Goal Setting Theory

 

You have heard the sentiment a number of times yourself: “Just do your best. That is all anyone can ask for.” But what does “do your best” mean? Might you have done better in your high school English class if your parents said, “You should strive for 85 percent or higher on all your work in English” rather than telling you to “do your best”? The research on goal-setting theory addresses these issues.

 

In the late 1960s, Edwin Locke proposed that intentions to work toward a goal are a major source of work motivation. We can say that specific goals increase performance, that difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy goals, and that feedback leads to higher performance than does nonfeedback.

 

But why are people motivated by difficult goals? First, challenging goals get our attention and thus help us focus. Second, difficult goals energize us because we have to work harder to attain them. Do you study as hard for an easy exam as you do for a difficult one?. Probably not. Third, when goals are difficult, people persist in trying to attain them. Finally, difficult goals lead us to discover strategies that help us perform the job or task more effectively. If we have to struggle to solve a difficult problem, we often think of a better way to go about it.

 

People do better when they get feedback on how well they are progressing toward their goals, because feedback helps to identify discrepancies between what they have done and what they want to do - that is, feedback acts to guide behavior. But all feedback is not equally potent. Self-generated feedback - with which employees are able to monitor their own progress - has been shown to be a more powerful motivator than externally generated feedback.

 

Are there any contingencies in goal-setting theory, or will difficult and specific goals always lead to a higher performance? In addition to feedback, three other factors have been found to influence the goals-performance relationship: goal commitment, task characteristics, and national culture.

 

In terms of behavior, the individual believes he or she can achieve the goal and wants to achieve it. Goal commitment is most likely to occur when when goals are made public, when the individual has an internal locus of control, and when the goals are self-set rather than assigned.

 

Goal-setting theory doesn´t work equally well on all tasks. The evidence suggests goals seem to have a more substantial effect on performance when tasks are simple rather than complex, well learned rather than novel, and independent rather than interdependent. 

 

Finally, setting setting specific, difficult, individual goals may have different effects in different cultures. To date, research has not shown that group-based goals are more effective in collectivist than individualist cultures.

 

Although goal setting has positive outcomes, some goals may be too effective. When learning something is important, goals related to performance undermine adaptation and creativity because people become too focused on outcomes and ignore changing conditions.

 

Implementing Goal Setting

Goal-setting theory has an impressive base of research support. But as manager, how do you make it operational? That´s often left up to the individual manager or leader.

 

Management by objectives (MBO) emphasizes participatively set goals that are tangible, verifiable, and measurable.The organization´s overall objectives are translated into specific objectives for each succeeding level in the organization (divisional, departmental, individual). But because lower-unit managers jointly participate in setting their own goals, MBO works from the bottom-up as well as from top-down. The result is hierarchy that links objectives at one level to those at the next. And for the individual employees, MBO provides specific personal performance objectives.