PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY 1978, 31, zyxwvutsrq INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION, INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES, GOAL DIFFICULTY, GOAL ACCEPTANCE, GOAL INSTRUMENTALITY, AND PERFORMANCE GARY A. YUKL State University of New York at Albany GARY P. LATHAM University of Washington A field study was conducted with 41 female typists in a large corporation to test an explanatory model of goal setting. Weekly productivity goals were either assigned by the supervisors or were set jointly with a typist. Goals were set for ten consecutive weeks. A correlational analysis of the data indicated that difficult goals led to higher performance. Higher performance led to higher absolute goals for the subsequent week, but smaller improvement goals. zyx Per- sons with a high need for achievement and an internal control orientation set higher goals. Goal setting led to greater overall per- formance improvement for employees who had high self esteem or who perceived goal attainment to be instrumental for getting extrin- sic rewards. Hypothesized relationships involving goal acceptance were not supported, which may have been due to a lack of validity for the goal acceptance measure. LOCKE’S (1968) theory of goal setting states that difficult goals that are clear and specific, if accepted, will result in higher performance than easy goals, non-specific goals, or no goals at all. Locke has also proposed that goal setting mediates the effects of performance feed- back, participation, and incentives on performance. While the effec- tiveness of goal setting has been repeatedly demonstrated in previous research, certain aspects of the theory have not been adequately inves- tigated, and some of the propositions lack consistent support (Latham and Yukl, 1975a). For example, most goal setting studies have failed to determine how goal acceptance and goal difficulty interact in deter- mining performance, or how goal acceptance mediates the effect of The authors are grateful to Richard Kopelman, Edwin Locke, Mahmoud Wahba, and Terry Mitchell for their suggestions and comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to Ed Abramowitz for his assistance in conducting the data analysis. zyxw 305