Laying a Ghost to Rest? The Role of Employee Involvement in the Selection of Performance Goals

In the performance management literature, it is a widely held assumption that the involvement of frontline employees in performance management systems increases employees' goal support, which, in turn, improves organizational performance. Yet empirically, this assumption is unsubstantiated. Therefore, the aim of this study is to make an empirical contribution to the literature by examining experimentally how involvement affects frontline employees' support of performance goals. To test the assumption, we conduct a survey experiment on more than 1600 public caseworkers working in Danish employment agencies. Contrary to the mainstream assumption, but in line with psychological theory, our experimental test shows that involving employees has no effect on their goal support. In addition, our findings highlight various challenges for managers who seek to improve goal support through employee involvement.