Goal orientation

Goal orientation is an 'individual disposition toward developing or validating one's ability in achievement settings'. Previous research has examined goal orientation as a motivation variable useful for recruitment, climate and culture, performance appraisal, and selection. Studies have also used goal orientation to predict sales performance, goal setting, learning and adaptive behaviors in training, and leadership. Due to the many theoretical and practical applications of goal orientation, it is important to understand the construct and how it relates to other variables. In this entry, goal orientation will be reviewed in terms of its history, stability, dimensionality, antecedents, its relationship to goal setting and consequences, its relevance to motivation, and future directions for research. Goal orientation is an 'individual disposition toward developing or validating one's ability in achievement settings'. Previous research has examined goal orientation as a motivation variable useful for recruitment, climate and culture, performance appraisal, and selection. Studies have also used goal orientation to predict sales performance, goal setting, learning and adaptive behaviors in training, and leadership. Due to the many theoretical and practical applications of goal orientation, it is important to understand the construct and how it relates to other variables. In this entry, goal orientation will be reviewed in terms of its history, stability, dimensionality, antecedents, its relationship to goal setting and consequences, its relevance to motivation, and future directions for research. The earliest conceptualizations of goal orientation were proposed in the 1970s by the educational psychologist J.A. Eison. Eison argued that students who approached college as an opportunity to acquire new skills and knowledge possessed a learning orientation while students who approached college with the goal to exclusively obtain high grades possessed a grade orientation. Eison originally believed that these two orientations were two ends of the same continuum and developed the Learning Orientation-Grade Orientation Scale to measure the continuum. At about the same time, J.G. Nicholls was developing a related theory that achievement motivation would lead grade school children to set high task related goals. Nicholls found that when some high-ability children encountered difficult tasks, they would use maladaptive strategies, leading to eventual feelings of helplessness, while others would use more productive coping strategies. Nicholls later conceptualized these differences as two types of achievement goals: (a) task involvement: where individuals seek to develop their competence relative to their own abilities and (b) ego involvement: where individuals seek to develop their competence relative to the abilities of others. Nicholls's early work set up Dweck's proposition of two types of goal orientation: learning orientation and performance orientation. Dweck postulated that children with learning goals were believed to approach situations with the goal to master the acquisition of new skills, while children with performance goals were believed to approach situations with the goal of gaining approval from peers and teachers. Similar to Eison, Dweck conceptualized goal orientation as a two-dimension construct. Individuals with a learning goal orientation (sometimes referred to as mastery goal orientation or abbreviated as LGO), seek to develop their competence by acquiring new skills and mastering new situations. They are not concerned about their performance relative to others, but rather with furthering their understanding of a given topic or task. Individuals with a performance goal orientation seek to demonstrate and validate the adequacy of their competence in order to receive favorable judgments and avoid negative judgments. Although Dweck's work in this area built on the foundation laid by Nicholls, the fundamental difference between the two scholars' works was the attribution of an individual's goal orientation. Nicholls believed that the goal orientation held by an individual was a result of the possession of either an internal or external referent, while Dweck considered the adoption of a particular goal orientation to be related to the theory of intelligence held by that individual. Subsequent work by Eison and colleagues in 1982, led to a change in the conceptualization of these orientations from two ends of a continuum to two separate constructs. More recently, researchers have embraced the idea that individuals can adopt the two orientation style simultaneously: persons can be high in both learning and performance orientations, low in both learning and performance orientations, or high in one orientation and low in the other. Ultimately, individuals can entertain multiple competing goal orientations at the same time, striving to both outperform competitors and improve their own performance. This led to the conceptualization of two separate continuums, one for learning goal orientation and one for performance goal orientation. Just over a decade after Dweck conceptualized the two-factor model of goal orientation, VandeWalle proposed that goal orientation is better conceptualized as a three-factor model, further dividing performance goal orientation into the dimensions of avoidant performance goal orientation (APGO) and prove performance goal orientation (PPGO). APGO is centered on the goal of avoiding failure and negative judgment from others centered on lack of competence while PPGO is centered on demonstrating performance to prove competence. Learning goal orientation has also been separated into two categories learning approach orientation and learning avoid orientation, however, this conceptualization is neither widely accepted nor substantially proven.According to VandeWalle, Cron & Slocum, APGO and PPGO have differing relationships with various outcome variables, supporting the argument that a three-factor model should be used in place of the originally conceptualized two-factor model.Sameer Babu M, and Selvamari S (2018) from India defined Mastery Goal Orientation as 'an attribution, of an individual, of meaningful manipulation of his/her course of action with a view that the spectrum of activities are leading to achieve the highest aim set forth for the same'.Reference: Sameer Babu M, and Selvamari S (2018). In Selvamari. S. (2018) 'Academic self-concept, self-handicapping, and mastery goal orientation as predictors of achievement in mathematics of secondary school students'. Unpublished M Phil Dissertation, University of Kerala, India. Vandewalle, Nerstad, and Dysvik (2019) provide a detailed history of the conceptualization of goal orientation, and they discuss the how the conceptualization and operationalization of goal orientation is an important factor for interpreting the variance in findings of goal orientation research studies for a given outcome variable. There has been great debate if goal orientation should be operationalized as a state or as a trait. Throughout the goal orientation literature, there are inconsistencies with regard to the conceptualization of the stability of the construct. For example, DeShon & Gillespie stated that in the literature, goal orientation has been conceptualized as a trait, quasi-trait, and state. They articulated that whether researchers conceptualize goal orientation as a trait or a state 'depends on the breadth of the inference that the researcher is attempting to support' (p. 1115). State goal orientation refers to the goal one has in a particular situation. It is similar to trait goal orientation in that it represents one's preference in an achievement situation. However, state goal orientation is 'specific to the task and context at hand' (p. 5). For example, VandeWalle, Cron & Slocum stated that goal orientation can be domain specific. They stated that it is possible for an individual to have a strong learning goal orientation in their academic domain but not in their work domain. Trait goal orientation refers to the 'consistent pattern of responses in achievement situations based on the individual's standing on goal orientation dimensions'. This view of goal orientation treats the construct as a stable, individual difference characteristic. Button, Mathieu, & Zajac take an integrative view of the construct, stating that goal orientation is best categorized as a relatively stable individual difference variable that can be influenced by situational and contextual characteristics. These authors found that when few situational cues are present, individuals will adopt their dispositional goal orientations. However, when 'dispositional goal orientations predispose individuals to adopt particular response patterns across situations, situational characteristics may cause them to adopt a different or less acute response pattern for a specific situation (p. 40). Thus, trait and state goal orientation interact, so both operationalizations should be considered simultaneously. Since the realization that performance goal orientation is best split into two separate parts, researchers have conducted validation studies to demonstrate the statistical and conceptual distinction of these three dimensions to goal orientation. Conceptual and empirical work by Elliot and Church and VandeWalle demonstrated that the factor structure of Goal Orientation does indeed lend itself to three distinct dimensions, as summarized below. An explanation of the learning-approach and learning-avoidance goal orientations are also included for completeness. In communications there is a theory that coincides with this overall concept. The theory is titled, the Theory of Goal-oriented communications. The idea behind it is that when communicating if individuals are concentrated on the goal at hand rather than the communication itself it will lessen confusion. Communication is not the goal in itself but something bigger, getting a planned idea across.