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The Significance of Task Significance: Job Performance Effects, Relational
Mechanisms, and Boundary Conditions
Adam M. Grant
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Does task significance increase job performance? Correlational designs and confounded manipulations
have prevented researchers from assessing the causal impact of task significance on job performance. To
address this gap, 3 field experiments examined the performance effects, relational mechanisms, and
boundary conditions of task significance. In Experiment 1, fundraising callers who received a task
significance intervention increased their levels of job performance relative to callers in 2 other conditions
and to their own prior performance. In Experiment 2, task significance increased the job dedication and
helping behavior of lifeguards, and these effects were mediated by increases in perceptions of social
impact and social worth. In Experiment 3, conscientiousness and prosocial values moderated the effects
of task significance on the performance of new fundraising callers. The results provide fresh insights into
the effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions of task significance, offering noteworthy
implications for theory, research, and practice on job design, social information processing, and work
motivation and performance.
Keywords: task significance, job design, work motivation, prosocial impact, job performance
Increasing job performance is among the most theoretically and
practically important problems in organizational research (Staw,
1984). Scholars have long recognized that job performance de-
pends heavily on how employees perceive their jobs (e.g., Herz-
berg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959; Turner & Lawrence, 1965).
Building on this core insight, extensive theory and research has
focused on increasing job performance by changing employees’
job perceptions. Scholars have often argued that job performance
can be enhanced through the cultivation of perceptions of task
significance—judgments that one’s job has a positive impact on
other people (Hackman & Oldham, 1976; Morgeson & Humphrey,
2006). Task significance is thought to be particularly critical in
today’s economy, as employees are increasingly concerned with
doing work that benefits other people and contributes to society
(e.g., Colby, Sippola, & Phelps, 2001; Turban & Greening, 1997)
and as organizations are increasingly concerned with providing
employees with these opportunities (e.g., Brickson, 2005; Thomp-
son & Bunderson, 2003).
Although task significance is assumed to increase job perfor-
mance by enabling employees to experience their work as more
meaningful, scholars have not yet established a clear causal link
between task significance and job performance. As Dodd and
Ganster (1996) summarized, task significance is one of two job
characteristics that “have seldom emerged as strong predictors of
outcomes” (p. 331). The two major meta-analyses of the job design
literature show weak relationships between task significance and
objective and subjective measures of job performance (Fried &
Ferris, 1987; Humphrey, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007). Studies
that have observed a relationship between task significance and job
performance suffer from at least two major limitations. First, the
majority of studies have relied on cross-sectional designs, failing
to rule out the possibility that task significance is a consequence,
not a cause, of job performance (e.g., Mathieu, Hofmann, & Farr,
1993). Second, the comparatively few experimental studies con-
ducted have manipulated task significance simultaneously with
other job characteristics and social cues (e.g., Griffin, Bateman,
Wayne, & Head, 1987; Morgeson & Campion, 2002; White &
Mitchell, 1979), failing to isolate task significance as an active
ingredient responsible for increases in job performance (Dodd &
Ganster, 1996; Parker & Wall, 1998).
The purpose of this article is to address this unanswered ques-
tion about the causal effects of task significance on job perfor-
mance and elaborate existing knowledge about how and when
these effects are likely to occur. I report three field experiments
that examine the effects, mechanisms, and boundary conditions of
task significance. The results show convergent support for the
causal effects of task significance on job performance and provide
novel insights into the relational mechanisms and boundary con-
ditions for these effects. I discuss the implications of these results
Adam M. Grant, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the
American Psychological Association Early Research Award, and the So-
ciety for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Lee Hakel Scholarship
provided valuable financial support for the preparation of this article. For
constructive feedback on drafts of this article, I am grateful to Sue Ashford,
Rick Bagozzi, Jane Dutton, Fiona Lee, Andy Molinsky, Sara Rynes, Scott
Sonenshein, Allison Grant, Kathryn Dekas, and members of the Impact
Lab. For assistance with data collection and entry, I thank Kelly Alexander,
Justin Berg, Jenny Deveau, Jamie Freese, Emily Kidston, Priya Raghavan,
and Justine Silver.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Adam M.
Grant, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Strategy,
Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina, Campus
Box 3490, McColl Building, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3490. E-mail:
agrant@unc.edu
Journal of Applied Psychology Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association
2008, Vol. 93, No. 1, 108–124 0021-9010/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.108
108
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