Performance Management: Putting Research into Action

Goal Commitment

A statistical review of eighty-three studies revealed that goal commitment is a critical ingredient for goals to lead to high performance, especially when goals are difficult (Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck, & Alge, 1999). A study with rehabilitation counselors at a state agency found that feedback had a positive relationship with work performance only for those individuals with high goal commitment; it had a negative relationship with performance for those with lower goal commitment (Renn, 2003). Thus, the well-validated five-item scale for assessing goal commitment developed by Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck, Wright, and DeShon (2001), as outlined in Exhibit 3.1, is of practical value to organizational researchers and practitioners ...