Organizational Goal Setting Research Articles

Examining community policing policy implementation and racial disparities in officer-involved lethal encounters

PurposeThe goal of this study is to examine how community policing policies (CPP) can be effective in addressing racial disparities in police killings in the United States.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilized multi-level mixed modeling techniques.FindingsThe study finds that CPP training for in-service officers is effective when the police chief is black, in contrast to the presence of written CPP statements and CPP training for newly recruited officers. This article concludes that the effectiveness of policy implementation is dependent upon policing leaders who manage policy implementation.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited in that it only includes data from people who were killed by police. In addition, it was extremely difficult to collect data on the race of the officer. Hence, it reduced the number of viable cases that we could include in the analysis.Practical implicationsThe most significant practical limitation to our research is the ability to generalize to police departments within a city and between cities. In some cases, police killings were confined to one or two areas in a city.Social implicationsDisproportionality in police killings is important in every country where certain groups are overrepresented in the number of police killings. This is particularly true today, where we see groups like Black Lives Matter highlighting higher levels of lethal force in minority neighborhoods.Originality/valueUsing representative bureaucracy theory, this research shows leaders select and emphasize specific goals among a set of organizational goals, seek to build trust rather than fight crimes and support goals to improve policy outcomes, which fills a theoretical gap in the theory.

Goal-setting in Organizations

Goal-setting can be a powerful driver of performance and many hierarchical organizations rely on it to improve organizational performance. When tasks and task-interdependencies are well-understood, goals can facilitate coordination as much as motivation. In contrast, when tasks are not well-understood and involve non-trivial interdependencies – as typically observed in complex or changing business environments – it is rarely possible to assign goals in a way that avoids some level of goal-conflict. While specific and ambitious goals may still motivate individuals, the same goals are likely to create conflict among organizational members. We employ a series of computational simulations to analyze how organizations should set individual-level goals and define an organizational goal structure that supports the pursuit of these goals. Specifically, we show that the joint choice of goal distribution (how many goals, specific or vague) and goal priority (whose goals are most important) in combination with the choice of goal structure (in terms of breadth and depth) results in an efficiency frontier. Different choices become optimal depending on the need to balance the quality of the outcome and the effort spent obtaining it. The results have significant implications for organization designers and the management of organizations.

Aiming and Adapting: How Multiple Goals and Adaptive Capabilities Affect Competitive Performance

How effective are multiple organizational goals and how do firm adaptive capabilities influence their effectiveness? We suggest that a firm’s set (repertoire) of multiple goals can vary in intensity and focus, culminating in a different pattern. Building on the organizational goal-setting and strategy literatures, we hypothesize that goal repertoire intensity and focus have important performance consequences and that firm’s adaptive capabilities moderate these relationships in different ways. Hypotheses are tested via multi-country survey data from top executives from 203 firms operating in different industries. Findings show that performance benefits from goal repertoire intensity but diminishes with goal repertoire focus. Increasing levels of adaptive capability enhance the performance benefits of repertoire intensity but degrade performance when repertoire focus is high. This research contributes to the goal-setting literature by providing insight into performance effects of patterns of multiple goals when firms vary in adaptive capability.

Organizational goals and resource allocation to overseas foreign direct investment

We investigate how organizational goal setting impacts slack resource allocation between markets at home and overseas, and argue that organizational goals, publicly announced, impact managers’ evaluations of resource allocation opportunities. Based on a sample of Chinese publicly listed manufacturing firms for the period 2010 to 2016, we find that when firms announce publicly a sales increasing goal as their priority, their attention will be focused on this goal with a tendency to invest the firm's slack resources locally. This tendency to invest slack resources locally is enhanced if the announced goal is not achieved, but is not achieved with a minor discrepancy. However, if the goal is not achieved, and with a major discrepancy, managers will likely conduct problemistic search and look to foreign locations to invest the firm's slack resources to achieve this goal. We also find the impact of organizational goal setting is more salient for SOEs and is dependent on levels of remuneration in the firm. As such, we revisit the importance of organization goals and the resource allocation decision in the firm which has not received the research attention one may have expected.

Government policy changes and organizational goal setting: Extensions to the behavioral theory of the firm

The increasing frequency and extent of government policy changes in many countries and industries has exposed an important theoretical gap about how such changes influence organizational goal setting. This paper extends the behavioral theory of the firm to account for changes in government policy on goal dimensions (i.e., what goals are adopted) and goal aspirations (i.e., the target levels adopted). We advance propositions regarding the specification of goal dimensions and add a new factor into the aspiration adaptation model to account for anticipatory (i.e., forward-looking) responses on the part of firms to government policy changes.

