| Goal orientation is conceived as an important motivational characteristic and is suggested to have important implication on human resource management. Yet most of the research on goal orientation has been done in Western cultures, particularly in the US. A cross-cultural study on goal orientation is important because organizations are increasingly facing the issue of managing diversity. The current study examined whether cultural differences between Western and East Asian societies influenced the correlations among the key variables in goal orientation theory: the implicit theory of intelligence, goal orientations, causal attribution, and self-efficacy. College students, 93 from a midwest state university in U.S. and 124 from a southeast university in China, participated in this study. Participants performed two tasks in two consecutive days. The tasks, the data sufficiency test adapted from the Graduate Management Admission Test, were used to solicit attributional analysis and self-efficacy judgment. Questionnaires on other variables were completed before, between, and after the two tasks. Independent T-tests and moderated hierarchical regressions were used to test the hypotheses. In contrast to what was predicted, the American sample was higher on the incremental theory of intelligence and performance orientation than the Chinese sample. However, the Chinese sample was higher on learning orientation than the American sample. The relationship between the implicit theory of intelligence and goal orientation was invariant across the two compared cultures. Ability attribution was negatively correlated with learning orientation, but positively correlated with performance orientation for both samples. Effort attribution was not correlated with either specific goal orientation in both samples. Attribution was correlated with self-efficacy for the American sample, but not for the Chinese sample. The effects of goal orientation on self-efficacy were mostly mediated by attribution. Learning orientation was positively correlated with self-efficacy in both cultures, but the relationship between performance orientation and self-efficacy was moderated by the culture. Performance orientation was negatively correlated with self-efficacy for the America sample, but the detrimental effect of performance orientation was not observed for the Chinese sample. It was suggested that a cross-cultural perspective needs to be adopted when utilizing goal orientation theory in human resource management cross-culturally. |
