Impact of personal control on performance: Is added control always beneficial?

Abstract

Presents a framework of control that suggests that each dimension is jointly determined by (a) the amount of control provided to an individual and (b) the individual's capacity to use control. The primary hypothesis is that performance is dependent on the degree to which the organizational control is congruent with the individual's capacity to use control. Two 2 × 2 repeated measures designs with 80 undergraduates were used to examine the impact of activity and outcome control congruence on performance in a proof-reading task. Exp I examined the impact of having too little activity and/or outcome control; Exp II examined the impact of having too much activity and/or outcome control. Results support the hypothesis and a congruent model of control. Congruent control environments resulted in greater performance than environments that provided either too little or too much control. (17 ref) (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)