But the story did not end there. Pdm might yet be beneficial in a non-motivational way—through cognition. This hypothesis originated in part from Latham observing quality circles at Weyerhaeuser where the objective is to generate ways to ‘‘work smarter rather than harder.’’ Consequently, Latham, Winters, and Locke (1994) randomly assigned people to an assigned or a participative goal condition in which people worked in a group (pdm) or alone on a task that was complex for them. No main effect was obtained for goal setting as the two conditions were yoked. But, there was a main effect for decision making with performance significantly higher in the pdm than in the individual decision making condition. The pdm subjects gave each other useful task strategy information. This main effect of pdm on performance was completely mediated by self-efficacy and task strategy.