Aiming and Adapting: How Multiple Goals and Adaptive Capabilities Affect Competitive Performance

Abstract

How effective are multiple organizational goals and how do firm adaptive capabilities influence their effectiveness? We suggest that a firm’s set (repertoire) of multiple goals can vary in intensity and focus, culminating in a different pattern. Building on the organizational goal-setting and strategy literatures, we hypothesize that goal repertoire intensity and focus have important performance consequences and that firm’s adaptive capabilities moderate these relationships in different ways. Hypotheses are tested via multi-country survey data from top executives from 203 firms operating in different industries. Findings show that performance benefits from goal repertoire intensity but diminishes with goal repertoire focus. Increasing levels of adaptive capability enhance the performance benefits of repertoire intensity but degrade performance when repertoire focus is high. This research contributes to the goal-setting literature by providing insight into performance effects of patterns of multiple goals when firms vary in adaptive capability.