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

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.