The Impact Of Achieving And Maintaining Goals On Unethical Behavior: Mediating Role Of Moderation

Goal setting theory is one of the most studied and widely used theories in the field of organizational behavior.A core principle of this theory is that specific and challenging goals will improve performance.However,when emphasizing the positive effects of goal setting,most researchers or practitioners ignore the possible negative effects of goal setting,that is,it will increase unethical behavior.Therefore,how to use high performance goals to motivate performance without encouraging unethical behavior has become a problem to be solved.In this study,we considered the role of goal types,that is,whether excessive use of achieving goals as a performance driver will increase unethical behavior,and explore the mechanism of this behavior to expand previous research.Research 1 used the form of a scale to test 238 working subjects to verify whether the target type can predict unethical behaviors,and to explore the mechanism of the promotion focus on the relationship between the target type and unethical behaviors.In the second,the results of study one were verified by experiments.In the third study,the experimental research method was used to explore whether self-construction can alleviate the undesirable after-effects of achieving goals,thereby reducing the generation of unethical behaviors,and in-depth exploration of the mechanism of achieving goals and maintaining goals affecting unethical behaviors.The results show that(1)achieving goals has a significant predictive effect on unethical behaviors,and promotes the focus on achieving Goals play an intermediary role in the influence of unethical behaviors;(2)Self-construction plays a moderating role in the influence of goal types on unethical behaviors.Individuals with independent self-construction are more likely to have the promotion focus when they have the ability to achieve the goal.For individuals who rely on self-construction,there is no difference between the non-ethical behaviors of achieving the goal group and maintaining the goal group.This study not only answers the question of how goal achievement affects non ethical behavior,but also answers the question of how goal achievement predicts non ethical behavior and how the mediating effect of promoting focus is more significant.The results of this study have potential guiding significance and application value for managers how to reasonably and effectively set organizational goals.