Effect of Training in Verbal Self-Guidance on Performance Effectiveness in a MBA Program, The

Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, Jan 2006 by Brown, Travor C, Latham, Gary P

The assumption underlying the present study is that first year MBAs enter a new environment where they have yet to develop the necessary behavioural skills to work effectively in a team setting. The MBA program differs from a traditional undergraduate program in at least three ways. First, unlike most undergraduate programs, some classes are only several weeks long while others run a full semester. second, the people with whom they regularly interact have widely different academic backgrounds (e.g., engineering, law, liberal arts, physical sciences, education, health sciences, nursing, etc.). Many MBA students do not have an undergraduate degree in business. Third, and most importantly, the MBA program requires extensive teamwork. Group assignments are an integral part of most, if not all, courses. People are permanently assigned to a team for at least an entire semester, and sometimes for a full academic year. Furthermore, there is fierce competition among people for grades as many organizational recruiters use grade point average (GPA) as a criterion for selection. The business school puts great pressure on MBA students to secure jobs with prestigious firms as starting salaries and place of employment can impact both the prestige and the ranking of a business school in the popular press. Adding to the expectations of, and stress placed on MBA students, is the emphasis by recruiters on evidence of interpersonal (i.e., teamwork) skills. Thus adapting to the environment of the MBA program requires the acquisition of interpersonal skills, a high GPA, and the motivation to do so.

Goal Setting and VSG

Based on the extant research, we hypothesized that VSG, with its emphasis on the discovery and affirmation of one's ability (e.g., "Ah, all I have to do to succeed is..."), increases a person's performance. Based on Locke's (2000) conclusions, we hypothesized an interaction effect such that participants who receive training in VSG and set a specific high goal have the highest level of performance effectiveness. Locke argued that on a complex task there is typically an interaction effect between task knowledge and goals. Specifically, he argued that this interaction occurs when: 1) the goal alone cannot activate existing task knowledge because the person lacks such knowledge and 2) this task knowledge is derived from other sources (e.g., peers, professors), which when combined with goals, results in the highest level of performance in the high goal, high task knowledge condition. Thus, we hypothesized that the motivational effects of goal setting are beneficial in this study only when training in VSG enables an individual to develop and affirm behaviours to overcome obstacles to his/her performance. VSG facilitates the discovery of task behaviours because it focuses attention on discovering and encoding the necessary strategies to perform the task at hand.

Performance Criteria

There has been a long debate in the literature concerning the choice of an appropriate performance criterion (see Latham & Wexley, 1994). The performance criteria in the present study were dictated by the setting. MBA programs have been criticized by both the media (Jack, 2001), as well as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, which is the accreditation body for MBA programs in North America (Olian et al., 2002), for developing people who graduate with strong analytical yet weak interpersonal skills. Business leaders and educators have demanded that this situation be corrected (Mason, 1992; Olian et al., 2002; Pfeffer, 1998).