Page 230 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

214 the high performance cycle: standing the test of time
effectively than do people who have low self-efficacy and who are more likely to hold a
fixed entity belief.

GROWTH-FACILITATING TASKS

Roberson, Korsgaard, and Diddams (1990) found that personal goals and task attributes
have independent effects on satisfaction; the former effect may be the result of goal
success. Tasks that are perceived as enriched facilitate high performance (Ambrose &
Kulik, 1999; Campion, 1996), probably through their effects on goals and/or organi-
zational satisfaction and commitment. Meta-analyses conducted by Mathieu and Zajac
(1990) revealed that jobs that are perceived as enriched, which are known to produce
high satisfaction, also yield high organization commitment.
Kirkpatrick (1992), using a proof-reading task, manipulated autonomy and respon-
sibility in order to determine the effect on performance. Increases in responsibility led
to increases in the difficulty level and commitment to self-set goals. The goals in turn
increased performance. Autonomy only affected feelings of responsibility. These results
suggest that enriching jobs through increases in responsibility can increase performance
through the process of goal setting.
Cordery (1996, 1997) argued that job enrichment alone does not improve performance.
He found that the antecedents of effective job design/redesign outcomes are supervisory
practices regarding (a) goal structure, the extent to which the supervisor ensures that
the employee has specific attainable goals; (b) method structure, the extent to which
the employee is able to exert control over work activity; (c) boundary protection, the
extent to which the employee is provided the knowledge, skills and resources to per-
form effectively; and (d) goal feedback, the extent to which the supervisor ensures that
the individual is given timely information on progress toward goal attainment. These
supervisory practices affect employee perceptions of job content.
In summary, enriched or challenging jobs appear to increase job satisfaction directly
and independently of goal setting. Goal attainment, however, also affects job satisfaction.
The effect of job enrichment on employee performance is indirect, namely through its
effects on goals, feedback, satisfaction and organizational commitment.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

The assertion that specific high goals lead to high performance was based on findings
from over 400 empirical studies at the time that the HPC was published in 1990. Thus
there has been minimal interest in or need for replicating this finding in the past decade.
Because goal-setting is a strong variable that masks individual differences (Adler, 1986),
personality variables were not included in the HPC.
Individual differences, however, have been the focus of much research in the past
decade. Phillips and Gully (1997) identified, in addition to ability, locus of control as
having a positive relationship with self-efficacy and an indirect relationship with self-
set goals. Lambert, Moore, and Dixon (1999) showed that self-set goals were more
effective for gymnasts who have an internal rather than an external locus of control.
Achievement-oriented individuals are more responsive to performance than to learning
goals (Harackiewicz & Elliot, 1993). A review of personality research showed that