While leading through goals is usually associated with a task-oriented leadership style, the present work links goal setting to transformational leadership. An online survey with two time points was ...conducted with employees to investigate the influence of transformational leadership on followers' job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and proactive behavior via goal attributes. Findings indicate that transformational leaders influence the extent to which followers evaluate organizational goals as important and perceive them as attainable. Multiple mediation analysis revealed that these goal attributes transmit the effect of transformational leadership on followers' job attitudes and proactive behavior. However, goal importance and goal attainability seem to be of differential importance for the different outcomes.
The Process of Disengagement From Personal Goals Ghassemi, Mirjam; Bernecker, Katharina; Herrmann, Marcel ...
Personality & social psychology bulletin,
04/2017, Volume:
43, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
To date, it is not well understood how individuals disengage from goals. A recent approach suggests that disengagement is often preceded by an action crisis, a motivational conflict in which the ...individual is torn between holding on to and letting go of a personal goal. We postulate that a dynamic interplay between the experience of action crisis and appraisals of goal desirability and attainability shapes the disengagement process from personal goals. In two longitudinal studies (N = 364), an action crisis in the goal to complete a university degree predicted devaluations of its desirability and attainability, and reversely, low goal attainability (but not desirability) predicted an increase in action crisis. Moreover, studies provided first evidence that devaluing goal desirability might be functional for well-being in an action crisis. Studies strengthen the view that disengagement is shaped by reciprocal processes between the experience of action crisis and changes in goal appraisal.
Achievement goal theory originally defined performance-approach goals as striving to demonstrate competence to outsiders by outperforming peers. The research, however, has operationalized the goals ...inconsistently, emphasizing the competence demonstration element in some cases and the peer comparison element in others. A meta-analysis by Hulleman et al. (2010) discovered that students' academic achievement was negatively predicted by performance-approach goals that focus on appearing talented, but positively predicted by performance-approach goals that focus on outperforming peers. The present meta-analysis extends that pattern to numerous other educational outcomes, such as competence perceptions and self-regulation. It does so while also removing a confound (i.e., the sample's mean age) that varies systematically along with the type of performance-approach goal measure employed in studies. Discussion explores when and why the 2 types of performance-approach goals are most likely to diverge versus converge. It also considers 2 potential directions that goal theory can take to incorporate the 2 performance-approach goals.
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Three studies examined associations between goal disengagement and goal reengagement tendencies and indicators of physical health (e.g., health problems, cortisol rhythms, sleep efficiency). Based on ...research showing that goal adjustment tendencies are associated with subjective well-being, the authors predicted that people who are better able to disengage from unattainable goals and reengage with alternative goals also may experience better physical health. Across the three studies, the findings demonstrate that the ability to disengage from unattainable goals is associated with better self-reported health and more normative patterns of diurnal cortisol secretion. Goal reengagement, by contrast, was unrelated to indicators of physical health but buffered some of the adverse effects of difficulty with goal disengagement. The results also indicate that subjective well-being can mediate the associations between goal disengagement tendencies and physical health.
The increasing frequency and extent of government policy changes in many countries and industries has exposed an important theoretical gap about how such changes influence organizational goal ...setting. This paper extends the behavioral theory of the firm to account for changes in government policy on goal dimensions (i.e., what goals are adopted) and goal aspirations (i.e., the target levels adopted). We advance propositions regarding the specification of goal dimensions and add a new factor into the aspiration adaptation model to account for anticipatory (i.e., forward-looking) responses on the part of firms to government policy changes.
•Difficulty judgments of attainment and maintenance goals are monitored differently.•Current-end state discrepancy (vs. context) has more impact for attainment goals.•Context (vs. current-end state ...match) has more impact for maintenance goals.•Modest attainment goals, though harder, can appear easier than maintenance goals.•Differences in judged difficulty can influence consequential goal choices.
We argue that individuals monitor and evaluate attainment and maintenance goals differently. Attainment goals feature a salient current-end state discrepancy that is processed more than the corresponding match for maintenance goals. For maintenance goals, for which a salient discrepancy is absent, contextual influences on goal success/failure receive more processing than for attainment goals. Thus, objectively more difficult attainment goals may be judged as easier than maintenance goals, when they feature sufficiently small discrepancies, or when context information is unfavorable. Study 1 establishes this core effect. Study 2 shows that thought listings capturing the relative processing of the current-end state discrepancy (match) and context information mediate perceived goal difficulty. Study 3 shows that the favorability of context information moderates the effect. Study 4 establishes joint difficulty evaluations as a boundary condition. Studies 5 and 6 (and Appendix B) show that such goal difficulty judgments affect consequential goal choices in real-world financial, workplace, and shopping situations.
