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Joint moderating effects of job experience and task component complexity: Relations among goal setting, task strategies, and performance
Author(s) -
Earley P. Christopher,
Lee Cynthia,
Hanson L. Alice
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of organizational behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.938
H-Index - 177
eISSN - 1099-1379
pISSN - 0894-3796
DOI - 10.1002/job.4030110104
Subject(s) - task (project management) , psychology , goal setting , component (thermodynamics) , joint (building) , job performance , moderation , goal orientation , social psychology , cognitive psychology , applied psychology , job satisfaction , management , economics , physics , thermodynamics , architectural engineering , engineering
Research in goal setting has demonstrated moderating roles of job experience and task complexity in the relation of goals to performance. Goal setting appears to have its strongest effect on an individual's performance and task strategy quality for jobs having low task complexity. A field study ( n = 347) was conducted to assess the moderating role of job experience and task component complexity, or the number of distinct and independent actions an individual must process, using respondents from several organizations across a variety of job levels. The results of moderated regression analyses demonstrate support for the hypothesis that task component complexity would moderate the effect of goal setting on performance. In addition, experience moderated the relation of goal setting to task strategy quality and performance for jobs having a great deal of task component complexity. The results are discussed as further evidence of the largged beneficial effect of goals on task performance for a job high in task component complexity.