A Meta-Model of the Effects of Goal Characteristics, Feedback, and Role Characteristics in Human Organizations

Abstract

Recent literature reviews have attempted to link goal-setting processes with other traditional human relations topics, possibly in a search for explanations of the inconsistent results among some empirical studies. The present reformulation builds upon the models developed in these literature reviews by offering more specific propositions regarding the variables in these models and by integrating these variables with three other organizational themes: participative management, job design and role theory. The model offered here is a meta-model because it is an integration of variables and concepts from several other models. Eleven propositions regarding the direct effects of goal characteristics, feedback, and role characteristics and eleven corollaries regarding the moderating effects of personal and job characteristics are presented.