Performance management & Best practices

Goal setting theory

Goal theory Goal theory, as developed by Latham and Locke (1979), highlights four mechanisms that connect goals to performance outcomes: 1) they direct attention to priorities; 2) they stimulate effort; 3) they challenge people to bring their knowledge and skills to bear to increase their chances of success; and 4) the more challenging the goal, the more people will draw on their full repertoire of skills. This theory supports the emphasis in performance management on setting and agreeing objectives against which performance can be measured and managed.

 

Goal setting theory (Locke & Latham, 1984, 199Oa) is based on the simplest of introspective observations, namely, that conscious human behavior is purposeful. It is regulated by the individual’s goals. Goal directedness, however, characterizes the actions of all living organisms including those of plants. Thus the principle of goal-directed action is not restricted to conscious action. Binswanger (1990) has shown that goal-directed action is defined by three attributes: (1) self-generufion: the source of energy is integral to the organism; (2) value-significance: the actions not only make possible but are necessary for an organism’s survival; and (3) goal-causation: the resulting action is caused by a goal. In the case of vegetative action, goal-directed behavior in the present is caused by past instances of successful goal-directed action. For example a person’s heart beats today because it beat successfully (i.e., facilitated survival) yesterday.

 

Social Cognitive Theory

 

Social cognitive theory Social cognitive theory was developed by Bandura (1986). It is based on his central concept of self-efficacy. This suggests that what people believe they can or cannot do powerfully impacts on their performance. Developing and strengthening positive self-belief in employees is therefore an important performance management objective. Principles of performance management the research conducted by Armstrong and Baron (1998, 2004) identified the following 10 principles of performance management as stated by practitioners:

1 It’s about how we manage people – it’s not a system.

2 Performance management is what managers do: a natural process of management.

3 A management tool that helps managers to manage.

4 Driven by corporate purpose and values.

5 To obtain solutions that work.

6 Only interested in things you can do something about and get a visible improvement.

7 Focus on changing behaviors rather than paperwork.

8 Based on accepted principle but operates flexibly.

9 Focus on development not pay.

10 Success depends on what the organization is and needs to be in its performance culture.

 

When human development is viewed from a lifespan perspective, the influential determinants include a varied succession of life events that vary in their power to affect the direction lives take (Brim & Ryff, 1980; Hultsch & Plemons, 1979).

 

Many of these determinants include age-graded social influences that are provided by custom within familial, educational, and other institutional systems. Some involve biological conditions that exercise influence over person's futures. Others are unpredicatable occurrences in the physical environment. Still others involve irregular life events such as career changes, divorce, migration, accidents, and illness. Social and technological changes alter, often considerably, the kinds of life events that become customary in the society. Indeed, many of the major changes in social and economic life are ushered in by innovations of technology.

 

Life experiences under the same sociocultural conditions at a given period will differ for people who encounter them at different points in their 6 lifespan (Elder, 1981). Thus, for example, economic depression will have different effects on those entering adulthood than on those who pass through such adverse conditions at a young age. Major sociocultural changes that make life markedly different such as economic adversities that alter livelihoods and opportunity structures, military conflicts, cultural upheavals, new technologies and political changes that modify the character of the society can have strong impact on life courses. Whatever the social conditions might be, there is still the task of explaining the varied directions that personal lives take at any given time and place. This requires a personal, as well as a social, analysis of life paths. Analysis of behavioral patterns across the lifespan reveals that, in addition to the prevailing sociocultural influences, fortuitous events often exert an important influences on the course of human lives (Bandura, 1982b).

 

There are many fortuitous elements in the events people encounter in their daily lives. They are often brought together through a fortuitous constellation of events, when their paths would otherwise never be crossed. In such chance encounters, the separate paths in which people are moving have their own chain of causal determinants, but their intersection occurs fortuitously rather than through deliberate plan. The profusion of separate chains of events provides innumerable opportunities for fortuitous intersections. It is such chance encounters that often play a prominent role in shaping the course of career pursuits, forming marital partnerships, and altering the future direction of other aspects of human lives (Bandura, 1982b). To cite but a single example, an editor arrives for a talk on the psychology of chance encounters and grabs a seat that happens to be next to a woman psychologist as the lecture hall rapidly fills up. This chance meeting eventually led to their marriage. With only a slight change of time of entry, seating constellations would have altered and this particular social intersect would probably not have occurred. A marital partnership was 7 thus fortuitously formed at a talk devoted to fortuitous determinants of life paths! As this incident illustrates, some of the most important determinants of life paths often arise through the most trivial of circumstances.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bandura, A. (1982b). The psychology of chance encounters and life paths. American Psychologist, 37, 747-755.

Brim, O. G., Jr., & Ryff, C. D. (1980). On the properties of life events. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life- span development and behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 367-388). New York: Academic Press.

Elder, G. H. (1981). History and the life course. In D. Bertaux (Ed.), Biography and society: The life history approach in the social sciences (pp. 77-115). Beverly Hills: Sage.

Hultsch, D. F., & Plemons, J. K. (1979). Life events and life- span development. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life-span development and behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 1-36). New York: Academic Press.

Latham, G P and Locke, E A (1979) Goal Setting – a motivational technique that works, Organizational Dynamics, Autumn, pp 442–47

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (199Oa). A theory of goal setting and task performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall.