Goal Setting in Business
In business, goal setting encourages participants to put in substantial effort. Also, because every member has defined expectations for their role, little room is left for inadequate effort to go unnoticed.
Managers cannot constantly drive motivation, or keep track of an employee’s work on a continuous basis. Goals are therefore an important tool for managers, since goals have the ability to function as a self-regulatory mechanism that acquires an employee a certain amount of guidance Shalley, 1995 and Locke and Latham (2002) have distilled four mechanisms through which goal setting can affect individual performance:
- Goals focus attention toward goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant activities.
- Goals serve as an energizer: Higher goals induce greater effort, while low goals induce lesser effort.
- Goals affect persistence; constraints with regard to resources affect work pace.
- Goals activate cognitive knowledge and strategies that help employees cope with the situation at hand.
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