Unintended consequences of performance incentives: impacts of framing and structure on performance and cheating

ABSTRACT Setting specific, challenging goals motivates employees to exert greater effort in their jobs. However, goal-setting may have unintended consequences of also motivating unethical behavior. The present study explores these consequences in the context of other features of goal-setting in organizations, how goals are framed and rewarded, to determine the tradeoff between performance and ethical behavior. Undergraduate students were incentivized to complete math problems using different outcome frames and incentive structures and were also provided an opportunity to cheat. Findings demonstrate that when goals rewarded with piece-rate incentives are framed as a loss, performance increased, though cheating behavior increased as well.

The discursive construction of international students in the USA: prestige, diversity, and economic gain

Universities in the USA must navigate a complex set of organizational goals when communicating about international students. On one hand, international students signal that the university has a global reach and diverse student body; on the other hand, international students have been viewed as edging out domestic students for access to scarce resources. How do US universities frame and reframe the fraught narrative around international students? We examined the websites of over 160 large universities in the USA and collected screenshots of how international students were represented. Using an academic capitalism framing, we understand universities to be neoliberal actors focused on securing their status position and generating economic growth. In this way, our findings show how international students have come to be framed as consonant with multiple organizational missions and goals. These goals include being viewed as global/cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse and financially sound. International students are in this sense are discursively constructed through these representations, framed as markers of prestige and legitimacy, as well as a means of economic stimulus. We also find that they are rarely presented as ordinary or unremarkable participants in a campus community alongside their domestic counterparts, marked instead by these exceptional narratives that reframe them in ways that serve institutional goals.

Social entrepreneurship, stakeholder management, and the multiple fitness elements of sustainability: where cash is no longer king

Social entrepreneurs are driven to solve a particular social problem. Yet, they operate in a broad universe of stakeholders that expect the organization to at least not worsen a range of social ills. This complicates the organization’s work as various social goals can be in tension with each other. Based on Instrumental Stakeholder Theory and the concept of organizational fitness, this paper uses a revelatory case study to explore the unique stakeholder management challenges faced by social entrepreneurs. A series of nine interviews and review of archival materials reveals how Berkshares, Inc., a creator of a local currency, had to contend with competing social issues important to an array of stakeholders. The study showed that competing views of different social issues from different stakeholders in the community had a substantial impact on the management of the organization. Two primary points emerged from the data. First, the need to manage these competing dimensions greatly complicates organizational goal setting and initiative selection, potentially creating internal conflict and making decisions easily contested. Second, this challenge alters the nature of the transition from startup to maturity, such that marketing and external communication became much more critical for maintaining stakeholder support as the venture grew.

EXPLORING THE INPUT OF COMPETENCE ASSESSMENT TO GOAL-SETTING IN VARIOUS TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONS

The aim of the present research is to investigate the existing practices of linking competence assessment to organizational goal-setting in various organisations in Latvia. The importance of linking employee competences to goal-setting within organizations has been established in scientific literature. Nevertheless, there is evidence gathered in this interdisciplinary research that existing methods of competence assessment used by various organizations in Latvia do not translate well into organizational goal-setting. The research is based on information gathered from semi-structured interviews with representatives of managerial positions in private and public, including educational service organizations (26 in total). Additionally, publicly available development plans are analysed. Empirical data are analysed according to a conceptual framework of criteria impacting the goal-setting process. Three subsets of criteria are used that guided interview question formulation and interview data analysis: formulation of a goal; employee’s ability to reach the assigned goal; employee’s self-assessment on his/her ability to reach the assigned goal. Analysis of the results indicate that when setting goals and assessing employee competences in relation to those goals, management decisions are greatly guided by subjective approaches. Such identified approaches in observed private and public service organizations indicate common risks that are discussed in this research.

Performance Appraisal and Employee Productivity in Plateau State Internal Revenue Service, Nigeria

