ACCOUNTABILITY, IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT, AND GOAL-SETTING IN THE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PROCESS

Theoretical perspectives from accountability, impression management, g oal setting, and performance evaluation suggest that accountability co nditions may influence whether goals are used for impression managemen t or performance-directed purposes. Goal theory and research suggest t hat goals typically are performance-directed, resulting in elevated pe rformance under certain conditions. Alternatively, impression manageme nt theory might imply that goals may not always be performance-directe d, and the goal-performance relationship may be decoupled in such case s. Accountability is proposed as influencing this relationship in addi tion to main effects on how people approach tasks. Two studies tested notions of how accountability influences task approaches and goal uses : a laboratory experiment with university students, and a field study of telemarketers. Convergence of results indicates that participants a pproached tasks and set goals differently according to accountability conditions. Furthermore, the goal-performance relationship differences reflect the use of goals for performance-directed purposes under low accountability, and for impression-management purposes under high acco untability (with no goal-performance relationship), as predicted.