Before a big assignment or major class project presentation, has a teacher ever encouraged you to “Just do your best”? What does that vague statement “do your best” mean? Would your performance on a class project have been higher had that teacher said you needed to score a 93 percent to keep your A in the class? Research on goal-setting theory addresses these issues, and the findings, as you’ll see, are impressive in terms of the effect that goal specificity, challenge, and feedback have on performance.19

Substantial research support has been established for goal-setting theory, which says that specific goals increase performance and that difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy goals. What does goal-setting theory tell us?

1. Working toward a goal is a major source of job motivation. Studies on goal setting have demonstrated that specific and challenging goals are superior motivating forces.20 Such goals produce a higher output than does the generalized goal of “do your best.” The specificity of the goal itself acts as an internal stimulus. For instance, when a sales rep commits to making eight sales calls daily, this intention gives him a specific goal to try to attain.

2. Will employees try harder if they have the opportunity to participate in the setting of goals? Not always. In some cases, participatively set goals elicit superior performance; in other cases, individuals performed best when their manager assigned goals. However, participation is probably preferable to assigning goals when employees might resist accepting difficult challenges.21

3. We know that people will do better if they get feedback on how well they’re progressing toward their goals because feedback helps identify discrepancies between what they’ve done and what they want to do. But all feedback isn’t equally effective. Self-generated feedback—where an employee monitors his or her own progress—has been shown to be a more powerful motivator than feedback coming from someone else.22

Three other contingencies besides feedback influence the goal-performance relationship: goal commitment, adequate self-efficacy, and national culture.

1. First, goal-setting theory assumes that an individual is committed to the goal. Commitment is most likely when goals are made public, when the individual has an internal locus of control, and when the goals are self-set rather than assigned.23

2. Next, self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task.24 The higher your self-efficacy, the more confidence you have in your ability to succeed in a task. So, in difficult situations, we find that people with low self-efficacy are likely to reduce their effort or give up altogether, whereas those with high self-efficacy will try harder to master the challenge.25 In addition, individuals with high self-efficacy seem to respond to negative feedback with increased effort and motivation, whereas those with low self-efficacy are likely to reduce their effort when given negative feedback.26

3. Finally, the value of goal-setting theory depends on the national culture. It’s well adapted to North American countries because its main ideas align reasonably well with those cultures. It assumes that subordinates will be reasonably independent (not a high score on power distance), that people will seek challenging goals (low in uncertainty avoidance), and that performance is considered important by both managers and subordinates (high in assertiveness). Don’t expect goal setting to lead to higher employee performance in countries where the cultural characteristics aren’t like this.

Exhibit 12–4 summarizes the relationships among goals, motivation, and performance. Our overall conclusion: The intention to work toward hard and specific goals is a powerful motivating force. Under the proper conditions, it can lead to higher performance. However, there’s no evidence that such goals are associated with increased job satisfaction.27

Exhibit 12–4

Goal-Setting Theory