W. Clay Hamner

Effect of performance feedback and goal setting on productivity and satisfaction in an organizational setting.

A quasi-experimental design (W=113) was employed to investigate the effect of evaluative and nonevaluative feedback and goal setting on performance and satisfaction in a large telephone company. Three experimental groups received either extrinsic feedback, intrinsic feedback, or extrinsic and intrinsic feedback in addition to goal setting, while a fourth group received only goal-setting instructions. The results show that it is possible for goal setting alone to enhance performance without a formal-knowledge-of-results program, and thus yield external validity for Lockes theory of goal setting. However, when evaluative and nonevaluative feedback was added to a goal-setting program, performance was generally enhanced beyond that found in the goal-settingonly group.

Goal setting, performance and satisfaction in an interdependent task

Abstract This study was designed to determine the effect that goals have on performance and the effect that performance has on reported levels of satisfaction in a competitively structured task. The results of this study give strong evidence to Lockes theory ( Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 1969, 4, 566–574) that the most immediate, direct motivational determinant of task performance is the subjects goal, and to Ilgen and Hamstras theory ( Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 1972, 7, 359–370) that satisfaction with ones performance is a function of the difference between actual performance and performance goals, and also a function of the difference between actual performance and performance of a reference person. Satisfaction and performance were found to be strongly related only up to the point where a person exceeds his goal or his reference persons outcome.