Goal setting procedure is a self-regulation key process which allows individuals to evaluate their behaviors and perform the necessary adjustments in order to deal with the discrepancy between actual outputs and desired outcomes. In the last decades this process has been presented as essential to reinforce individual motivation and to improve organizational performance. However, some researchers suggested that high challenging goals could actually constrain the individual ability to recognize moral issues and, because that, incite unethical behaviors. The results of the present study, done with undergraduate students (N=84), show that the presence of financial incentives combined with the absence of external control and high performance goals tend to diminish the ethical quality of individual’s behavior. We discuss the practical implications of these results for preventing unethical behaviours as well as reinforce formal mechanisms which penalize these unethical behaviors.

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Goal setting, external control, individual ethics.