| Employee performance is a widely studied subject across many fields. However, the vast majority of studies on employee performance have focused on a between-person perspective (Dalal, Bhave, & Fiset, 2014), involving the examination of differences across individuals. This research has led to important advances in theory and practice, but also provides a limited perspective. An alternative approach to examining employee performance is the less studied within-person perspective, involving the examination of differences within individuals over time. There are a number of advantages to examining performance from this perspective; for instance, this approach allows for (a) the discovery of different relationships between variables from those that have been observed at the between-person level (e.g., change in sign, direction, or strength of the relationship), (b) the production of incremental and unique information for theory building, and (c) the development of stronger inferences regarding causation. Thus, the overall purpose of the current research is to further our understanding of within-person performance over time and potential individual, organizational, and cultural factors influencing this performance. Specifically, a self-regulation perspective is adopted to develop predictions regarding the dynamics and factors that drive within-person performance. Several influencing factors are introduced at three levels (i.e., within-person, between-person, and between-group) and tested to examine the extent to which they predict performance over time and influence the relationships between the identified predictors and performance at the within-person level. The current study involves employee data from over 30,000 employees at a large multinational company across seven waves and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses. The findings of the current research show that a substantial portion of the variability in performance is observed at the within-person level (47%-71%) and this variability can be partially accounted for by goal-related factors (i.e., goal quality and goal alignment). In addition, the relationship between goal quality and performance was shown to be moderated by employees' level within the organizational hierarchy. These findings can help inform theoretical models related to within-person performance as well as practical applications related to improving performance.;Keywords: job performance, within-person variability, longitudinal, self-regulation, goals. |
