Assessing the effectiveness of MBO is a complex task. Let’s briefly review a growing body of literature on the relationship between goals and performance. If factors such as a person’s ability and acceptance of goals are held constant, more difficult goals lead to higher performance. Although individuals with difficult goals achieve them far less often than those who have easy goals, they, nevertheless perform at a consistently higher level.
Moreover studies consistently support the finding that specific difficult to achieve goals produce a higher level of output than do no goals or generalized goals such as do your best. Feedback also favorably affects performance. Feedback lets a person know whether his or her level of effort is sufficient or needs to be increased. It can induce a person to raise his or her goal level after attaining a previous goal and indicate ways to improve performance.
The results cited here are all consistent with MBO’s emphasis on specific goals and feedback. MBO implies, rather explicitly states that goals must be perceived as feasible. Research on goal setting indicates that MBO is most effective if the goals are difficult enough to require some stretching.
But what about participating? MBO strongly advocates that goals be set participatively. Does the research demonstrate that participatively set goals led to higher performance than those assigned by a manager? Somewhat surprisingly, the research comparing participatively set goals with assigned goals has not shown any strong or constant relationship to performance. When goal difficulty has been held constant, assigned goals frequently do as well as participatively determined goals, contrary to MBO ideology. Therefore, it is not possible to argue for the superiority of participation as do MBO proponents. One major benefits from participation, however is that appears to induce individuals to set more difficult goals. Thus, participation may have a positive effect on performance by increasing one’s goal aspiration level.
Studies of actual MBO programs confirm that MBO effectively increase employee performance and organizational productivity. One of the more critical components of this effectiveness is top management commitment to the MBO process. When top managers had a high commitment to MBO and were personally involved in its implementation, productivity gains were higher than if this commitment was lacking.
How do you set employee objectives?
Employee should have a clear understanding of what they’re attempting to accomplish. Furthermore, as a manager you have the responsibility for seeing that this task is achieved by helping your employees set work goals. Although these two statements appear to be common sense, it’s often a little more complex. Setting objectives is a skill that every manager needs to perfect. You can facilitate this process by following these guidelines:
Identifying an employee’s key job tasks:
Goal setting begins by defining what you want your employees to accomplish. The best source for this information is each employee’s job description.
Establish specific and challenging goals for each key task: Identify the level of performance expected of each employee specify the target for the employee to hit. Specify the deadlines for each gal. Putting deadlines on each goal reduces ambiguity. Deadlines however should not be set arbitrarily. Rather they need to be realistic given the tasks to be completed.
Allow the employee to actively participate: when employees participate in goal setting they are more likely to accept the goals. However, it must be sincere participation; that is employees must perceive that you are truly seeking heir input not just going through the motions.
Prioritize goals: when you give someone more than one goal, it is important to rank the goal in order of importance. Prioritizing encourages the employee to take action and expend effort on each goal in proportion to its importance. Rate goals for difficulty and importance. Goal setting should not encourage people to choose easy goals. When goals are rated, individuals can be given credit for trying difficult goals even if they don’t fully achieve them.
Build in feedback mechanisms to assess goal progress; Feedback lets employees know whether their level of effort is sufficient to attain the goal. Feedback should be both self generated and supervisor generated. In either case, feedback should be frequent and recurrent.
Link rewards to goal attainment: It’s natural for employees to ask what’s in it for me? Linking rewards to the achievement of goals will help answer that question.
Showing posts with label Management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Management. Show all posts
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Human relations movement
Another within the human resources approach is important to management history for its unflinching commitment to making management practices more humane. Members of the human relations movement uniformly believed in the importance of employee satisfaction – a satisfied worker was believed to be a productive worker. For the most part, the people associated with this movement – Dale Carnegie, Abraham Maslow, and Douglas McGregor were individuals whose views were shaped more by their personal philosophies than by substantive research evidence.
Dale Carnegie is often overlooked by management scholars, but his ideas and teachings have had an enormous effect on management practice. His book How to Win Friends and Influence People was read by millions in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In addition, during this same period, thousands of managers and aspiring managers attended his management speeches and seminars. What was the theme of Carnegie’s book and lectures? Essentially, he said that the way to succeed was to
(1) make others feel, important through a sincere appreciation of their efforts;
(2) make a good first impression;
(3) win people over to your way of thinking by letting others do the talking, being sympathetic and never telling a man he is wrong and
(4) change people by praising good traits and giving the offender the opportunity to save face.
Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, proposed a hierarchy of five needs: physiological,
safety,
social esteem and self actualization. In terms of motivation,
Maslow argued that each step in the hierarchy must be satisfied before the next level can be activated and that once a need was substantially satisfied,
it no longer motivated behavior.
Douglas McGregor is best known for his formulation of two sets of assumptions -
Theory X and Theory Y – about human nature.
Theory X presents an essentially negative view of people. It assumes that they have little ambition, dislike work, want to avoid responsibility and need to be closely supervised to work effectively.
On the other hand, Theory Y offers a positive view assuming that people can exercise self direction accept responsibility and consider work to be as natural as rest or play. McGregor believed that Theory Y assumptions best captured the true nature of workers and should guide management practice.
A story about McGregor effectively captures the essence of the human perspective. McGregor had taught for a dozen years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before he became president of Antioch College. After six years at Antioch, he seemed to recognize that his philosophy had failed to cope with the realities of organizational life.
He believed for example, that a leader could operate successfully as a kind of advisor to his organization though without being a boss. Unconsciously he hoped to duck the unpleasant necessity of making difficult decisions, of taking the responsibility for in course of action, among many uncertain alternatives, of making mistakes and taking the consequences. Good human relations would eliminate all discord and disagreement. He couldn’t have been more wrong. It took a couple of years for him to realize that a leader cannot avoid the exercise of authority any more than he can avoid responsibility for, what happens to his organizations.
The irony in McGregor’s case was that he went back to MIT and began preaching his humanistic doctrine again. And he continued to do so until his death. Like Maslow’s McGregor’s beliefs about human nature have had a strong following among management academics and practitioners.
What common thread linked the advocates of the human relations movement?
The thing that United human relations supporters, including Carnegie, Maslow, and McGregor, was an unshakable optimism about people’s capabilities. They believed strongly in their cause and were inflexible in their beliefs, even when faced with contradictory evidence. No amount of contrary experience or research evidence would alter their views. Despite this lack of objectivity, advocates of the human relations movement had a definite influence on management theory and practice.
Dale Carnegie is often overlooked by management scholars, but his ideas and teachings have had an enormous effect on management practice. His book How to Win Friends and Influence People was read by millions in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In addition, during this same period, thousands of managers and aspiring managers attended his management speeches and seminars. What was the theme of Carnegie’s book and lectures? Essentially, he said that the way to succeed was to
(1) make others feel, important through a sincere appreciation of their efforts;
(2) make a good first impression;
(3) win people over to your way of thinking by letting others do the talking, being sympathetic and never telling a man he is wrong and
(4) change people by praising good traits and giving the offender the opportunity to save face.
Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, proposed a hierarchy of five needs: physiological,
safety,
social esteem and self actualization. In terms of motivation,
Maslow argued that each step in the hierarchy must be satisfied before the next level can be activated and that once a need was substantially satisfied,
it no longer motivated behavior.
Douglas McGregor is best known for his formulation of two sets of assumptions -
Theory X and Theory Y – about human nature.
Theory X presents an essentially negative view of people. It assumes that they have little ambition, dislike work, want to avoid responsibility and need to be closely supervised to work effectively.
On the other hand, Theory Y offers a positive view assuming that people can exercise self direction accept responsibility and consider work to be as natural as rest or play. McGregor believed that Theory Y assumptions best captured the true nature of workers and should guide management practice.
A story about McGregor effectively captures the essence of the human perspective. McGregor had taught for a dozen years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before he became president of Antioch College. After six years at Antioch, he seemed to recognize that his philosophy had failed to cope with the realities of organizational life.
He believed for example, that a leader could operate successfully as a kind of advisor to his organization though without being a boss. Unconsciously he hoped to duck the unpleasant necessity of making difficult decisions, of taking the responsibility for in course of action, among many uncertain alternatives, of making mistakes and taking the consequences. Good human relations would eliminate all discord and disagreement. He couldn’t have been more wrong. It took a couple of years for him to realize that a leader cannot avoid the exercise of authority any more than he can avoid responsibility for, what happens to his organizations.
The irony in McGregor’s case was that he went back to MIT and began preaching his humanistic doctrine again. And he continued to do so until his death. Like Maslow’s McGregor’s beliefs about human nature have had a strong following among management academics and practitioners.
What common thread linked the advocates of the human relations movement?
The thing that United human relations supporters, including Carnegie, Maslow, and McGregor, was an unshakable optimism about people’s capabilities. They believed strongly in their cause and were inflexible in their beliefs, even when faced with contradictory evidence. No amount of contrary experience or research evidence would alter their views. Despite this lack of objectivity, advocates of the human relations movement had a definite influence on management theory and practice.
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