Some Unanswered Questions about Goal Effects: A Recommended Change in Research Methods

Robert E. Wood and Trevor C. Bailey
Additional contact information
Robert E. Wood: Australian Graduate School of Management.
Trevor C. Bailey: Australian Graduate School of Management.

Australian Journal of Management, 1985, vol. 10, issue 1, 61-73

Abstract: Goal setting has been described to managers as a “motivational technique that works†(Locke and Latham, 1984), despite a lack of theoretical explanations in the organisational behaviour literature about why, how or when it works. Recent advances have been made in the development of goal effects theory which attempt to deal with these issues (e.g. Locke et al., 1981; Naylor and Ilgen, 1984). This paper complements those theoretical developments through a discussion of how existing laboratory and field studies have tended to overlook learning, task and chronic effects in the study of goal effects. The pros and cons of using a research game for the study of goal effects are discussed and a research game which has been developed to study goal, feedback and task effects on individual performance is described.

Keywords: GOALS; TASK COMPLEXITY; METHODS; RESEARCH GAME (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1985
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/031289628501000105 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ausman:v:10:y:1985:i:1:p:61-73

DOI: 10.1177/031289628501000105

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Australian Journal of Management from Australian School of Business
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().