Goal Setting involve setting a clear
objective and ensuring that every participant is
clearly aware of what is expected from him or her,
if this objective is to be achieved. This has a
couple of advantages in that, assuming that the goal
is reasonably challenging, all participant will have
to put a substantial effort to achieve that goal.
Second, because every member is aware of what is
expected of him or her (high role perception),
little room is left of inadequate effort going
unnoticed. Management by objectives is another name
for goal setting. Note, the goal has to be
reasonable, setting a goal to go to Mars (planet) on
a shoe string budget and very tight schedule may not
improve intensity and persistence from employees and
may actually achieve the opposite. One drawback of
goal setting is that implicit learning is impended.
This is because it encourages short term gain
without intimately understanding the work process.
i.e. you may end up with zombie like employees.
“Goals provide a sense of direction and purpose” (Goldstein, 1993, p.96). Locke et al. (1981) examined the behavioural effects of goal-setting, concluding that 90% of laboratory and field studies involving specific and challenging goals led to higher performance than easy or no goals.