Locke’s Goal Setting Theory Application to IT Industry
The foundation of
modern-goal setting which is having a momentous impact to management of a
workforce today was set by Locke’s goal setting theory (Lunenburg, 2011). The
theory can be considered as the blueprint of motivation for the modern
workplace as goal setting theory makes the employee engagement, goals and
productivity to relate to each other with actionable and clear goals (Seijts et al.,
2004). The effect on the subsequent performance is greater, after
setting goals which are difficult but specific, and such goals makes the
individuals or teams to perform better than the easy general goals as described
by Mann,
Ridder and Fujita (2013).
Figure 1: Setting and reaching a goal
Figure 1: Setting and reaching a goal
Source:
Foster (2016)
Information technology industry which involves building state of the art technology solutions to every aspect of modern life, required the employees to perform productively to stay in business (Tohidi, 2011). There should be enough challenge to the knowledge workers in order to keep them motivated to strive for achieving the tasks (Hamid, Sengupta and Swett, 1999). Hence, it is essential to understand the applicability of Locke’s goal setting theory effectiveness in the aspect of information technology sector employees and management perspectives. The goal setting theory is defined with five main principals, which are described by Lunenburg (2011) as, goals should have a clarity, should be challenging goal, needs commitment to achieve, requires feedback and should consider the complexity of the goal.
Clarity
Clarity of a goal defines
it is clear, specific and measurable, to ensure the goal can have a timeline
set for completion (Hamid, Sengupta and Swett, 1999). The agile processes
followed in tech companies demand to setup clear achievable targets, by
defining user stories or requirements, as specific and achievable in a given
time scale defined as an agile sprint (Tohidi, 2011). A user story or requirement
should have a clear requirement definition, clear acceptance criteria and an
estimation for it defined, which satisfies the clarity, measurable and set for
a achieve in a specified timeline, catering the clarity aspect of the goal setting
theory.
Challenging
To motivate oneself to
strive to achieve a goal, the goal should have reasonable level of difficulty
as a challenging goal (Seijts et al., 2004). The work in information
technology industry is always challenging and the employees have to learn new
skills each and every day of their professional life. It is harder to find none
challenging repetitive routine tasks in an industry where innovation and
technology is utilized to the maximum level of possibility (Tohidi, 2011).
Therefore, the challenging aspect of a goal in a tech company is inevitable.
However, empowered team in modern agile practices in IT industry may set the
timelines to achieve a goal with ease (Tohidi, 2011). Hence, the industry is
practicing velocity measurement based on the past agile sprint achievements,
which is even visible to management, so that the teams are motivated to strive
to increase the velocity, as the team progresses with a given project.
Commitment
Commitment refers to the
deliberate effort put forward to achieve the goal and one should have shared
his/her goal to someone in order to have an accountability to reach the goal (Mann, Ridder and
Fujita, 2013). In the tech companies, the release timelines are
committed and to meet those deadlines the team is set with multiple cycles with
clearly specified sets of goals. In each small cycle generally known as an
agile sprint, set of stories or requirements are committed and declared before
the start of the sprint (Hamid, Sengupta and Swett, 1999). Therefore, the
accountability is assigned to the team to take necessary steps to complete the
set goals in a given sprint (Tohidi, 2011).
Feedback
Another vital factor to
achieve a goal is to have a mechanism to receive information on the progress, to
ensure the necessary adjustments can be made if required based on feedback and
progress, without giving up the goal entirely (Seijts et al., 2004). The
information technology companies mostly use tools to monitor the goals set for
a given sprint, or release cycle. These tools are providing insights on the
team progress and achievement of the set goals (Tohidi, 2011). There is a
practice of daily meetups within the teams where the members review the
progress and discuss any road blocks. Depending on the current progress and any
road blocks necessary adjustments can be made by the team, and the management
as the facilitator for the team. However, some tech companies who are still
following traditional approaches to review progress, of the projects only once in
couple of weeks, would suffer due to the inability to take corrective actions
on time (Tohidi,
2011).
Complexity
If the goal is too
complex and depending on the learning curve required, breaking down the goal
into achievable sub-goals is essential with realistic timescales (Mann, Ridder and
Fujita, 2013). Further, a goal should be smart as described by Seijts et al.,
2004, and they further mention that the smart defines, Specific, Measurable,
Achievable, Realistic and Timely goal. The complex
implementation requirements in information technology solutions are broken down
to couple of levels (Tohidi, 2011). The categorization of such solution
implementation starts from initiatives, epics and features. The required
feature implementations then broken down as goals, or user stories which can
achieved in a given timeline. Generally, as a practice to achieve a given story
or requirement, multiple sub tasks are defined. Such breakdown of work caters,
the Locke’s goal setting theory principal of consideration for complexity (Tohidi, 2011).
When there are unknowns, the spike or research items are defined by software
development teams to clear the
As an example, the Microsoft
founder Bill Gates has used goal setting to in building the giant tech
company. Using objective and key results
(OKR) was the strategy of goal setting followed in the Microsoft company which
made them the most widely used technology provider in the world home personal
computers and laptops (Liu, 2019). As per Bill Gates having only concrete
objective is not sufficient in getting the objective achieved, but one needs
have reachable goals defined for the objective and must have clear steps to
achieve (Mejia, 2018).
The success of Microsoft as a tech company is evident for how effectively goal
setting can be applied in human resources in a tech company.
