organization goal

1. The passage underscores the importance of goal setting in organizations, highlighting its role
in motivating employees and improving performance. Goals serve as targets that create a
sense of tension, which employees are driven to reduce by achieving them. Setting and
achieving goals not only enhances performance but also satisfies the need for achievement,
competence, and personal growth. Self-efficacy, the belief in one's capabilities, is crucial in
setting higher, attainable goals. Successful goal setting typically includes goals that are
specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Overall, goal setting is
a powerful tool for focusing employee efforts and achieving organizational success.
Elements of Goal Setting
Goal setting, as a motivational tool, is most effective when all its major elements are present.
These are goal acceptance, specificity, challenge, and performance monitoring and feedback.
Each is discussed briefly in the following sections.
Goal Acceptance Effective goals need to be not only understood but also accepted. Simply
assigning goals to employees may not result in their commitment to those goals, especially if
the goal will be difficult to accomplish. Minimally, supervisors need to explain the purpose
behind goals and the necessity for them. A more powerful method of obtaining acceptance is
to allow the employees to participate in the goal-setting process. A public statement of
performance intentions also contributes to the commitment of employees to their achievement.
Specificity Goals need to be as specific, clear, and measurable as possible so that
employees will know when a goal is reached. Asking employees to improve, to work harder,
or to do better is not very helpful, because that kind of goal does not give them a focused
target to seek. Specific goals (often quantified) let them know what to reach for and allow them
to measure their own progress.
Challenge Perhaps surprisingly, most employees work harder when they have difficult goals
to accomplish rather than easy ones. Hard goals present a challenge that appeals to the
achievement drive within many employees. These goals must, however, still be achievable,
given the experience of the individual and the resources available.
Performance Monitoring and Feedback Even after employees have participated in setting
well-defined and challenging goals, two other closely related steps are important to complete
the process. Performance monitoring—observing behavior, inspecting output, or studying
documents of performance indicators—provides at least subtle cues to employees that their
tasks are important, their effort is needed, and their contributions are valued. This monitoring
heightens their awareness of the role they play in contributing to
organizational effectiveness. Simply monitoring results, however, may not be enough. Many
employees are hungry for information about how well they are performing. Without
performance feedback— the timely provision of data or judgment regarding task-related
results—employees will be Employee Selfefficacy working in the dark and have no true idea
how successful they are. A ball team needs to know the score of the game; a trapshooter
needs to see the clay pigeons break into pieces; and the woodchopper needs to see the chips
fly and the pile of firewood grow. The same can be said for a team on the production line or a
retail salesclerk. Performance feedback tends to encourage better job performance, and self-
generated feedback is an especially powerful motivational tool.

2. The Three Factors
Valence refers to the strength of a person’s preference for receiving a reward. It is an
expression of the amount of one’s desire to reach a goal. For example, if an employee strongly
wants a promotion, then promotion has high valence for that employee. Valence for a reward
is unique to each employee and thus is a reflection of the concept of individual differences an
individual’s valence for a reward is conditioned by experience, and it may vary substantially
over a period of time as old needs become satisfied and new ones emerge. It is important to
understand the difference between the implications of need-based models of motivation and
the idea of valence in the expectancy model. In the need-based models, broad generalizations
are used to predict where a group of employees may have the strongest drives or the greatest
unsatisfied needs. In the expectancy model, managers need to gather specific information
about an individual employee’s preferences among a set of rewards and then continue to
monitor changes in those preferences. Since people may have positive or negative
preferences for an outcome, valence may be negative as well as positive. When a person
prefers not attaining an outcome, as compared with attaining it, valence is a negative figure.
If a person is indifferent to an outcome, the valence is 0. The total range is from 1 to +1, as
shown in Figure 5.8. Some employees will find intrinsic valence in the work itself, particularly
if they have a strong work ethic or competence motivation. They derive satisfaction directly
from their work through a sense of completion, of doing a task right, or of creating something.
In this instance, outcomes are largely within the employee’s own control and less subject to
management’s reward system. These employees are self-motivated.
Expectancy is the strength of belief that one’s work-related effort will result in completion of
a task. For example, a person selling magazine subscriptions door-todoor may know from
experience that volume of sales is directly related to the number of sales calls made.
Expectancies are stated as probabilities—the employee’s estimate of the degree to which
performance will be determined by the amount of effort expended. Since expectancy is the
probability of a connection between effort and performance, its value may range from 0 to 1.
If an employee sees no chance that effort will lead to the desired performance, the expectancy
is 0. At the other extreme, if the employee is totally confident that the task will be completed,
the expectancy has a value of 1. Normally, employee estimates of expectancy lie somewhere
between the two extremes. One of the forces contributing to effort-performance expectancies
is the individual’s self-efficacy. Employees with high levels of self-efficacy are more likely to
believe that exerting effort will result in satisfactory performance. High self-efficacy creates a
high expectancy assessment.
Instrumentality represents the employee’s belief that a reward will be received once the task
is accomplished. Here the employee makes another subjective judgment about the probability
that the organization values the employee’s performance and will administer rewards on a
contingent basis. The value of instrumentality effectively ranges from 0 to 1.17 For example,
if an employee sees that promotions are usually based on performance data, instrumentality
will be rated high. However, if the basis for such decisions is unclear or managerial favoritism
is suspected, a low instrumentality estimate will be made.

3. How the Model Works
The product of valence, expectancy, and instrumentality is motivation. It is defined as the
strength of the drive toward an action. Below is an example of the expectancy model in
operation.
The three factors in the expectancy model may exist in an infinite number of combinations.
The multiplicative combination that produces the strongest motivation is high positive valence,
high expectancy, and high instrumentality. If desire for a reward is high, but either of the
probability estimates is low, then motivation will likely be moderate, at best. If both expectancy
and instrumentality are low, then motivation will be weak even if the reward has high valence.
A special case occurs when valence is negative. For example, some employees would prefer
not to be promoted into management because of the stress, loss of overtime pay, or additional
responsibilities they would bear. In particular, the widespread corporate downsizings of the
past decade clearly targeted middle managers and produced insecurity in those who
remained. In situations like these, where promotion has a negative valence, the employee will
try to avoid earning the promotion. The strength of avoidance behaviour depends not only on
the negative valence but on the expectancy and instrumentality factors as well.
Through experience, people learn to place a different value on the rewards available to them
and also on the varying levels of rewards offered. They also develop expectancy and
instrumentality estimates through both their direct experiences and their observations of what
happens to others. As a consequence, employees perform a type of cost-benefit analysis,
often implicit, for their own behaviour at work. If the estimated benefit is worth the cost, then
employees are likely to apply more effort.
Interpreting the Expectancy Model
Advantages The expectancy model is a valuable tool for helping managers think about the
mental processes through which motivation occurs. In this model, employees do not act simply
because of strong internal drives, unmet needs, or the application of rewards and
punishments. Instead, they are thinking individuals whose beliefs, perceptions, and probability
estimates powerfully influence their behavior. The model reflects Theory Y assumptions about
people as capable individuals and in this way values human dignity.
Limitations Despite its general appeal, the expectancy model has some problems. It needs
further testing to build a broad base of research evidence for support. Its multiplicative
combination of the three elements needs further substantiation. Both intrinsic and extrinsic
rewards need to be considered. The predicted effects of multiple outcomes from the same
effort must be built into the model. In addition, reliable measures of valence, expectancy, and
instrumentality need to be developed. There is a special need to develop measures that
managers can use in actual work settings. When possible, managers need to learn both what
employees perceive and why they hold those valence, expectancy, and instrumentality beliefs.