MGMT 8705M Week 3 Research Synthesis Example

Did the Goal-Setting Debate Measure the Same Thing? A Research Synthesis Sorting Four Studies by the Outcome Each Counted, Showing That Supporters and Critics Largely Measured Different Behavior Before Weighing What Either Found

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8705M: Organizational Behavior Performance and Evaluation

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Did the Goal-Setting Debate Measure the Same Thing? A Research Synthesis Sorting Four Studies by the Outcome Each Counted, Showing That Supporters and Critics Largely Measured Different Behavior Before Weighing What Either Found

The Question

A sales operations manager at a composite medical supply distributor proposed specific, difficult monthly targets for every account representative, citing goal-setting research. A colleague objected that the same research literature warns of goals encouraging dishonesty. Both were citing real work. This synthesis gathers the central studies on each side and asks how much of the disagreement concerns whether specific goals help, and how much concerns what each study counted as the outcome.

The Synthesis Matrix

[after]

The columns were fixed before the studies were read, so that each study's outcome could be compared on the same terms.

Table 1

Four Sources on Goal Setting, Sorted by What They Measured

Sorted by What Was Counted

Regrouping the rows by outcome rather than by author changes the picture. The supporting evidence, summarized by Locke and Latham (2002), measures performance: units produced, problems solved, sales made, quality ratings. On that outcome the evidence that hard, concrete goals lift performance relative to vague ones is large and consistent across many tasks. The critical evidence measures something else. Schweitzer et al. (2004) counted whether participants misreported their own results, and found misreporting more common among people who had fallen just short of a specific goal. Ordóñez et al. (2009) gathered evidence on side effects: dishonesty, neglect of unmeasured parts of a job, excessive risk and reduced learning on complex tasks.

A Contest Partly About Measurement

Seen this way, much of the debate is not a conflict of findings. Both camps can be right: goals raise measured performance and can, under some conditions, raise dishonesty about that performance or crowd out unmeasured work. Locke and Latham (2009) replied that the critics generalized from a few studies and ignored conditions, such as commitment and ethical climate, that shape goals' effects. That reply concerns conditions, not the basic finding of side effects. The genuine disagreement is narrower: how often the side effects occur in real organizations and how much they offset the performance gains.

Laboratory Against Field

The side-effect evidence comes largely from laboratory experiments with students and from illustrative cases, while the performance evidence includes many field studies. That asymmetry matters for the distributor. Its representatives self-report call activity and pipeline estimates, outcomes vulnerable to the misreporting Schweitzer and colleagues observed, and their jobs include unmeasured tasks such as resolving billing problems that goals could crowd out.

What the Combined Record Supports

The record supports this: specific, difficult targets are likely to raise the representatives' measured sales; where outcomes are self-reported or where important tasks go unmeasured, targets carry a risk of misreporting and neglect. It does not tell the distributor how large that risk is in a sales force.

What the Distributor Should Watch

If the distributor adopts targets, it can watch for the side effects the critical studies describe. Differences between representatives' self-reported pipeline and later booked orders, compared before and after targets begin, would show whether reporting becomes less accurate. Time logged on billing disputes and account maintenance, tasks the targets do not reward, would show whether effort shifts away from them. Both can be tracked from records the company already keeps, so the target's effects need not be inferred from the research alone.

Why the Matrix Changes the Conversation

The manager and the colleague who objected were not, on this reading, disagreeing about the same evidence. Showing them the matrix sorted by outcome turns an argument about whether goal setting works into a discussion of which outcomes the company cares about and how it will watch each one.

The Study Nobody Has Run

The missing study is a field experiment in a sales organization that randomly assigns specific targets and measures both verified sales and the accuracy of self-reported pipeline data, along with time spent on unmeasured tasks. Until it exists, the manager's proposal should pair targets with verification of self-reports.

References

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2009). Has goal setting gone wild, or have its attackers abandoned good scholarship? Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 17-23. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2009.37008000

Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6-16. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2009.37007999

Schweitzer, M. E., Ordóñez, L., & Douma, B. (2004). Goal setting as a motivator of unethical behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 422-432. https://doi.org/10.2307/20159591