Human Motivation And Workers Productivity
[A CASE STUDY OF BETA GLASS PLC UGHELLI, DELTA STATE, NIGERIA]

4).    GOAL – SETTING THEORY – EDWIN LOCKE

The basic assumption of Goal Theory is that people’s goals or intentions play an important part in determining behaviour. (Locke et al 1997) states that values give rise to experience of emotion and desire in order to achieve a goal. Goal guide responses and actions. Direct behaviour and performance and lead to certain consequence and feedback.

Figure 4: An illustration of Locke theory of goal-setting. The international encyclopedia of Business and Management Vol. 5 (2002: P 4586) added that the theory states two important goal attribute: intensity and content. It explained that “goal intensity refers to the strength of goals in terms of importance and commitment, goal content is directed towards aspects such as difficulty, specificity and complexity.” Furthermore, that researches focuses more on the effects of goal content as regards difficulty and specificity, comparing a non-specific goal assignment, such as ‘ do your best’ with a specific and difficult assigned goal condition such as ‘process x orders this week without any mistakes.’
GOAL – SETTING AND PERFORMANCE
Edwin Locke opined that ‘goal-setting is more appropriately viewed as a motivational technique rather than as a formal theory of motivation’
Difficult goals motivate as a result of:
i.    Direct attention to the task at hand. Challenging goals get our attention and focus
ii.    Energizes us because we work harder to attain them
iii.    Because goals are difficult, people persist in trying to achieve them
iv.    Make us discover strategies that help us to perform the task or jobs effectively. Feedback help to guide behaviour, detect discrepancies
Goal commitment is more likely when goals are (i) made public (ii) the individual has an internal locus of control (iii) the goals are self-set rather than assigned.
Therefore, goal enhances performance when they are simple, well learned and independent. On interdependent task, group goals are preferable. In addition, goal-setting theory is culture bound.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATION FOR THE MANAGER
There are many practical applications for the manager:
i.    Set specific performance goal in order to direct behaviour and maintain motivation.
ii.    Set challenging but realistic goals. Goals should be moderately set
iii.    Accurate feedback and knowledge of result is usually associated with high performance. Feedback help to check progress and subsequent revision of goals
iv.    Goal can be determined vertically from up to down or horizontally from left to right. Employee participations in goal-setting is motivating and impact on performance.