Aspiration-Level Adaptation in an American Financial Services Organization: A Field Study

Using field data from an American financial services organization, we examined the effects of three important variables in Cyert and March's (1963) initial conceptualization of the aspiration-level adaptation process: The previous aspiration level, performance feedback, and social comparison. P...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Management science 2002-10, Vol.48 (10), p.1285-1300
Main Authors: Mezias, Stephen J, Chen, Ya-Ru, Murphy, Patrice R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Adjustment
Behavior
Behavior modeling
Business studies
Case studies
Cognition & reasoning
Control variables
Decision making
Estimation methods
Financial services
Focalism
goal setting
Hypotheses
Management science
Mathematical models
Modeling
Optimism
Organizational behavior
Organizational learning
Organizations
Rationing
Reasoning
Social comparison
Standard error
Studies
U.S.A
Variables
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Using field data from an American financial services organization, we examined the effects of three important variables in Cyert and March's (1963) initial conceptualization of the aspiration-level adaptation process: The previous aspiration level, performance feedback, and social comparison. Past findings obtained in controlled contexts (Glynn et al. 1991; Lant 1992) have provided empirical support for the attainment discrepancy model (Lewin et al. 1944), which includes variables of the previous aspiration level and attainment discrepancy (i.e., performance feedback). We replicated these findings in the field: The effects of the previous aspiration level and attainment discrepancy on the current aspiration levels were significant and positive. In addition, we investigated the effect of social comparison using a variable based on the difference between the performance of the focal unit and the performance of comparable others (Greve 1998). Based on the assumption that decision makers in organizations will expect to observe similar performance levels among those in the same comparison group (Wood 1989), we posited that the effect of social comparison would be negative, refiecting managerial efforts to reduce performance discrepancies among similar units. The empirical results supported the prediction from this reasoning. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for theory and research in organizational learning and the behavioral theory of the firm.
ISSN:0025-1909
1526-5501
DOI:10.1287/mnsc.48.10.1285.277