The study examined the effect of Performance Appraisal on Employee Productivity in Plateau State Internal Revenue Service. The study was guided by two objectives and two null hypotheses of no significant relationship. The study adopts survey research design. The population of the study consists of all 1580 employees of PSIRS. The sample size of the study was 319; this was determined using Taro Yamane formula. The sample size was allocated to the population using Bourley’s Proportional formula. The instrument of data collection was a structured questionnaire. The instrument was subjected to face and content validity. Cronbach alpha method was used to establish the internal consistency of the questionnaire items. A reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained. Data collected were analyzed using frequency, percentages and tables. Logit regression model was used to assess the nature and degree of relationship between dependent variable and independent variables. Log likelihood ratio Chi-square and Log likelihood estimates were used to test model fit of the 2 hypotheses for the study; the z-statistics test was also used to test the independent variables influence on the dependent variable. The study revealed that management by objectives and 360 degree feedback appraisal techniques enhanced employee productivity in PSIRS. It was recommended that, PSIRS should enforce management by objectives in order to enable staff participate in organizational goal setting and understand areas of responsibility so as to further improve productivity. The 360 degree feedback appraisal techniques should also be encouraged to serve as pre-requisite for supervisors and employees to discuss organizational weaknesses, productivity standards and areas of improvement.

On Establishing Legitimate Goals and Their Performance Impact

We investigate the role of legitimacy in setting organizational goals as a way to address the potential “dark,” unethical side of organizational goal setting. Coupling qualitative and quantitative research methods to better understand legitimacy in goal setting, we first induce novel hypotheses based on observed practice and then provide survey evidence to test the performance implications. Study 1 reports findings based on interviews with twenty-two company executives. We identify attention to goal credibility, prioritization of stakeholders directly involved in the goal’s attainment when setting goals, and communication openness regarding goals, as well as their combination, as being important to organizational performance outcomes. Study 2 determines whether these three practices and their interaction predict performance using a survey conducted with 522 companies across four countries. Among other findings, we contribute to the organizational goal setting literature by showing that higher organizational performance is associated with the amount of priority given to the key actors (typically employees) directly involved with the goal’s attainment. We also find a positive interaction between attention to goal credibility, key actor (employee) importance, and communication openness on financial performance and non-financial goal attainment. Our work takes an initial step toward understanding how organizations can better shape the legitimacy of organizational goals for improved organizational performance and reduced unethical behavior.

Productivity vs security: mitigating conflicting goals in organizations

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to the understanding of goal setting in organizations, especially regarding the mitigation of conflicting productivity and security goals.Design/methodology/approachThis paper describes the results of a survey with 200 German employees regarding the effects of goal setting on employees’ security compliance. Based on the survey results, a concept for setting information security goals in organizations building on actionable behavioral recommendations from information security awareness materials is developed. This concept was evaluated in three small- to medium-sized organizations (SMEs) with overall 90 employees.FindingsThe survey results revealed that the presence of rewards for productivity goal achievement is strongly associated with a decrease in security compliance. The evaluation of the goal setting concept indicates that setting their own information security goals is welcomed by employees.Research limitations/implicationsBoth studies rely on self-reported data and are, therefore, likely to contain some kind of bias.Practical implicationsGoal setting in organizations has to accommodate for situations, where productivity goals constrain security policy compliance. Introducing the proposed goal setting concept based on relevant actionable behavioral recommendations can help mitigate issues in such situations.Originality/valueThis work furthers the understanding of the factors affecting employee security compliance. Furthermore, the proposed concept can help maximizing the positive effects of goal setting in organizations by mitigating the negative effects through the introduction of meaningful and actionable information security goals.

Teacher work motivation in the era of extrinsic incentives: Performance goals and pro-social commitments in the service of equity

Mindful of the withering of high-stakes accountability and disappointing data from pay for performance evaluations in the US, we ask why management by extrinsic incentives and organizational goal setting may have been far less powerful than designers of accountability and extrinsic incentive systems had expected. We explore how system-generated motives (e.g., attaining specific organizational goals, preventing sanctions, or garnering rewards) stack up against autonomously generated, intrinsic, or service motives.? We found through both quantitative and qualitative data that for teachers in the charter schools a constellation of public service motives pre-dominated: diffuse pro-social commitments, ideologies of fairness and equity, a belief in the moral deservingness of deprived student populations in opposition to societal neglect, and identification with one’s work as a personal calling. By comparison, monetary rewards were embraced as already deserved. Neither rewards, nor accountability, seemed to regulate behavior in a deep way. Prestige was not bestowed by official performance statuses within the accountability system, but flowed from judgments, personally communicated, by students, parents, or colleagues who had direct contact with teachers’ work.

Goal Development Theories and the Use of Terminal Goals in Organizational Goal Setting

Corporate goals are generally established to provide guidance and direction for employees and managers to focus organizational efforts. A review of existing literature and theories about approaches to goal development are used to explore how goals that have a finite target may have an impact on the organizational climate and employee perspectives. A proposed model is offered which describes how the type of goal may have an effect on employees’ commitment to the organization, expectations of reward, and employment transitions.

