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This paper aims to investigate the effects of goal orientation on understanding the dynamics of stocks and flows (SF).

The authors use the well-established department store task as the experimental task to evaluate people’s understanding of SF and implement a survey to assess different goal orientation levels. Ordinary least square is used to test the effects of goal orientations on the SF performance.

The findings suggest that learning goal orientation is positively associated with SF performance. However, prove and avoid performance goal orientation are unrelated to SF performance.

The study has important theoretical and practical contributions. From a theoretical perspective, the authors examine the impact of goal orientation in dynamic decision-making to advance the knowledge on the role of goal orientation. Practically, the research demonstrates that learning-goal-oriented people perform better in stock and flow tasks, suggesting that goal orientation is an important trait for recruiting organizational members whose work involves SF decision-making tasks.

The current study examined relationships between goal orientation dimensions and other individual difference constructs in order to clarify the conceptual definition of goal orientation. Results from a sample of university students (N = 228) revealed that learning goal orientation is related to constructs addressing competence (need for achievement, intrinsic motivation, and private self‐consciousness) and to constructs addressing control (locus of control and dominance). Additionally, results indicated that performance goal orientation is related to constructs addressing individuals' desire for favorable evaluations (social desirability and public self‐consciousness). Finally, we proposed that self‐esteem addresses issues relating to both competence and desire for favorable evaluations, and results revealed support for predicted relationships with learning and performance goal orientation dimensions. Our clarification of the goal orientation construct provides a framework to guide future research.

Many fresh graduates have unrealistic career expectations. When reality sets in after graduation, they may be disappointed. Due to factors such as the limited availability of feasible alternative career options, employees who have to stay in jobs they dislike may feel trapped. To alleviate the resulting stresses, they may engage in avoidance coping strategies, such as non-work-related social media use, to discharge their mental strains. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the perception of being trapped can result in the adoption of avoidance coping strategies, and how these strategies can influence individual performance and social media use.

Based on the literature on avoidance coping strategy, goal orientation theory, and performance theory, the authors proposed a theoretical model on how the avoidance coping strategy of an individual can influence their performance and workplace behavior.

The authors propose that when a fresh graduate feels “trapped” in a job, the stresses experienced may cause them to hide behind their defense mechanisms. An avoidance coping strategy may then be adopted, and this will influence the individual’s workplace behavior (in terms of non-work-related use of social media) and performance.

If an avoidance coping strategy is an antecedent to non-work-related use of social media, then controlling the use of social media in the workplace may only cause these employees to switch to other forms of self-distraction (for instance, spending more time chatting with colleagues). Under some circumstances, the use of such control mechanisms may even give cyberloafers stronger urges to use social media for non-work-related purposes. If this is the case, managers should reconsider their current approach in handling the related behavior.

If the cause of non-work-related use of social media in the workplace is an avoidance coping strategy, then the engagement of such workplace behaviors should not be considered “intentionally harmful actions”. One important criterion for workplace behavior to qualify as a type of counterproductive behavior is that such behavior must be conducted to be intentionally harmful. Given this, the resulting actions of an avoidance coping strategy should not be considered a form of counterproductive behavior, and the authors should reconsider the conceptualization of cyberloafing provided in the organizational literature.

The authors believe that this research represents one of the first attempts to bridge the gap between clinical and managerial literature. It attempts to explain non-work-related use of social media in the workplace from the perspective of trapped perception and avoidance coping strategy, and it argues that not all forms of non-work-related use of social media in the workplace are instances of cyberloafing.

This study aims to innovate by investigating the effects of goal orientations on informal learning strategies and whether intrinsic motivation mediates the relation between those two constructs.

To address these aims, the author relied on a quantitative study and on structural equation modeling to evaluate the relationships prescribed by the research model. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 244 bank managers from Brazilian banks.

Results show that mastery goal orientation positively relate with both informal cognitive and behavioral learning strategies in the workplace.

This paper has contributed to the discussion concerning the effects of goal orientations on managers’ informal learning strategies, complementing previous research on the antecedents of informal learning.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to test the relation between employee goal orientation and occupational withdrawal intentions and behaviors considering employee satisfaction a mediator in the relations.

Survey data were obtained from a sample of 241 licensed real estate professionals using a self-administrated questionnaire. Mediation hypotheses were tested using Smart PLS.

The results indicate that job satisfaction fully mediates the relation between learning goal orientation and occupational withdrawal intentions and behaviors. A direct positive relation was found between avoid goal orientation and occupational withdrawal intentions and behaviors.

Worker shortages in many occupations increases the importance of the ability to understand and predict occupational withdrawal behaviors.

