Which Employees Set the Bar Higher?

Topic: Personality, Motivation, Goals

Publication: Personality and Individual Differences
Article: Individual differences in reactions to goal-performance discrepancies over time.
Authors: P.D. Converse, E. Steinhauser, and J. Pathak
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

 By nature, a goal creates a discrepancy between an employee’s current performance and some future state.  For example, though I have only written one and half sentences, my goal is to write a full review.  Thus, by setting this goal, I have created a goal-performance discrepancy for myself.  Research suggests that goal-performance discrepancies motivate employees to modify their goals (either up or down) and/or efforts toward attaining those goals (slack off or try harder).    

A recent study by Converse, Steinhauser, and Pathak suggests that several individual differences predict how individuals behave in response to goal-performance discrepancies (which comes in the form of performance feedback).  Converse et al.’s study was conducted on a sample of 90 college students taking an introductory psychology course.

Past research has found that, in general, individuals tend to set lower goals after receiving negative feedback (i.e., large goal-performance discrepancy) and set higher goals following positive feedback.  Converse et al. found that this trend is especially true for individuals with an internal locus of control (i.e., believe that they have control over outcomes).  Individuals with an external locus of control (believe that they have little control over outcomes) do not follow this pattern, as they tend to set slightly higher goals following negative feedback. 

Also, individuals high in self-efficacy tend to set higher goals for themselves, especially after receiving positive feedback.  Highly efficacious people have more confidence in their ability and thus are more willing to challenge themselves by setting the bar a little higher.  Finally, whereas conscientious individuals tend to increase effort following negative feedback, they may actually reduce effort following positive feedback.  Converse et al. speculate that conscientious individuals may allocate resources away from the goal and consciously juggle other goals and/or priorities, which is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Converse, P.D., Steinhauser, E., & Pathak, J. (2010). Individual differences in reactions to goal-performance discrepancies over time. Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 138-143.

Effective Goals CAN Fly Under the Radar

Topic: Goals, Job Performance
Publication: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Article: An exploratory field experiment of the effect of subconscious and conscious goals on employee performance.

Author: A. Shantz, G.P. Latham

Featured by: Benjamin Granger

Do subconscious goals lead to improved employee performance?

What exactly are subconscious goals?  Unlike conscious goals, employees are unaware of subconscious goals.  When they become aware of them, they become conscious goals.  In other words, subconscious goals may drive employee behavior automatically as they are below their conscious awareness.

In order to test the idea that subconscious goals can lead to improved employee performance, Shantz and Latham (2009) used a technique that is known as priming.  Priming is a method (often used by psychological researchers and savvy managers of course) of manipulating an individual’s goals without them being aware of it.  For example, in their study, Shantz and Latham used a large color photo of a woman winning a race (picture of Sonia O’Sullivan).  In the pilot stages of the study, simply viewing this photo led study participants to brainstorm more uses of a coat hangar than those who did not view the picture (fascinating, don’t you think?).

Importantly, Shantz and Latham put subconscious goals to the test using employees from a university fund-raising call center.  

“FIGHT! FIGHT!” The Schoolyard Brawl for Goal Setting

Topic: Goals

Publication: The Academy of Management Perspectives

Article: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting.

Author: L.D. Ordonez, M.E. Schweitzer, A.D. Galinsky, M.H. Bazerman

Featured by: Benjamin Granger

Innumerable studies have consistently shown that setting challenging and specific goals lead to increased employee performance at work. Recently, however, Ordonez, Schweitzer, Galinsky, and Bazerman (2009) described goal setting as “overprescribed” and guilty of causing predictable and unfavorable side effects.   

Mounting an Attack on Goal Setting

Ordonez and colleagues organized their attack by listing several ways in which goal setting can actually lead to negative outcomes.  To illustrate their points, the authors cited research on goal setting as well as high profile examples of how goal setting may have led to major organizational failures, including Enron’s collapse and safety issues associated with the Ford Pinto.  According to Ordonez et al., goal setting can:

1.    Narrow Employees’ Focus - Specific goals can narrow employees’ attention to the point that they neglect other important features of a certain task or project (e.g., focus on pumping out products in high quantity with little attention paid to safety issues).

2.    Encourage Risky Behavior - Setting goals that are too challenging can lead to risk taking (taking unadvised risks to meet lofty goals).

3.    Promote Unethical Behavior - Like risky behavior, goals that are too challenging can promote unethical behavior (e.g., charge customers extra for a service to meet profit goals).

The Goal Revision Seesaw: What Makes it Move?

Topic: Self Efficacy, Goals
Publication: The Journal of Applied Psychology 
Article: The role of feedback, causal attributions, and self-efficacy in goal revision .
Author: A.P. Tolli, A.M. Schmidt
Reviewed by: Benjamin Granger

One thing that we know is that employees frequently revise their performance goals.  But we know less about how and why they do so….until now.

In a recent study from Journal of Applied Psychology, Tolli and Schmidt attempted to empirically answer the questions of how and why employees revise their goals over time.  This should be particularly interesting to any manager or supervisor interested in understanding how employees set their goals at work and subsequently perform on the job.