Application of disability-adjusted life years to predict the burden of injuries and fatalities due to public exposure to engineering technologies

BackgroundAs a public safety regulator, the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) of Ontario, Canada predicts and measures the burden of injuries and fatalities as its primary means of characterizing the state of public safety and for decision-making purposes through the use of a simulation model. The paper proposes a simulation-based predictive model and the use of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) as a population health metric for the purposes of reporting, benchmarking, public safety decision-making, and organizational goal setting. The proposed approach could be viewed as advancement in the application of traditional population health metrics, used primarily for public health policy decisions, for the measurement and prediction of safety risks across a wide variety of engineering technologies to which the general public is exposed.ResultsThe proposed model is generic and applicable to a wide range of devices and technologies that are typically used by the general public. As an example, a measure of predicted risk that could result from the use of and exposure to elevating devices in the province of Ontario is presented in terms of the DALY metric. The predictions are further categorized in terms of the causal attribution of the risks for the purposes of identifying and focusing decision-making efforts. The results are also presented by taking into consideration factors such as near-misses or precursor events as termed in certain industries.ConclusionsThe ability to predict potential health impacts has three significant advantages for a public safety regulator – external reporting, decision-making to ensure public safety, and organizational benchmarking. The application of the well-known Monte Carlo simulation has been proposed to predict the health impacts expressed in terms of DALYs. The practicality of the proposed ideas has been demonstrated through the application of the prediction model to characterizing and managing risks associated with elevating devices in the province of Ontario, Canada.

A Multi-Organization Examination of Stretch Goals in SUD Treatment Centers

Although the literature on the effects of organizational goal-setting on performance is substantial, very limited research has empirically addressed the effects of an increasingly common type of goal: the organizational stretch goal (Sitkin et al., 2011). These seemingly impossible goals, often lauded as bold and inspirational by the business press, may have negative outcomes for organizations, especially for those within challenging contexts. We find evidence of the widespread adoption of stretch goals in such a challenging context - within a sample of SUD treatment centers - and test their main and moderated effects on outcomes. Our results indicate that stretch goals have important implications for both financial performance and indicators of patient treatment quality, as main effects and moderated by a center's past record of performance. We conclude that stretch goals are generally harmful for organizations in such difficult contexts, although stretch goals can be beneficial for financial performance when organizations have a basis of strong prior performance to build upon.

The Impact of Organizational Goal Setting on the Industrial Munificence-Goal Attainment Relationship

In seeking to exploit environmental resources and opportunities, CEOs can either set multiple goals or narrow their focus on a few targets for the organizations. What approach will help organizations to benefit more from industrial munificence? In this paper, we investigate the moderating effects of CEOs’ goal setting (including the number of goals and the prioritization of these goals) on the relationship between industrial munificence and the satisfaction of goal attainment. By examining 277 small and medium-size firms in four countries, we find that CEOs need to stretch their goal list while keeping a clear priority order among these goals in order to capitalize on industrial munificence. Implications of our study are discussed.

The Use of Self-Set Goals as an Impression Management Tactic: Antecedents and Consequences

Using survey and archival data from 598 employees of a Fortune 100 financial services firm, this paper studies the antecedents and consequences of using goal selection as an impression management tool. We find that poor performance relative to performance targets in one period increased employees' desire to use goal setting as an impression management tactic in the next period. In addition, using goal setting as an impression management tactic causes employees to self-select less difficult performance goals, which in turn negatively impacts actual performance. Given the extensive use of goal setting in organizations, understanding its use and effects as an impression management tactic is important.

Understanding the Ethical Cost of Organizational Goal-Setting: A Review and Theory Development

Goal-setting has become a popular and effective motivational tool, utilized by practitioners and substantiated with decades of empirical research. However, the potential for goal-setting to enhance performance may come at the cost of ethical behavior. I propose a theoretical model linking attributes of goals and goal-setting practices to unethical behavior through two psychological mechanisms – ethical recognition and moral disengagement; and addressing the moderating role of individual differences (e.g., goal-commitment and conscientiousness), as well as the broader organizational ethical context.

Strategic Transformation in Public Health: In the Case of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Current public health debate centers on the content and extent of health problems, appropriate solutions, and acceptable practices. This essay describes and analyzes how a number of countries are answering these questions using an emerging conceptual framework of organizational change. Special attention is paid to the recent strategic transformation of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This process of organizational change used extensive deliberation among stakeholders over the organization's goals, and based on these goals, implemented a novel matrix structure for increased effectiveness. However, this essay reveals a number of short-term costs associated with this form of organizational goal setting and change.