For the last ten years, Associate Professor Don VandeWalle has focused on goal
orientation research. For VandeWalle the concept of goal orientation--how people
approach achievement tasks psychologically—became of fascination to him as a twentysomething college track coach. He has been instrumental in bringing this research out of
social psychology field and into organizational behavior, and thus has become a leading
management scholar on investigating the goal orientations of adults in work, training, and
higher education settings.
Distinctions in Research
Vandewalle takes very seriously the caliber of his research. While giving a recent
presentation to faculty and doctoral students at University of Southern California, he
noticed that the attendees from different discipline areas were finding similar patterns in
their research findings as he. “This says something about science. If you have good
questions, good theory, and good research methods, then people’s ideas will converge,
“VandeWalle explained. “You see this often in some physics question, Ebola, or HIV
research, where researchers from different parts of the world are asking similar questions
and arriving at similar conclusions.” VandeWalle believes that the convergence of ideas
comes as a result of good science.
A recent study by VandeWalle and colleagues investigates how one’s goal orientation
can have a positive or negative impact on important motivational processes such as goal
setting. The upcoming publication “The Role of Goal Orientation on Negative Emotions
and Goal Setting: When Initial Performance Falls Short of One’s Performance Goal”,
conducted with co-authors John Slocum of SMU Cox, William Cron of TCU and Frank
Qu of University of Houston, will appear in Human Performance in the latter part of
2004. Also discussed in the study are the organizational implications for activities such as
employee motivation, personnel decisions, employee development, and organizational
culture.
A predecessor 2001 article published in Organizational Dynamics, “Goal Orientation:
Why Wanting to Look Successful Doesn’t Always Lead to Success” is a summary of
VandeWalle’s goal orientation research and is often used as an instructional resource by
faculty at other universities across the country. Vandewalle is probably best known for
his article “Development and Validation of a Work Domain Goal Orientation Instrument”
that describes the development and validation process for a widely-used instrument to
assess goal orientation. VandeWalle’s research and assessment tools are internationally
recognized and the goal orientation instrument has been translated by other scholars into
Hebrew, German, Dutch, French, and Mandarin. VandeWalle's research has also helped
lay the foundation for goal orientation to become one of the preeminent topics for
doctoral student dissertations.
Future Agenda
VandeWalle has a new research agenda which investigates how implicit theories about
personal development held by a leader influence leadership style and leader interactions
with followers. “Implicit theories are beliefs people have about whether their abilities can
be developed or not,” VandeWalle explained. “If a leader has fixed or incremental ideas
about the development of ability, they will perceive others and the world in a certain light
and because of their view, act in certain manner. As individuals advance in their career to
leadership roles, a fixed belief orientation is likely to become a disadvantage because
these individuals are not as reflective, rush to quick judgments about others, and are less
likely to use a developmental style with subordinates.” VandeWalle continued with his
insights. “It’s hard to be a visionary leader with fixed ideas. Those with more flexible
orientations may initially appear scattered with such a mindset, but as they move up the
ladder that orientation is likely to become strength.”
An affirmation of VandeWalle’s research direction and concepts came from an
interaction with a senior faculty member after the presentation at the University of
Southern California. Based on 20 years of collaboration with a high level consulting firm,
the faculty member had developed a widely used instrument to identify effective and
ineffective leadership styles. VandeWalle’s predictions based on his implicit theory
model mapped out almost exactly with the leadership styles found by the consulting firm.
“Their instrument, however, did not have predictive capabilities,” Vandewalle
commented. “The instrument could assess who has these leadership styles, but is not able
to predict who is likely to have them before a selection is made of a future candidate.
In his current research development phase, VandeWalle is fleshing out the pieces of the
implicit theory leadership model with his colleague Peter Heslin, Assistant Professor of
Management and Organizations. The collaboration with Heslin has been quite productive
as he did his dissertation at the University of Toronto on implicit theories. The work to be
done will have implications for leadership development, selection, employee
development, and career development. Developing intervention strategies to promote
more productive implicit theory orientations is also being studied.
VandeWalle areas of expertise include: employee motivation and selection, executive
development, leadership, organizational behavior and change, and research methods. He
received his doctorate in Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management from
Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He holds an MBA from
the University of Kansas and a BA in Communications and Business/Economics.