Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

162 G ARY P. LATHAM
and persistence, can also have a cognitive benefit. It can influence the motivation to discover
ways to attain the goal (Seijts and Latham, 2005 ).
SUBPRINCIPLES
There are at least four subprinciples necessary for deriving the motivational benefi ts of
goal setting. The goal must be challenging and specific, feedback must be provided on
progress in relation to goal attainment, ways must be found to maintain goal commitment,
and resources must be provided for and obstacles removed to goal attainment.
Set challenging specific goals
The goal must be both challenging and specific. Given adequate ability and commitment
to the goal, the higher the goal the higher the performance. This is because people
normally adjust their level of effort to the difficulty of the goal. In addition to being
targets to attain, goals are the standards by which one judges one ’s adequacy or suc cess.
Challenging goals facilitate pride in accomplishment. People with low goals are mini ­
mally satisfied with low performance attainment, and become increasingly satisfi ed with
every level of attainment that exceeds their goal. This is also true for individuals with a
high goal. To be minimally satisfied, they must accomplish more than those who have
a low goal. Consequently, they set a high goal to attain before they will be satisfi ed with
their accomplishment. In short, to be satisfied, employees with high standards must accomplish
more than those with low standards. In addition, an employee ’s outcome expectancies
are typically higher for the attainment of high rather than low goals because the
outcome one can expect from attaining a challenging goal usually includes such factors
as an increase in feelings of self - efficacy, personal effectiveness, recognition from peers, a
salary increase, a job promotion, etc. As a result people, in most instances, readily commit to
a high goal if they believe they have the ability to attain it.
Goal specificity facilitates an employee ’s focus in that it makes explicit what it is the
individual should choose to do or try to accomplish. If the goal specifies A, then B and
C will be downplayed. Specificity also facilitates measurement or feedback on progress
toward goal attainment. A drawback of an abstract goal such as “ do your best ” is that
it allows people to give themselves the benefit of the doubt concerning the adequacy of
their performance (Kernan and Lord, 1988). Thus their maximum effort is not aroused.
For feedback to be used intelligently, it must be interpreted in relation to a specifi c goal.
Goal specifi city clarifi es for employees what constitutes effective performance.
For goal setting to be maximally effective, the goal and the measure of performance
effectiveness used must be aligned. Thus, if a logging crew wants to increase productivity
by 15%, the performance measure must be the number of trees cut down divided by
the hours worked. If the director of an organization’s RandD division wishes to increase
line managers ’ satisfaction with the unit, the goal set can be a specific increase in the frequency
of behaviors emitted that have been identified through job analysis as necessary
for line management ’s satisfaction. Goals and the measures of their attainment that have
appeared in the scientific literature include physical effort, quantity and quality measures
of production, costs, profi ts, and job behaviors.