Figure 2: Microsoft Revenue in Billion Dollars
Figure 2: Microsoft Revenue in Billion Dollars
Source:
Liu (2019)
Once employees have the knowledge and skills to perform tasks it is vital to set goals which are realistic to keep the employees motivated to achieve which maximize the productivity (Seijts et al., 2004). As per above application of goal setting theory, to keep the tech employees motivated and achieve the set project goals, information technology industry can be considered as an industry where the goal setting is utilized with modern tooling and practices unique to the tech companies, which helps the IT industry to succeed in providing the demanding innovative solution needs, by all other industries (Tohidi, 2011).
List of References
Foster, M. (2016)
7 Steps to Achieving Any Goal
in Life
[online Available at: < http://michelecfoster.com/7-steps-to-achieving-any-goal-in-life/>.].[Accessed
on 13th May 2020].
Hamid,
T.K. A., Sengupta, K and Swett, C. (1999) The Impact of Goals on Software
Project Management: An Experimental Investigation. Management Information Systems
Quarterly, 23(4), pp.531-555.
Liu, S. (2019)
Microsoft's annual revenue
worldwide, from FY 2002 to FY 2019 [online Available at:
< https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-revenue-since-2002/>.].[Accessed
on 24th May 2020].
Lunenburg,
F. C. (2011) Goal-Setting Theory of Motivation. International Journal of Management,
Business, and Administration,
15(1), pp.1-6.
Mann,
T., Ridder, D and Fujita, K. (2013) Self-Regulation of Health Behavior: Social
Psychological Approaches to Goal Setting and Goal Striving. Health Psychology, 32(5), pp.487-498.
Mejia, Z. (2018)
This simple method is used by
Bill Gates, Larry Page and even Bono to tackle their biggest goals
[online Available at: < https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/14/this-goal-setting-method-is-used-by-bill-gates-larry-page-and-bono.html>.].[Accessed
on 24th May 2020].
Seijts,
G. H., Latham, G. P., Tasa, K and Latham, B. W. (2004) Goal Setting and Goal
Orientation: An Integration of Two Different Yet Related Literatures. Academy of Management Journal, 47(2), pp.227-239.
Tohidi,
H. (2011) Teamwork productivity & effectiveness in an organization base on
rewards, leadership, training, goals, wage, size, motivation, measurement and
information technology.
Procedia
Computer Science, 3(1), pp.1137-1146.
I agree with you pushpa. Let me add some poit to this. organization members will work hard to reach challenging goals, they will only do so when the goals are within their capability. As goals become too difficult, performance suffers because organization members reject the goals as unreasonable and unattainable. A major factor in attainability of a goal is self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). This is an internal belief regarding one’s job-related capabilities and competencies. If employees have high selfefficacies, they will tend to set higher personal goals under the belief that they areattainable. The first key to successful goal setting is to build and reinforce employees’ self-efficacy.
ReplyDeleteThe proper strategy identified and followed by the team would increases the performance of the team, however, the incorrect strategy may reduce the achievability of difficult goals (Yurtkoru et al.,2017). Further, Yurtkoru et al.(2017) says, the employees will take difficult tasks as a positive challenge, when the team or individuals are self-sufficient, which would result in improved performance.
DeleteAgree with your view. It Industry in global economy is highly competitive and business continuity is depend on innovation (Nickie, Frimpong, and Sun, 2019). Establishing, communicating and directing employees towards achievement of organizational goals by rewarding mechanism is establishing a motivational working atmosphere and enhance employee work engagement. The continuous work engagement maintains a positive relationship on employee performances and opens the gate for innovation (Landers, Bauer and Callan, 2015).
ReplyDeleteTrue. Challenging goals which needs innovative implementation is a key motivator for information technology sector employees, therefore, it is essential for the team leads and management to set the challenging goals to the workers to keep the enthusiasm and passion towards work at a higher level, as per Choon and Patrick (2016).
DeleteA very interesting topic. furthermore Locke (1989) explains; Given goal commitment, job performance improves because the goal provides a regulatory mechanism that allows the employee to observe, monitor, subjectively evaluate, and adjust job behavior in order to attain the goal. goal setting taps a fundamental attribute of human behavior, namely 'goal directedness' (Lee, Locke and Latham, 1989).
ReplyDeleteAgree. However, Goldman et al. (2002) say, even though the goal-directedness has a positive relationship to the well-being of an individual, and his compensation and materialistic satisfaction, such goal-directedness may not significantly relate to the satisfaction of the employment functions.
DeleteInteresting topic.In 1960’s, Edwin Locke put forward the Goal-setting theory of motivation. This states that goal setting is essentially linked to task performance. It states that specific and challenging goals along with appropriate feedback contribute to higher and better task performance. Goals indicate and give direction to an employee about what needs to be done and how much efforts are required to be put in.
ReplyDeleteAgree. Yurtkoru et al. (2017) says, properly defined goals direct team towards the achievements of the organizational targets as every individual has good understanding about the expectation and deliverable. However, if the organization failed to set goals properly, employee performances may degrade due to unnecessary pressure on the employees (Yurtkoru et al.,2017).
DeleteAgree with your view, Goal-setting and performance assessment of individuals and teams. Most organizations will expect line managers to undertake these tasks, usually within a centrally designed appraisal scheme. This improves the chances of appraisals being linked to strategy. Also, there has been a move towards so-called 360° appraisals. These assess an individual’s performance from multiple perspectives not just the line manager but also from other parts of the organization on which the work of the individual and/or their team impacts. This is an attempt to assess the full impact of an employee’s work on the success of strategy (Johnson, Scholes & Whittington 2005).
ReplyDelete