In partial fulfilment of requirement in

Foundations in Human Resource Management

BA 933

Journal Critique on: Learning versus performance goals: When should each be used?
School Year
2018 - 2019

Submitted to:
Mr. Godofredo Eding

Submitted by:
Kevin Mark C. Ramos
Journal Critique on: Learning versus performance goals: When should each be
used?

Goal setting is an important tool in management. Behavioral experts and

psychologists agree that goal setting increase an employee’s effectiveness.
Performance goals affect the focus, effort and persistence of the employees. A goal
assists in the prioritization of employee’s attention, focusing on actions which are goal
relevant. A goal would also help employees manage the amount of effort they exert
based on the difficulty level of the goal. A goal will also push employees to persist in
their effort until the goal is reached. Lastly, goal setting stimulates the development of
better task strategies.

However, the article argues that contrary to this established belief on motivation
in the workplace, performance or outcome goals can have harmful effects on an
employee’s performance. The article says that it is the acquisition of knowledge and
skills rather than the mere increase in effort and persistence that is needed for improved
performance. The focus should instead be on the discovery of effective strategies or
processes to attain desired results.

The article explains that obtaining information before setting a performance goal
is fundamentally important. Setting a particular performance goal detrimentally affects
an individual's viability in the beginning periods of learning. Trying to accomplish a
particular performance goal places extra demands on individuals, to such an extent that
they can't commit the vital cognitive resources to perfecting the task. Instead of learning
how to master an activity or task, employees would only try to achieve the required level
of performance as specified in their performance goals.

Additionally, the assignment of a specific challenging performance goal makes

some people so anxious to perform well that they unsystematically try to discover the
task-relevant strategies, which proves both inefficient and ineffective. The article gives
demonstrates this with an amateur golfer example. In the case, instead of perfecting
form, the amateur golfer would try to swing as many times as possible just to achieve
their goal.

KEVIN MARK C. RAMOS

MBA- Foundations in Human Resource Management
 The article provides sufficient reasoning to back its claim. In addition to the
figures provided by the article, anecdotal evidence show that having performance goals
before providing means of acquisition of knowledge and skills tend to make employees
careless and ineffective. In various enterprises in the country, quotas, especially for
sales, are established. In most times, employees only try to reach the quotas rather
than improve their craft. This is extremely risky on a dynamic and competitive
environment, especially when the quotas are increased. Many employees find
themselves unable to achieve the quota. This is also true to a number of government
agencies, in their different functions. This is the main reason why there are a lot of
inefficiencies in the government service. Instead of focusing on acquiring knowledge,
they focus on achieving the set goal.

This however, has an accompanying caveat. The use of performance goals is

still a highly effective tool in management. The only point of the article is that it would
work effectively if there has been sufficient acquisition of knowledge to develop effective
strategies.

Further quantification of the effectiveness of performance goals is needed for this

study. Most of the evidence given by the article are either anecdotal or solely based on
related literature. Statistics on the difference in increase in performance between having
solely performance goals and having the means for knowledge acquisition must be
gathered.

KEVIN MARK C. RAMOS

MBA- Foundations in Human Resource Management