Self Regulation In Long-term Goal Achievement

Modern society makes the life of intellectual workers confused by conflict between temptations and distant objects. Many of the things managers want most cannot be accomplished in immediate here and now. The self-regulation and accomplishment of long-term goals immerged to be an important management topic for managers and professionals, since the creative tasks and flexible time schedule makes self-control even fatal for performance. Recent self-regulation researches has been under the spotlight of scholars. However, there are few in-depth research into the integrate process of long-term goal due to the lack of theoretical foundation. Most research is limited to one specific decision-making bias, failing to give a whole picture of the dramatic and complex process. With the development of Construal Level Theory (CLT), it becomes feasible to conduct the comprehensive investigation into integrate process of long-term goal.Based on CLT, this study aimed to explore the mechanism underlining decision-making bias, combining all courses of long-term goal, and tried to figure out the effect of construal level on decision-making. The paper is composed of three studies:Study1:Exploratory Interviews of Distant Goal Regulation BehaviorsAfter conducting47semi-structured interviews with employees on the irrational decision-making experience, we identified the typical decision-making bias (e.g. planning fallacy, multi-selves conflict), and classified specific behavior in multi-selves conflict via critical incident technique and content analysis method. These results provided us a clearer understanding of long-term goal and content basis for the following study.Study2:Construal Level and Planning FallacyWe conducted3parallel scenario experiments to explore the effect of individual’s construal level on planning fallacy which is the typical decision-making bias in planning stage of long-term goal, adopting questionnaire survey and scenario stimulation experiment. In each group, participants (with86,81,120subjectives, respectively) first completed a construal level priming manipulation which assigned them into two group:high construal level and low construal level. Then we assessed the effects on over-confidence in different scenario. The statistical results all demonstrated that high-level construal lead to low over confidence. This study proved that construal level played a key role in planning fallacy.Study3:Construal Level and Multi-selves ConflictBased on the result of prior interview, we determined to adopt online scenario to explore how construal level influence multi-selves conflict. This study was composed of3stages. At first, after conducting10semi-structured interviews about online activities, we extracted10"should" activities and10"want" activities, which were applied in the second part. Second,87participants were asked to provide accurate rating (want/should score) of online activities category via Medialab software, and we defined5"should" activities and5"want" activities to develop a scale for measurement in the following stage. Third, adopting BIF scale to assess construal level, we administrated questionnaires to87college students to test the impact of construal level on behavior choices. The results showed that construal level was a strong predictor of multi-selves conflict. Specifically, high-level individuals are more likely to choose should behavior, with a higher SMW score of online behavior.The conclusions were meaningful both theoretically and practically. For scholars, they could consider the results as an important supplement to both long-term goal and construal level. For employees, the results offer a new perspective to avoid decision-making bias. For managers, they can take more effective ways to recruit, training and monitoring after knowing the key role of construal level in achieving long-term goal.