Effects of Regulatory Modes on work performance: the moderating role of job complexity and familiarity.

This research investigated how job’s familiarity and complexity interact with employees’ Regulatory Modes (Higgins, Kruglanski, & Pierro, 2003; Kruglanski et al., 2000) in determining work performance. Participants’ (N= 298; age=31.87 years; SD=8.14) locomotion and assessment tendencies were measured, and they were asked to rate complexity, experience and familiarity related to their daily work tasks and their job performance over the last year. The aim of the study was to analyze the moderating role of both familiarity and complexity on job performance through a multiple regression model. Results showed that in the condition of low familiarity with and high complexity of job tasks, high locomotion and high assessment are both needed to perform best, according to the “Complementarity hypothesis” (Kruglanski et al., 2013). Moreover, in case of low complexity task, the self-rated best performance was shown by employees high in locomotion and low in assessment. On the other side, for high familiarity with the task, its complexity level doesn’t matter, since high locomotion alone lead to the best performance. Implications for work performance and goal pursuit are discussed.