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Preparation of this article was funded in part by a Ford Motor Company Affiliate Fund grant to the first author. All three authors contributed equally to this article.
We thank John Dimitejevich, Barbara Finnegan, Shirley Ring, and Kimberly Tilghman for their help in conducting and analyzing these experiments, and Ayala Cohen for her statistical advice.
In this monograph we describe a unique method for resolving scientific disputes: the joint design of crucial experiments by the antagonists themselves with the help of a mediator. This method was applied to the issue of the effect of participation on goal commitment and performance. In research on this topic, Latham and his colleagues had obtained markedly different results from those obtained by Erez and her colleagues. With Locke serving as a third party mediator, Latham and Erez designed four experiments to resolve the discrepancies. The experiments were conducted at the University of Washington and the University of Maryland. The results revealed that the major reason for the difference was that Erez gave very brief tell instructions to her assigned goal subjects, whereas Latham used a tell and sell approach. Four additional factors also contributed to the earlier difference in findings: goal difficulty, setting personal goals before goal treatments were introduced, self-efficacy-inducing instructions, and instructions to reject disliked goals. It was concluded that (a) the differences between Latham and Erez can be explained on the basis of differences in specific procedures, and (b) the method used to resolve this dispute should be used by other investigators.
In this monograph we present a method of resolving scientific disputes...