The Dark Side of Goal Specificity: Satisficing and Bounded Awareness

Abstract

Most managerial, professional and decision-making tasks are unstructured. Yet the prescriptions from the goal-setting literature are primarily based on highly structured tasks and are often generalized to unstructured tasks. This paper provides evidence that applying prescriptions from the goal-setting literature to the domain of unstructured tasks may be dangerous. Findings from four experiments show that managers’ and task performers’ reactions to specific goals are detrimental to motivation, attention, and performance in unstructured task environments, but not in structured task environments.