What specific types of goals produce the best results and increased levels of performance?

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is the most well known theory of motivation. He hypothesized that within every human being there exists a hierarchy of five needs. These begin with Physiological needs that include hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs. The second level is Safety needs that include security and protection from physical and emotional harm. The next level is Social needs and it includes affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship. Reaching a higher level we find Esteem needs that includes internal esteem factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement; and external esteem factors such as status, recognition, and attention. At the top of the hierarchy is Self-actualization needs. This is the drive to become what one is capable of becoming; includes growth, achieving one's potential, and self-fulfillment.

As a need becomes substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant. No need is ever fully gratified; a substantially satisfied need no longer motivates.

The Two-Factor Theory is sometimes also called motivation-hygiene theory. Proposed by psychologist Frederick Herzberg when he investigated the question, "What do people want from their jobs?" He asked people to describe, in detail, situations in which they felt exceptionally good or bad about their jobs. These responses were then tabulated and categorized. From the categorized responses, Herzberg concluded that Intrinsic factors, such as advancement, recognition, responsibility, and achievement seem to be related to job satisfaction. Dissatisfied respondents tended to cite extrinsic factors, such as supervision, pay, company policies, and working conditions. The opposite of satisfaction is not dissatisfaction. Removing dissatisfying characteristics from a job does not necessarily make the job satisfying. Job satisfaction factors are separate and distinct from job dissatisfaction factors.

Managers who eliminate job dissatisfaction factors may not necessarily bring about motivation. Please look at Exhibit 7-3. It reveals that when hygiene factors are adequate, people will not be dissatisfied. Neither will they be satisfied. To motivate people, managers must emphasize factors intrinsically rewarding that are associated with the work itself or to outcomes directly derived from it.

which considers how strongly peoples' reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with their interests and core values. If individuals pursue goals because of an intrinsic interest, they are more likely to attain their goals and are happy even if they do not. The process of striving toward them is fun. In contrast, people who pursue goals for extrinsic reasons (money, status, or other benefits) are less likely to attain their goals and less happy even when they do. Because the goals are less meaningful to them. OB research suggests that people who pursue work goals for intrinsic reasons are more satisfied with their jobs, feel they fit into their organizations better, and may perform better.

The Implications for extrinsic and intrinsic rewards can be summed up. First, for individuals, it means to choose your job for reasons other than extrinsic rewards. For organizations, it means managers should provide intrinsic as well as extrinsic incentives. They need to make the work interesting, provide recognition, and support employee growth and development. Employees who feel what they do is within their control and a result of free choice are likely to be more motivated by their work and committed to their employers.

In the late 1960s, Edwin Locke proposed that intentions to work toward a goal are a major source of work motivation. Goals tell an employee what needs to be done and how much effort is needed. Evidence strongly suggests 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. Specific hard goals produce a higher level of output than do the generalized goals. If factors like ability and acceptance of the goals are held constant, we can also state that the more difficult the goal, the higher the level of performance.

Why are people motivated by difficult goals? Challenging goals get our attention and thus tend to help us focus. Difficult goals energize us because we have to work harder to attain them. When goals are difficult, people persist in trying to attain them. Difficult goals lead us to discover strategies that help us perform the job or task more effectively. People will do better when they get feedback on how well they are progressing toward their goals. Self-generated feedback is more powerful a motivator than externally generated feedback. The evidence is mixed regarding the superiority of participative over assigned goals. If employees have the opportunity to participate in the setting of their own goals, will they try harder? A major advantage of participation may be in increasing acceptance. If people participate in goal setting, they are more likely to accept even a difficult goal than if they are arbitrarily assigned it by their boss. Evidence strongly suggests 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. If participation isn't used, then the individual assigning the goal needs to clearly explain its purpose and importance.

In addition to feedback, three other factors influence the goals-performance relationship, goal commitment, task characteristics, and national culture.

Goal-setting theory presupposes that an individual is committed to the goal. He or she believes they can achieve the goal and They want to achieve it. Goal commitment is most likely to occur when goals are made public, when the individual has an internal locus of control, and when the goals are self-set rather than assigned.

Goals themselves seem to affect performance more strongly when tasks are simple rather than complex, well learned rather than novel, and independent rather than interdependent. On interdependent tasks, group goals are preferable.

National culture. Goal-setting theory is culture bound and it is well adapted to North American cultures, where individual achievement and performance are most highly valued. To date, research has not shown that group-based goals are more effective in collectivists than in individualist cultures. In collectivistic and high-power-distance cultures, achievable moderate goals can be more highly motivating than difficult ones. Finally, assigned goals appear to generate greater goal commitment in high than in low power-distance cultures. More research is needed to assess how goal constructs might differ across cultures.

First, training programs often make use of enactive mastery by having people practice and build their skills. In fact, one reason training works is that it increases self-efficacy. Individuals with higher levels of self-efficacy also appear to reap more benefits from training programs and are more likely to use their training on the job. The best way for a manager to use verbal persuasion is through the Pygmalion effect or the Galatea effect.

As discussed in Chapter 5, the Pygmalion effect is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy in which believing something can make it true. In some studies, teachers were told their students had very high IQ scores when in fact they spanned a range from high to low. Consistent with the Pygmalion effect, the teachers spent more time with the students they thought were smart, gave them more challenging assignments, and expected more of them—all of which led to higher student self-efficacy and better grades. This strategy also has been used in the workplace. Sailors who were told convincingly that they would not get seasick were in fact much less likely to do so. Intelligence and personality are absent from Bandura's list, but they can increase self-efficacy. People who are intelligent, conscientiousness, and emotionally stable are so much more likely to have high self-efficacy that some researchers argue self-efficacy is less important than prior research would suggest. They believe it is partially a by-product in a smart person with a confident personality. Although Bandura strongly disagrees with this conclusion, more research is needed.

