ABSTRACTIn three experiments, I investigate how supervisors’ task performance in lower-level jobs prior to being promoted to the supervisory level influences the targets they set for employees. I propose that supervisors show an “experience bias” by which they overemphasize their own experiences when setting targets for employees. As such, supervisors who achieved high performance before being promoted set higher targets than low-performing supervisors, despite having the same information about the employee’s potential. In line with my prediction, I find that supervisors exhibit this bias if they have worked on the employees’ task but that this bias is absent when they previously did a different task. I also show that this bias comes from a limited awareness that own experiences are not generalizable and it likely prevails in many managerial situations. The biased targets also lead to negative employee reactions. This study contributes to the understanding of supervisor target setting.

中文翻译：

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主管先前的任务绩效对员工目标的影响


摘要在三个实验中，我研究了主管在晋升到主管级别之前在较低级别工作中的任务绩效如何影响他们为员工设定的目标。我建议主管表现出“经验偏见”，在为员工设定目标时过分强调自己的经验。因此，尽管对员工潜力的信息相同，但在晋升前取得高绩效的主管比绩效低的主管设定了更高的目标。根据我的预测，我发现如果主管曾处理过员工的任务，他们就会表现出这种偏见，但当他们以前做过不同的任务时，这种偏见就不存在。我还表明，这种偏见来自于一种有限的认识，即自己的经验不可概括，并且在许多管理情况下很可能普遍存在。有偏见的目标也会导致员工的负面反应。这项研究有助于理解主管目标设定。