Page 238 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

222 the high performance cycle: standing the test of time
significant predictor of affective commitment to the organization (O’Driscoll & Randall,
1999).

DISCUSSION

The HPC appears to have withstood the test of time. Although the model would benefit
from studies that use more elaborate statistical analyses, the extant empirical studies
conducted during the past decade suggest that such tests would yield significant results.
Specific high goals lead to high performance. High performance on enriched tasks often
leads to high rewards which in turn promotes satisfaction which subsequently encourages
commitment to the organization.
In the 10 years since the publication of the original HPC model, the findings reported
in the present chapter show:
that attention, effort and persistence are associated with arousal of the sympathetic

nervous system, specifically changes in heart rate, and that action is represented by a
hierarchy of goals and subgoals activated in the prefrontal cortex
the relevance of goal-setting theory to neurorehabilitation and sports

the differential effects of a learning vs. a performance goal orientation

the benefit of setting specific difficult learning goals on tasks that are complex for the

individual
the benefit of assigning proximal goals as opposed to only a distal outcome goal on

tasks that are characterized by high uncertainty
the benefit of proximal learning goals on the generation of task strategies

the role of goals (and self-efficacy) as mediators of the effect of such factors as per-

sonality, job enrichment and incentives on performance
the significance of viewing task ability as an acquirable skill rather than a fixed entity

the interaction between goal difficulty and goal commitment

the refinement of the goal commitment scale

a model of the relationship between motivation, task knowledge and performance

the generalizability of goal-setting findings with individuals to groups.

Many questions remain unanswered. These include the following:
Is a learning vs. a performance mastery goal orientation truly a trait? Are these orien-

tations easily induced as states through instructions?
How do people actually “translate” traits into situationally specific goals? Is this done

consciously or subconsciously?
How proximal should proximal goals be? Hourly? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? What

context factors need to be taken into account?
Under what specific conditions will enriched jobs lead to the setting of higher goals?

Are the elements of enrichment that lead to higher goals (e.g., feedback) the same or
different than the ones that lead to high goal commitment (e.g., task challenge)?
What group process factors, other than those already discovered, facilitate vs. under-

mine the goal-directed behavior of groups?
What is the relative importance of internal, self-administered rewards and external

rewards provided by others to job satisfaction and organizational commitment? Do
people differ in this regard? Is a particular trait involved?