyze whether self-efficacy predicts academic achievement above and beyond personality. They analyzed the Big Five personality traits (conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion/introversion, openness to experience, and emotional stability), which are defined as innate dispositions. They examined the predictive power of personality and self-efficacy on students' grades. Their findings ultimately concluded that "self-efficacy was predictive of academic achievement above and beyond personality in all of the analyses." In terms of practical implications, this research reaffirmed that students can develop the skills, specifically the confidence, to succeed. Stajkovic has also published articles on self-regulation, which goes hand-in-hand with core confidence and self-efficacy. Self-regulation is connected to processes related to underlying attitudes and behaviors and how they happen. Research on self-regulation has put a focus on how core confidence plays a role in self-regulation of job performance as well as life satisfaction. The role core confidence plays in adaptive self-regulation is that the person already has the skill and motivation but is triggered psychology to enable this potential. Doubt inhibits this potential. Looking at both confidence levels, individuals with low core confidence are less likely to participate in activities if there is doubt. Individuals with high core confidence are able to overcome this doubt. Stajkovic hypothesized that core confidence was positively related to performance, satisfaction with life, and job satisfaction. Tests of these hypothesis found core confidence was in fact a significant predictor of performance, satisfaction with life, and job satisfaction in both the students and employees who were studied but also cautioned that future research should look into when too much core confidence might cause negative consequences due to it becoming arrogance.

Interaction of primed subconscious and conscious goals In an experiment published in 2006 Stajkovic and colleagues examined the relationship between primed subconscious goals and conscious goals. Conscious goal setting theory asserts that consciously setting specific, difficult goals explains and predicts work performance. As the title suggests, Stajkovic and Sergent posit that cognitive automation, that is, using the subconscious, to prime goals to free up working or active memory in task performance provides an opportunity for competitive advantage. Stajkovic and Sergent argue that the use of the subconscious to prime goals will produce a competitive advantage in business. The authors state the problem that the modern worker is experiencing cognitive overload in the workplace due to the complexities and demands of the same. Upon stating the problem, the authors set about providing empirical data to support their argument to show that the use of subconscious processing can provide a competitive advantage in business.