Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

168 G ARY P. LATHAM
worst enemy. Millman and Latham ( 2001 ) trained displaced managers to systematically
monitor their self - talk to exclude negative comments and increase positive ones with
respect to job attainment. Within nine months, 48% of the people who were trained
obtained a job that paid $ 10,000 of their previous job; only one person of eight in the
control group was able to do so. The self - efficacy of the participants in the group who
were trained in functional self - talk was significantly higher than those in the control group.
Similar results have been obtained for Aboriginals in Canada (Latham and Budworth,
2006). Training in VSG also turned highly competitive MBA students into team players
(Latham and Brown, 2006 ).
The order in which these two steps, outcome expectancies and self - effi cacy, should be
implemented varies by individual. If outcome expectancies are already high, this step may
be skipped. Focus immediately on ways of increasing self - efficacy if the person lacks confi
dence that the goal is attainable.
Provide resources needed to attain the goal
Goals are unlikely to be attained if situational constraints blocking their attainment are
not removed. Thus the organization needs to ensure that the time, money, people, and
equipment necessary for goal attainment exist. Most importantly the measurement system
must not only allow accurate tracking of goal progress, it must be aligned with and be
supportive of goal attainment.
For example, a newly hired professor may set a goal to receive a mean score of 5 or
higher on a 7 - point scale of teaching effectiveness rated by students. If the measurement
system for promotion and tenure focuses primarily on publications in mainstream academic
journals, and resources are provided primarily for conducting research, commitment
to this teaching goal may quickly wane.
Arguably, among the most important resources necessary for accruing the positive
benefits of goal setting is the employee ’s ability. Organizations must provide the necessary
training to give people the knowledge and skill to attain the goal. This is because the
relation of goal difficulty to performance is curvilinear. Performance levels off after
the limit of ability has been reached (Locke, Fredrick, Buckner, and Bobko, 1984 ).
Learning vs performance goals
Consistent with the above findings regarding an individual ’s ability are studies by Earley,
Connolly, and Ekegren ( 1989 ) as well as Kanfer and Ackerman ( 1989 ). They found that
when people lack the requisite knowledge to master a task, because they are in the early
stages of learning, urging them to do their best results in higher performance than setting
a specifi c difficult goal. The reasons are at least three - fold (Latham, Seijts, and Crim,
2008). First, such tasks are complex for people. Thus the direct goal mechanisms of
effort, persistence, and choice are no longer sufficient to ensure high performance. This
is because people have yet to learn the correct strategy for performing effectively. Second,
such tasks require primarily learning rather than motivation. People have no problem ­
solving processes for these tasks to draw upon. Third, people with specific high goals feel
pressure to perform well immediately. As a result, they focus more on their desire to get