A Preliminary Investigation of the Effect of Rules on Employee Performance

Abstract

The way in which rules impact workplace performance has been a topic of discussion in the Organizational Behavior Management literature for some time. Despite this interest, there is a dearth of empirical research on the topic. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of rules and goal setting in the workplace. Participants included two employees at an intensive residential treatment facility. The dependent variable was the percentage of sign-out / sign-in cells completed on a daily checklist. During ba-seline, data were collected on the percentage of cells correctly completed. During the treatment evaluation phase, employees were given 1 of 2 randomly assigned goal-rules in an alternating fashion: a praise goal-rule and a reprimand goal-rule. The corresponding contingency described in the goal-rule (i.e., praise or reprimand) was delivered contingent upon employee goal completion. Results showed that performance increased over baseline levels after the introduction of the goal-rules. In addition, slight differences in pe-rformance between the two types of goal-rules were noted for each participant.

KEYWORDS:

• goal setting
• performance
• praise
• reprimands
• rules
• rule-governed behavior

The authors thank the action editor, Dr. Ramona Houmanfar, for her insightful comments and suggestions during the revision process. James Squires is now at Western Michigan University.