Goal-Setting Theory: Effective Strategies for Success

What is this page about?

An explainer of goal-setting theory, Edwin Locke and Gary Latham's finding that specific, challenging goals produce better performance than vague "do your best" ones, opening with Locke's 1968 paper and the logging-industry evidence. It covers the five principles and four mechanisms, the cognitive science, the role of self-efficacy (Bandura), learning versus performance goals, and the Dweck-Locke debate, with four case studies (the logging trucks, participative goal-setting across cultures, "Goals Gone Wild," and social cognitive theory in organizations), the empirical evidence, and critiques.

What has been corrected on this page?

Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

1. 11 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

   The 2009 'Goals Gone Wild' paper predates the 2016 Wells Fargo scandal; replacing with a case (Ford Pinto) actually discussed by Ordonez et al. (2009).

   Before

   At Wells Fargo, specific cross-selling goals for branch employees produced millions of unauthorized account openings.

   After

   At Ford, an aggressive goal to build a subcompact car under a strict weight and cost ceiling contributed to the dangerous design of the Ford Pinto.

   Why: The specific sentence named in this contribution was already correctly fixed to the Ford Pinto example. However, found and fixed the SAME Wells Fargo/2009-Ordonez-paper fabrication repeated in three additional locations: (1) the article's closing summary paragraph still said 'the failures of goal-setting at Enron and Wells Fargo' (fixed to 'Enron and Ford'), (2) the post excerpt independently said 'they also built Enron and Wells Fargo' (fixed to 'Enron and the Ford Pinto'), and (3) a FAQ answer explicitly attributed 'Wells Fargo's account-opening quotas' to the 2009 Ordonez et al. paper alongside the legitimate Enron and Ford Pinto examples (removed, since Wells Fargo's scandal broke in 2016, seven years after the paper). All three fixes verified clean on fresh re-fetch and the live rendered page.

   View the full record →

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