This study adds to the literature by considering goal orientation as an individual employee characteristics central in predicting and understanding occupational attitudes and withdrawal intentions and behaviors.

This study aims to examine the direct effects of job support and the indirect effects of individual career planning on the motivational process of training transfer, which consists of the structural relationship between learning goal orientation, learning motivation, transfer motivation and training transfer.

An online survey was administered to 255 respondents in South Korea, and 252 valid responses were used for analysis. A hypothetical model was examined using a structural equation model and multi-group analysis.

This study found that the synchronous process model of training transfer was well validated in the Korean context; moreover, job support promoted employee motivations that led to their training transfer. In addition, career planning was found to have a moderating role in the relationships explored in this study. That is, when the level of career planning was high, job support directly affected the motivation to transfer, and the link between intrinsic learning orientation and motivation to learn was highly activated compared to the group with a low level of career planning.

This study is limited by the single-dimensional measurement of its constructs, including job support, goal orientation and motivation to transfer. This limitation should be considered when interpreting the study’s results. In terms of implications, the study suggests that organizations should help individuals identify their career interests and establish a strategy to achieve their career goals by providing information about specific areas of interest.

This study proposes that the motivational mechanisms leading to training transfer are affected by trainees’ level of career planning. In addition, the study findings emphasize the importance of organizations’ role in guiding individual employees’ career planning to facilitate performance through training transfer.

There have been strides in workplace incivility (WI), but in what direction, angles and theoretical streams are they taking place? In light of it, the purpose of this review is to analyze the overall WI research output yielded in the initial decades of this century.

This investigation searched exclusively for empirical articles written in English that matched the terms incivility and WI in the websites of prominent peer-review publications covering the period of 19 years (i.e. 2000–2019). As a result, 93 peer-reviewed empirical studies were properly gathered and classified.

WI is one of the most relevant topics in OB studies under scrutiny in this moment. Corroborating such a perception is the huge amount of outlets that have been publishing about WI. In this sense, it is a topic that has gained strong interdisciplinary status, given the manifested interest of very distinct areas. Cross-sectional studies have prevailed in terms of method preferences, yet other approaches have been used. Of noteworthy is the shortage of qualitative and meta-analytic studies. Data provided evidence that a very limited number of nations (only 18 countries) have been investigated and it is not exactly surprising that the United States be the target of the majority of studies in this field. The antecedents and consequences of WI are the major focus of the investigations. But I found some evidence that that WI has been tested as performing the role of measure, mediator and moderator.

It focused exclusively on peer-review journals and articles written in English.

This endeavor contributes to the theory of WI by encompassing crucial aspects such as time horizon, major outlets, study types, country-level output, samples features, constructs perused, theoretical function of WI and research outcomes. In addition, it points out new potential research streams.

This paper explores the role of individual goal orientation on the self‐management work process and how individual goal orientation may impact self‐managed work team (SMWT) effectiveness. Supervisory encouragement, team member goal orientation, and work team behaviors are included in a conceptual model of work team effectiveness. Propositions addressing the relationships between goal orientation, encouraging supervisory behaviors, and self‐managed work team effectiveness are offered and practical implications addressing the usage of goal orientation as a selection tool for self‐managed work teams and the need for external supervisors to encourage certain work team behaviors to promote work team effectiveness are discussed.

Despite the literature on subordinates' destructive responses to abusive leadership, an emerging body of literature proposes that subordinates may react constructively to abusive supervision under certain conditions. The authors contribute to this line of research by proposing and testing the moderating effects of performance-approach and -avoidance goal orientation on the relationship between abusive supervision and task performance, and by testing work effort as a mechanism underlying this moderating effect.

The study hypotheses were tested in two studies. In Study 1 (field survey, N = 230), the moderation hypotheses were tested. Study 2 (experiment, N = 116) extended Study 1 and examined the mediated moderation model.

The study empirical evidence from the two studies showed that (1) abusive supervision was more positively related to an employee's task performance when that employee's performance-approach goal orientation was high (vs low), (2) abusive supervision was not more positively related to task performance when performance-avoidance goal orientation was high (vs low) and (3) the employee's work effort mediated the moderating effect of performance-approach goal orientation.

This research suggests that organizations and subordinates should be aware of the positive contextual role of performance-approach goal orientation, which may shape subordinates' subsequent work behavior in response to supervisors' hostility, and should invest more time and effort in reinforcing subordinates' performance-approach goal orientation.

This study has identified a new condition and offers new evidence of the potential functional effect of abusive supervision. Specifically, the study finding of the positive moderating role of performance-approach goal orientation adds to the literature examining when abused subordinates respond constructively to abusive supervision. The study analysis of the mediating effect of work effort further reveals the mechanism of this effect.