Goal-setting is a cognitive approach, proposing that an individual's purposes direct his action. Reinforcement theory, in contrast, takes a behavioristic view, arguing that reinforcement conditions behavior. The two theories are clearly at odds philosophically. Reinforcement theorists see behavior as environmentally caused. You need not be concerned, they would argue, with internal cognitive events, that is, what controls behavior are reinforcers. Any consequences that, when immediately following responses, increase the probability that the behavior will be repeated.

But organizational justice draws a bigger picture. Exhibit 7-7 shows a model of organizational justice. Employees perceive their organizations as just when they believe rewards and the way they are distributed are fair. In general, people see allocations or procedure favoring themselves as fair. Few people really make mathematical calculations of their inputs relative to the outcomes of others. They base distributive judgments on a feeling or an emotional reaction to how they think they are treated relative to others, and their reactions are often emotional as well. Our discussion has also focused on reactions to personal mistreatment. People react emotionally to injustices committed against others, prompting them to take retributive actions. The other key element of organizational justice is the view that justice is multidimensional. How much we get paid relative to what we think we should be paid (distributive justice) is obviously important. But, according to researchers, how we get paid is just as important. Thus the model of organizational justice includes procedural justice—the perceived fairness used to determine the distribution of rewards. Two key elements of procedural justice are process control and explanations. Process control is the opportunity to present your point of view about desired outcomes to decision makers. Explanations are clear reasons management gives for the outcome. Thus, for employees to see a process as fair, they need to feel they have some control over the outcome and that they were given an adequate explanation about why the outcome occurred. It's also important that a manager is consistent (across people and over time), is unbiased, makes decisions based on information, and is open to appeals. The effects of procedural justice become more important when distributive justice is lacking. If we don't get what we want, we tend to focus on why. If your supervisor gives a cushy office to a co-worker instead of to you, you're much more focused on your supervisor's treatment of you than if you had gotten the office. Explanations are beneficial when they take the form of post hoc excuses ("I know this is bad, and I wanted to give you the office, but it wasn't my decision") rather than justifications ("I decided to give the office to Sam, but having it isn't a big deal."). Interactional justice describes an individual's perception of the degree to which she is treated with dignity, concern, and respect. When people are treated in an unjust manner (at least in their own eyes), they retaliate (for example, badmouthing a supervisor). Because people intimately connect interactional justice or injustice to the conveyer of the information, we would expect perceptions of injustice to be more closely related to the supervisor. Of these three forms of justice, Distributive justice is most strongly related to organizational commitment and satisfaction with outcomes such as pay. Procedural justice relates most strongly to job satisfaction, employee trust, withdrawal from the organization, job performance, and citizenship behaviors. There is less evidence about interactional justice.

The Model in Exhibit 7-9 integrates much of what we know about motivation. Its basic foundation is the expectancy model. Expectancy theory predicts that an employee will exert a high level of effort if he/she perceives that there is a strong relationship between effort and performance, performance and rewards, and rewards and satisfaction of personal goals. Each of these relationships, in turn, is influenced by certain factors. For effort to lead to good performance, the individual must have the requisite ability to perform, and the performance appraisal system must be perceived as being fair and objective. The final link in expectancy theory is the rewards-goals relationship. The model considers the achievement, need, reinforcement, and equity/organizational justice theories. High achievers are internally driven as long as the jobs they are doing provide them with personal responsibility, feedback, and moderate risks. Reinforcement theory recognizes that the organization's rewards reinforce the individual's performance. Individuals will compare the rewards (outcomes) they receive from the inputs they make with the outcome-input ratio of relevant others and inequities may influence the effort expended.

Here, we review the most established to determine their relevance in explaining turnover, productivity, and other outcomes, and assess the predictive power of each. We looked at Need Theories such as Maslow's hierarchy, McClelland's needs, and the two-factor theory focus on needs. None has found widespread support, although McClelland's is the strongest, particularly regarding the relationship between achievement and productivity. In general, need theories are not very valid explanations of motivation. We focused on Self-Determination Theory and Cognitive Evaluation Theory. As research on the motivational effects of rewards has accumulated, it increasingly appears extrinsic rewards can undermine motivation if they are seen as coercive. They can increase motivation if they provide information about competence and relatedness. We looked at Goal-Setting Theory. Clear and difficult goals lead to higher levels of employee productivity, supporting goal-setting theory's explanation of this dependent variable. The theory does not address absenteeism, turnover, or satisfaction, however. Reinforcement Theory was next one the list. This theory has an impressive record for predicting quality and quantity of work, persistence of effort, absenteeism, tardiness, and accident rates. It does not offer much insight into employee satisfaction or the decision to quit. We went over Equity Theory/Organizational Justice. Equity theory deals with productivity, satisfaction, absence, and turnover variables. However, its strongest legacy is that it provided the spark for research on organizational justice, which has more support in the literature. And we closed with Expectancy Theory. Expectancy theory offers a powerful explanation of performance variables such as employee productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. But it assumes employees have few constraints on decision-making, such as bias or incomplete information, and this limits its applicability. Expectancy theory has some validity because for many behaviors people consider expected outcomes.

What are the 3 types of goals?

What are the types of goals?

What are performance goals?

Which theory says that specific and difficult goals with feedback lead to higher performance?