Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
University of Zurich, Switzerland, 2Universiteit van Amsterdam, Business School, The Netherlands
Abstract. Efcient self-regulation has been argued to consist of more than just setting goals and tenaciously pursuing them it also requires that
people adapt their goals to changing circumstances. Although previous studies have already focused on interindividual differences in goal
disengagement (one aspect of goal adaptation), so far, no study has looked at predictors and consequences of daily work goal adaptation. As
predicted, daily goal adaptation was related to the amount of unplanned tasks and the extent to which the time needed for tasks was
underestimated. However, unlike previous research on goal disengagement, daily goal adaptation had a negative (and not a positive) effect on
well-being and subjective productivity. It is suggested that the emotional aspect of goal adaptation/goal disengagement needs more research
attention.
Keywords: goal disengagement, goal adaptation, multiple goals, self-regulation, self-management, time management
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Method
Participants
Participants were recruited at two Swiss companies in the
insurance industry. We distributed 84 paper questionnaire
sets (with questionnaires for 5 days) and received 54 back
(a response rate of 64%). Twenty-ve respondents were
female (46.3%) and 29 male (53.7%). Four were younger
than 25 years (7.4%), 24 were between 25 and 34 years
(44.4%), 18 between 35 and 44 years (33.3%), 7 between
45 and 54 years (13.0%), and one was older than 55 years
(1.9%). Twenty-eight were employees without a leadership
position and 26 were employees with a leadership position.
Eighteen had an organizational tenure of less than 5 years,
17 a tenure between 5 and 10 years, and 19 a tenure of more
than 10 years.
Measures
Participants answered all items on a 7-point Likert scale
(1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = rather disagree,
4 = in between, 5 = rather agree, 6 = agree, and
7 = strongly agree; see Gonzalez-Roma & Espejo, 2003;
Lozano, Garca-Cueto, & Muniz, 2008). They were asked
to ll out all questionnaires at the end of a working day
and to answer all items with regard to work. We asked them
to specify the date and the time of lling it out. Twenty-two
lled out the questionnaires on consecutive days, 8 had a
weekend between the rst and the last day (e.g., Wednesday,
Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(1):5056
52
Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among study variables (averaged over days)
Variable
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
SD
2.80
3.57
3.51
5.24
5.23
1.20
1.68
1.49
1.01
1.12
.79
.415
.412
.431
.389
.89
.410
.252
.112
.86
.332
.205
.91
.603
.82
Note. Average Cronbachs alphas in italics in the diagonal. Nparticipants = 54. |correlations| .27 are signicant at p < .05; |correlations| .35 at p < .01.
Analyses
Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling
(HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2001) because diary data
have a nested (multilevel) structure: Variables at the day
level are nested within people. In line with the recommendation by Raudenbush and Bryk (2001), all measures at
the day level were person-centered (i.e., interindividual
variance was removed). We used the computer program
HLM (Raudenbush, Bryk, & Congdon, 2006) for these
analyses.
Results
Table 1 reports the descriptive statistics and correlations for
all variables, averaged over days. It also shows that the reliabilities of all scales were satisfactory.
The following set of equations was used for testing
Hypotheses 1a and 1b:
Y ij p0j p1j GOAL ADAPTATIONij eij ;
1a
1b
1c
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Predictor
Parameter
Estimate
SE
t ratio
Intercept
Goal adaptation
b00
b10
5.24
0.25
0.10
0.06
50.38
4.09
< .01
< .01
Intercept
Goal adaptation
b00
b10
5.23
0.23
0.11
0.08
48.74
2.99
< .01
< .01
Well-being
Productivity
Table 3. Effects of underestimating task duration and the extent of unplanned tasks on goal adaptation
Predictor
Parameter
Estimate
SE
t ratio
b00
b10
b20
2.80
0.13
0.20
0.12
0.05
0.05
24.25
2.66
4.22
< .01
< .05
< .01
Intercept
Unplanned tasks
Underestimating time
Note. Nparticipants = 54; Ndays = 262.
