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This study explores the interrelationship among goal orientation, self-regulatory mechanisms and error orientation with a view to predicting performance in a management task involving decision making at a furniture factory in an uncertain situation. The sample was randomly assigned as a control group and an experimental group, but only the participants in the latter group received fictitious information about job insecurity in the furniture sector. Successive self-assessments evaluated their judgments about self-efficacy and emotional state during the task. The results show that, initially, the setting of uncertainty negatively affects self-regulatory mechanisms and performance; this effect disappears with time, while affective state and a positive error orientation guarantee better long-term performance.
Keywords: goal orientation, error orientation, self-efficacy, uncertainty, decision making.
Recent research has shown that in most organizations there are two clearly differentiated cultures in relation to errors: the avoidance of errors, or error management. Although both cultures pursue the same end - avoidance of the negative consequences of errors - the strategy for addressing failures differs (Van Dyck, 2000). Avoidance involves rejecting any type of error, while error management is based on the premise that it is impossible to prevent all errors, and it is understood and accepted that errors will inevitably occur. Also, error management is clearly related to learning goal orientation, while error avoidance would be related to a performance goal orientation (only those that ensure success). Thus, it can be affirmed that, because they encourage learning and the exploration of new challenges (Dormann & Frese, 1994; Frese, 1995) errors have a positive function in the training received by workers. Errors increase motivation, break the routine of daily life, lead to creative solutions, and reduce frustration, although these effects appear most often if there are personal and organizational antecedents supporting this orientation.
In this sense, a personal disposition that played a central role in the objective of our work was error orientation. Experimental evidence has shown that a positive error orientation, associated with the ability to reflect on the occurrence of such errors, the need to communicate them, and so on, has a potential impact on job performance (Frese, 1995; Frese & Zapf, 1994). On the other hand, Fair, Hofmann, and Ringenbach (1993) argued that achievement goal theory and research suggest that...