Operations managementLesson 5 of 7 in the course Organizational Planning and Controlling

Goal Setting and Organizational Control: Motivation, Systems, and Autonomy

5 flashcards · 5 quiz questions · 5 match pairs · 5 fill-in sentences · English

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Summary

This lesson explains how planning and goal setting can influence employee motivation and performance. It introduces goal theory and the characteristics that make goals more likely to direct effort effectively.

Managers need more than employees who work hard: effort must be directed toward the right outcomes and carried out appropriately. Goal theory helps explain how goals shape that effort. It proposes that certain kinds of goals motivate behavior and contribute to performance. Goal theory is focused in scope, but it has strong research support as an explanation of motivation.

All flashcards

Goal acceptance
A person's agreement to take a goal as their own.
Means-ends inversion
When methods intended to achieve a goal become treated as goals themselves.
Aspiration level
The level of performance a person hopes or expects to achieve.
Cybernetic control system
A system that detects deviations and automatically adjusts work to correct them.
Personal control
A person's belief that they can influence their environment in a desired direction.

Quiz questions

  1. What is means-ends inversion in an organization?Answer: Treating a method for reaching a goal as a goal in itself.
  2. When is high performance most likely to contribute to an employee's job satisfaction?Answer: When it meets aspirations and leads to a reward the employee values.
  3. Which sequence represents the four-step organizational control process?Answer: Set standards, monitor activity, compare performance, evaluate and act.
  4. What makes a control system cybernetic?Answer: The work system detects deviations and has built-in procedures to correct them.
  5. What is a screening control?Answer: A checkpoint that determines whether work can proceed to its next stage.

Based on Principles of Management by David S. Bright, Anastasia H. Cortes, Eva Hartmann, K. Praveen Parboteeah, Jon L. Pierce, Monique Reece, Amit Shah, Siri Terjesen, Joseph Weiss, Margaret A. White, Donald G. Gardner, Jason Lambert et al. (OpenStax), licensed CC BY 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.

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