The hypotheses regarding the predictors of goal adaptation (Hypotheses 2a and 2b) were tested using the following
set of equations:
GOALADAPTATIONij p0j p1j UNPLANNED TASKSij
p2j UNDERESTIMATING TIMEij
eij ;
2a
p0j b00 r0j ;
2b
2c
2d
Discussion
This study is the rst to examine goal adaptation on the
intraindividual level. Consistent with previous thinking,
the extent of unplanned tasks and the extent of underestimation of task duration predicted daily goal adaptation. More
importantly, the consequences of daily goal adaptation differed sharply from previous studies on goal disengagement
(e.g., Brandtstadter & Renner, 1990; Heckhausen et al.,
2001; Wrosch et al., 2007; Wrosch, Scheier, Miller et al.,
2010 Hogrefe Publishing
54
researchers should follow the advice of a reviewer who suggested for such a study that well-being should be measured
with scales that do not contain affectively toned items but
may rather focus on the physical or psychological health.
Second, longitudinal studies would be helpful that shadow
a complete goal adaptation process. Imagine, for example,
that researchers follow people over time who have the goal
of becoming members of executive boards. Surely, at least
some people will realize (sooner or later) that this goal is
unattainable for them. If the emotion-focused explanation
is correct, these people should experience negative emotions
when they realize that they are not going to get as far as they
originally wanted and report reduced well-being. Later on,
when they have adapted to their situation, they should report
higher well-being because they then experience the advantages of disengaging from goals.
Although the ndings reported here extend our understanding of goal adaptation in a number of ways, we must
acknowledge a few limitations. First, this study did not
include goal reengagement (Wrosch, Scheier, Miller et al.,
2003). However, daily goal reengagement can be considered
as being of less relevance at work because most goals at
work are set by the supervisors and there may often be no
need for active searching for new goals. Furthermore, previous studies (Miller & Wrosch, 2007; Wrosch et al., 2007)
showed that the impact of goal reengagement is generally
less than the impact of goal disengagement (or even nonsignicant). Second, the present study is only correlational in
nature, which cannot prove causality. Thus, future research
may be able to manipulate goal adaptation and test the
effects on outcome variables like the ones used in this study.
Such a goal manipulation could be achieved by teaching
planning techniques (e.g., the use of implementation intentions, Gollwitzer, 1999; Koole & vant Spijker, 2000) to
some participants, but not to others, and it could be expected
that the training group has a lesser need to adapt goals.
Third, our study was designed only to evaluate intraindividual effects of goal adaptation. However, it would be important to know whether the intraindividual effects are
moderated by some individual characteristics. For example,
people who have a tendency to plan goal adaptation ahead
maybe react in a less negative way if they have to adapt their
goals (see Henderson, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2007).
Fourth, the particular sample we used could entail a threat
to the generalizability of the ndings, as is the case in many
studies. All of our participants were Swiss, and Swiss people
score particularly highly on future orientation (i.e., the
degree to which individuals engage in future-oriented
behaviors such as planning; Ashkanasy, Gupta, Mayeld,
& Trevor-Roberts, 2004). Not being able to stick to plans
(i.e., goal adaptation) might therefore be more negative for
Swiss people than for people from other cultures. In any
case, replications in other contexts would be very welcome.
Fifth, all our data came from self-report, which could have
introduced a common method bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie,
Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). However, common method bias
may be less problematic than often assumed (Spector,
2006). Furthermore, our statistical analyses (i.e., centering
the scores at the individuals means) eliminated response
tendencies stemming from personal characteristics as one
2010 Hogrefe Publishing
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by a grant by the Stiftung
Suzanne und Hans Biasch zur Forderung der Angewandten
Psychologie, awarded to the rst author (in collaboration
with the second author). We would like to thank James Y.
Shah for his comments on the manuscript.
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Cornelius J. Konig
Department of Psychology
University of Zurich
Binzmuhlestr. 14/12
8050 Zurich
Switzerland
Tel. +41 44 635 7218
Fax +41 44 635 7219
E-mail c.koenig@psychologie.uzh.ch