Locke Goal Setting Theory

No taxicabs on a rainy day in New York are a common display. However this is not due to a shortage of supply, this actually relates to a 1997 study of NYC cabdrivers (Camerer et al., 1997). On rainy days, cabdrivers went home as soon as they had met their fare target, rather than working a little longer for additional income. This is an example of a goal set too low by managers, and shows one of the implications of setting goals for your employees, or in general trying to motivate them successfully. This theory, named goal setting theory is introduced by Locke, (1968) and can be found repeatedly in many other firms nowadays, it argues that ‘work motivation is influenced by goal difficulty, goal specificity, and knowledge of results’ (Buchanan, …show more content…
(Finkelstein et al,. 2009) demonstrates an example in which the theory will not work, namely for top managers. The ambiguity of the top management task (Mintzberg, 1973) weakens managerial expectations that effort will result in performance, since exogenous factors like the economy might influence a company’s performance. Moreover the marginal value of additional compensation for top managers already earning millions of dollars may not be that great. Still, a top manager would never decline a raise (due to managerial status) – yet the additional compensation will not necessarily be motivational. We can conclude that from an expectancy theory point of view, incentives may not yield the anticipated outcomes for top managers that they might for lower. Indicating another difficulty of applying motivational