What is Goal Setting Theory?
In the later 1960s, Dr Edwin Locke’s article on “Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives”, stated that clear goals and appropriate feedback motivates employees. He also went on to say that when employees worked towards a goal, it spearheaded a major source of motivation within the employees to actually reach the goal. As a result, the final performance of the employee improves. Locke’s study also threw light on the relationship between goals and performance. According to his study, specific and difficult goals conduced to better results and performance as compared to vague, randomly set or easy to do goals. After a few years, another researcher, Dr Gary Latham also started conducting research in the same field and in 1990, both Locke and Latham published their combined work in a book, which reinforced the need to specify goals correctly in order to achieve better results. In simple terms what they were trying to say in the book is that if you tell yourself, ‘I want to lose 50
