Goal commitment and the goal-setting process: Problems, prospects, and proposals for future research

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of goal commitment in goal-setting research. Despite Locke's (1968) specification that commitment to goals is a necessary condition for the effectiveness of goal setting, a majority of studies in this area have ignored goal commitment. In addition, results of studies that have examined the effects of goal commitment were typically inconsistent with conceptualization of commitment as a moderator. Building on past research, we have developed a model of the goal commitment process and then used it to reinterpret past goal-setting research. We show that the widely varying sizes of the effect of goal difficulty, conditional effects of goal difficulty, and inconsistent results with variables such as participation can largely be traced to main and interactive effects of the variables specified by the model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)