The use of leaderboards is a common approach to the gamification of employee performance, but little is known about the specific mechanisms and mediating processes by which leaderboards actually ...affect employee behavior. Given the lack of research in this domain, this study proposes goal-setting theory, one of the most well-established motivational theories in psychology, as a framework by which to understand these effects. In this study, a classic brainstorming task is gamified with a leaderboard in order to explore this. Participants were randomly assigned to four classic levels of goal-setting (do-your-best, easy, difficult and impossible goals) plus a leaderboard populated with initials and scores representing identical goal-setting conditions. The presence of a leaderboard was successful in motivating participants to performance levels similar to that of difficult and impossible goal-setting, suggesting participants implicitly set goals at or near the top of the leaderboard without any prompting to do so. Goal commitment, a common individual difference moderator in goal-setting theory, was also assessed and behaved similarly in the presence of the leaderboard as when traditional goals were provided. From these results, we conclude that goal-setting theory is valuable to understand the success of leaderboards, and we recommend further exploration of existing psychological theories, including goal-setting, to better explain the effects of gamification.
•Goal-setting theory was offered as an explanatory framework for leaderboards.•An experiment found addition of a leaderboard on a task increased performance.•Leaderboards performed similarly to traditional difficult and impossible goals.•Individual goal commitment moderated the success of leaderboards as with goals.•Goal-setting and other psychological theories should be explored in gamification.
Context:
Goal-setting is a key characteristic of modern rehabilitation. However, goals need to be meaningful and of importance to the client.
Axioms:
Both theories and empirical evidence support the ...importance of a hierarchy of goals: one or more overall goals that clients find personally meaningful and specific goals that are related to the overall goals. We posit that the client’s fundamental beliefs, goals and attitudes (“global meaning”) need to be explored before setting any rehabilitation goal. A chaplain or other person with similar skills can be involved in doing so in an open-ended way. The client’s fundamental beliefs, goals and attitudes serve as a point of departure for setting rehabilitation goals.
Setting goals:
We set out a three-stage process to set goals: (1) exploring the client’s global meaning (i.e. fundamental beliefs, goals and attitudes), (2) deriving a meaningful overall rehabilitation goal from the client’s global meaning and (3) setting specific rehabilitation goals that serve to achieve the meaningful overall rehabilitation goal.
Conclusion:
This is an extension of current practice in many rehabilitation teams, which may help counter the drive toward exclusively functional goals based around independence.
A common and important feature within models of career management is the career goal, yet relatively little is known about the factors influencing career goals and when and how career goal setting ...occurs. Drawing from Ashforth's (2001) model of role transitions we propose and test a model wherein mentoring experiences of early career professionals relate to short- and long-term career goals through professional identification. Using survey data collected at three points in time from 312 early career professionals, we find that psychosocial mentoring, but not career mentoring, positively relates to professional identification. For short-term goal outcomes, professional identification positively relates to extrinsic goals, intrinsic goals, and goals that are high quality (i.e., specific, difficult, to which one is committed). For long-term goal outcomes, professional identification positively relates to extrinsic and intrinsic goals, but not to goal quality. Instead, in the long-term goal model, psychosocial mentoring is directly related to goal quality. The theoretical and practical implications of this study for professional identification, career goals, and how mentors can facilitate career goals are discussed.
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This book concentrates on the last twenty years of research in the area of goal setting and performance at work. The editors and contributors believe goals affect action, and this volume has a lineup ...of international contributors who look at the recent theories and implications in this area for IO psychologists and human resource management academics and graduate students.
The SMART acronym (e.g., Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timebound) is a highly prominent strategy for setting physical activity goals. While it is intuitive, and its practical value has ...been recognised, the scientific underpinnings of the SMART acronym are less clear. Therefore, we aimed to narratively review and critically examine the scientific underpinnings of the SMART acronym and its application in physical activity promotion. Specifically, our review suggests that the SMART acronym: is not based on scientific theory; is not consistent with empirical evidence; does not consider what type of goal is set; is not applied consistently; is lacking detailed guidance; has redundancy in its criteria; is not being used as originally intended; and has a risk of potentially harmful effects. These issues are likely leading to sub-optimal outcomes, confusion, and inconsistency. Recommendations are provided to guide the field towards better practice and, ultimately, more effective goal setting interventions to help individuals become physically active.
PurposeAs an increasingly important variable in the career field, career sustainability has received particular attention, yet few empirical studies have been conducted to examine its antecedents. ...The authors propose a moderated mediation model based on the goal-setting theory and the wise proactivity perspective for exploring when and how self-goal setting can influence career sustainability.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a time-lagged design and collect three waves of data from 1,260 teachers in basic education schools in China. The authors test the proposed hypotheses with SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.3.FindingsThe results show that self-goal setting positively relates to career sustainability and that career crafting plays a mediating role in this relationship. This relationship is strengthened when perceived organizational goal clarity is high.Originality/valueThe authors extend the application scenarios of the goal-setting theory to the field of career research and find out that self-goal setting is also a self-initiated and wise antecedent of career sustainability. From a wise proactivity perspective, the authors examine the mediating mechanism of career crafting to make positive career outcomes. Furthermore, the authors consider the impact of perceived organizational goal clarity as a boundary condition and broaden the understanding of “when to wise proactivity” from the goal-setting theory.
This chapter summarizes the authors' joint development of the goal setting theory. The basic concept was based on more than 50 years of research and the formal theory has endured for 28 years (Locke ...& Latham, 1990). The theory was not developed through overgeneralization from only a few studies or by deduction but rather by induction. The inductions involved the integration of hundreds of studies involving thousands of participants. The theory initially focused solely on consciously set goals. To date, the goal setting theory has shown generality across participants, tasks, nationality, goal source, settings, experimental designs, outcome variables, levels of analysis (individual, group, division, and organizational), and time spans. The theory identifies both mediators and moderators of goal effects. Numerous subsequent studies since 1990 have supported the main tenets of the theory. New findings have enlarged our knowledge of the relevant mediators and moderators as well as showing new applications (Locke & Latham, 2013). Among these discoveries are when to set learning rather than performance goals, the effect of goals primed in the subconscious on job performance, and that goal effects are enhanced by having people write at length about them.
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