Decision-making in a dynamic task: effects of goal orientation on stocks and flows performance

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the effects of goal orientation on understanding the dynamics of stocks and flows (SF).Design/methodology/approachThe authors use the well-established department store task as the experimental task to evaluate people’s understanding of SF and implement a survey to assess different goal orientation levels. Ordinary least square is used to test the effects of goal orientations on the SF performance.FindingsThe findings suggest that learning goal orientation is positively associated with SF performance. However, prove and avoid performance goal orientation are unrelated to SF performance.Originality/valueThe study has important theoretical and practical contributions. From a theoretical perspective, the authors examine the impact of goal orientation in dynamic decision-making to advance the knowledge on the role of goal orientation. Practically, the research demonstrates that learning-goal-oriented people perform better in stock and flow tasks, suggesting that goal orientation is an important trait for recruiting organizational members whose work involves SF decision-making tasks.