IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v10y1985i1p61-73.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Robert E. Wood

    (Australian Graduate School of Management.)

  • Trevor C. Bailey

    (Australian Graduate School of Management.)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert E. Wood & Trevor C. Bailey, 1985. "Some Unanswered Questions about Goal Effects: A Recommended Change in Research Methods," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 10(1), pages 61-73, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:10:y:1985:i:1:p:61-73
    DOI: 10.1177/031289628501000105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/031289628501000105
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/031289628501000105?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tabernero, Carmen & Wood, Robert E., 1999. "Implicit Theories versus the Social Construal of Ability in Self-Regulation and Performance on a Complex Task," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 104-127, May.
    2. Vancouver, Jeffrey B. & Putka, Dan J., 2000. "Analyzing Goal-Striving Processes and a Test of the Generalizability of Perceptual Control Theory," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 334-362, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:10:y:1985:i:1:p:61-73. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.