Goal Setting in the Australian Public Service: Effects on Psychological Empowerment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Do specific and difficult job goals have a positive, negative, or negligible effect on higher levels of performance in the form of organizational citizenship behavior ( OCB ) among government employees? Importantly, how do they influence OCB : directly and/or indirectly through psychological empowerment? This article on a small group of Australian federal government employees draws from the goal‐setting and self‐determination theories to provide a better understanding of how goal setting affects OCB . Findings show that goal specificity largely influenced OCB indirectly through psychological empowerment. In contrast, goal difficulty raised OCB directly and through the partial mediating effect of psychological empowerment .