Effects of training in procedural justice on perceptions of disciplinary fairness by unionized employees and disciplinary subject matter experts.

A training program, based on procedural justice theory, was developed for teaching supervisors to take effective disciplinary action with employees. Canadian supervisors of unionized employees were randomly assigned to the training (n = 35) or the control group (n = 36). Analyses of variance revealed that both supervisory self-efficacy and outcome expectancies were significantly higher in the training than in the control conditions. Following simulated role-play exercises derived from organizational incidents, both unionized employees and disciplinary subject matter experts (managers, union officials, and attorneys) rated the trained supervisors higher on disciplinary fairness behavior than the supervisors in the control group. Self-efficacy was found to mediate the relationship between training and perceptions of disciplinary fairness.

Goal setting as a strategy for health behavior change.

This article discusses the beneficial effects of setting goals in health behavior change and maintenance interventions. Goal setting theory predicts that, under certain conditions, setting specific difficult goals leads to higher performance when compared with no goals or vague, nonquantitative goals, such as "do your best." In contrast to the graduated, easy goals often set in health behavior change programs, goal setting theory asserts a positive linear relationship between degree of goal difficulty and level of performance. Research on goal setting has typically been conducted in organizational and laboratory settings. Although goal setting procedures are used in many health behavior change programs, they rarely have been the focus of systematic research. Therefore, many research questions still need to be answered regarding goal setting in the context of health behavior change. Finally, initial recommendations for the successful integration of goal setting theory in health behavior change programs are offered.