Personal goals are ubiquitous in everyday life, with people typically pursuing multiple personal goals at any given time. This article provides a review and synthesis of the vast and varied research ...on personal goals. A growing body of research shows that goals are best conceptualized as a distinct unit of analysis, with extensive within-person variations in both goal characteristics and attainment. In this article, the authors review existing literature on personal goals, examining the process of goal pursuit from start to finish, including goal setting, goal pursuit and self-regulation, and the outcomes associated with attainment and/or failure. They also address the many aspects of personal goal pursuit that are still poorly understood, highlighting directions for future research.
Les objectifs personnels sont omniprésents dans notre vie quotidienne et les gens ont tendance à en poursuivre plusieurs à tout moment. Le présent article propose un examen et une synthèse des vastes et divers travaux de recherche effectués sur les objectifs personnels. Un nombre croissant de recherches montre que les objectifs personnels sont mieux conceptualisés comme unité d'analyse distincte, du fait des énormes variations individuelles tant au niveau des caractéristiques des objectifs que de l'atteinte. Dans le présent article, les auteurs passent en revue la littérature actuelle sur les objectifs personnels, en examinant le processus de la poursuite d'objectifs du début à la fin, dont la fixation d'objectifs, la poursuite d'objectifs et l'auto-régulation ainsi que les résultats associés à l'accomplissement et (ou) à l'échec. On y aborde également les nombreux aspects de la poursuite d'objectifs personnels, qui sont encore très peu compris, en proposant quelques pistes de recherche future.
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Mastery-approach (MAP) goals, focusing on developing competence and acquiring task mastery, are posited to be the most optimal, beneficial type of achievement goal for academic and life outcomes. ...Although there is meta-analytic evidence supporting this finding, such evidence does not allow us to conclude that the extant MAP goal findings generalize across cultures. Meta-analyses have often suffered from overrepresentation of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) samples; reliance on bivariate correlations; and lack the ability to directly control individual-level background variables. To address these limitations, this study used nationally representative data from 77 countries/regions (N = 595,444 adolescents) to examine the relations of MAP goals to four antecedents (workmastery, competitiveness, fear of failure, fixed mindset) and 16 consequences (task-specific motivational, achievement-related, and well-being outcomes), and tested the cross-cultural generalizability of these relations. Results showed that MAP goals were: (a) grounded primarily in positive but not negative achievement motives/beliefs; (b) most strongly predictive of well-being outcomes, followed by adaptive motivation; (c) positively but consistently weakly associated with achievement-related outcomes, particularly for academic performance (β = .069); (d) negatively and weakly associated with maladaptive outcomes; and (e) uniquely predictive of various consequences, controlling for the antecedents and covariates. Further, the MAP goal predictions were generalizable across countries/regions for 13 of 16 consequences. While directions of effect sizes were slightly mixed for academic performance, perceived reading, and PISA test difficulty, the effect sizes were consistently small for most countries/regions. This generalizability points to quite strong cross-cultural support for the observed patterns.
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•The study expands the goal complex canon with new reasons for goal pursuit.•A new measure of goal complexes was validated.•A performance goal’s effects depended on why it is pursued.•Social reasons ...for goal pursuit were healthier than often assumed.•Findings were consistent across samples from the USA and Thailand.
Achievement goal theory has evolved since introduced about 40 years ago. One of its newer variants is the goal complex model. It assumes that each achievement goal (i.e., performance or mastery) can be pursued for many reasons and, more provocatively, that the goal’s effects depend partly on why it is pursued. Clearly, the first task for this area is to identify likely goal pursuit reasons, develop and validate a measure of reasons, and chart the influence of those reasons. Progress remains limited, however. Nearly all studies have considered only a small set of reasons suggested predominantly by self-determination theory, overlooking several other plausible reasons. Nor is there an established measure of goal pursuit reasons. To overcome those limitations, the current study validated and tested a new goal complex measure that includes several additional goal pursuit reasons, both personal (e.g., pride) and social (e.g., to make close others proud, or to help or serve others) in nature. Two culturally distinct samples of university students – one from the USA (n = 400), the other from Thailand (n = 404) – completed the measure with performance goals in mind and then reported a diverse array of educational outcomes. Their results converge for the most part. In each sample, the new measure proved to have good structural validity and psychometric properties. Several goal complexes, including the new social ones, showed unique and often desirable relationships with outcomes, too. The findings raise several research directions and implications for achievement goal theory.
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