Competition and Achievement Goals in Work Teams

Abstract

This study examined how competition within teams influences which type of achievement goals employees adopt. We studied how dispositional learning-goal and performance-goal orientation interact with team-level competition and predict whether team members adopt state learning or performance achievement goals. State achievement goals, in turn, were proximal antecedents of two outcome measures: job-related self-efficacy and supervisory ratings of job performance. The participants were 502 employees and 55 supervisors. Results confirmed that competition was positively associated with state performance goals. Trait performance-goal orientation influenced whether competition was negatively associated with state learning goals. In highly competitive teams, trait performance-goal orientation was negatively related to state learning goals, whereas in less competitive teams, a performance-goal orientation was positively related to state learning goals.

Notes

¹As predicted, competition interacted with the “corresponding” motivational trait, PGO. Whether an interaction occurred between competition and the “noncorresponding” disposition, LGO, was tested to rule out that an unexpected but actually significant effect was overlooked. This finding is in accordance with the notion that contextual factors encourage the expression of corresponding traits. Note also that competition did not moderate the direct relationships between the two dimensions of trait goal orientation and the dependent variables (self-efficacy, supervisory ratings), nor the relationships between state achievement goals and the dependent variable, which was tested in an exploratory fashion.