Importance of participative goal setting and anticipated rewards on goal difficulty and job performance.

Engineers/scientists (n = 76) either participated in the setting of, or were assigned, specific behavioral goals during their performance appraisal. Participative goal setting resulted in more difficult goals -being set than was the case when the goals were assigned. Perceptions of goal difficulty, however, were not significantly different in the two goal-setting conditions. The analysis of the performance data collected 6 months later (n— 132) revealed main effects for both goal setting and anticipated rewards. Only participative goal setting led to significantly higher performance than a do your best and a control group condition. There was no significant difference between the performance of the latter two conditions despite the fact that the individuals in the do-your-best group received knowledge of results.