Setting a specific, difficult target improves performance. That is among the best-established findings in management research, and it is why your business has targets. What follows is what else a target does at the same time.
Key Takeaway
Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky and Bazerman open by calling goal setting one of the most replicated and influential paradigms in the management literature[1], then identify a narrow focus that neglects nongoal areas, distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation[2]. They argue that rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for motivation, it needs to be conceptualised differently[2]. Locke and Latham replied in the same issue, and a secondary source reports they conceded that the failure modes are real while disputing that the theory itself is to blame[3].
Our Grades For These Claims
Applying the scheme from the first article in this series.
That specific, difficult goals improve performance is Grade A, and unusually, that grade is supported by both sides. The critics state it in their opening line.
That the six side effects occur is Grade B. They are published in a peer-reviewed journal with case and experimental evidence, and a secondary source reports the theory's own founders conceding the failure modes are real.
That the side effects are attributable to goal setting theory itself is Grade C, and that is precisely what the founders disputed.
Our position: this is a rare and useful shape. A strong effect, a serious documented downside, and both parties agreeing on the empirical facts while disputing the attribution. That is a more informative situation than the disputes in the fourth, ninth and eighteenth articles of this series, where the facts themselves were contested.
A Note On Method
Everything here is verified to August 2026.
We obtained the published abstract and executive overview of the critique, plus fragments of its body text from hosted copies[1][2][4].
Several of those fragments are truncated mid-sentence, and we say so at each use rather than completing them.
We did not obtain the founders' response, and know its title, journal, volume, issue and date from a publisher record[5]. Its content reaches us through a single commercial website[3], which we flag at every use.
We did not obtain any of the primary goal-setting research, including Locke and Latham (2002), and report citations only.
All arithmetic is ours and uses invented figures to demonstrate a mechanism.
This article reviews management research. It is not management, human resources or compensation advice.
What The Theory Claims
The proposition, as the critics state it.
A source summarising the critique records that performance management practices in organizations are strongly influenced by goal-setting theory, which posits that specific and difficult goals direct and motivate appropriate behaviors, increase persistence in goal attainment, and focus attention on goal-relevant knowledge[4].
The foundational statement is Locke and Latham (2002), Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey, in American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717[1]. A later retrospective is Locke and Latham (2019), The development of goal setting theory: A half century retrospective, in Motivation Science[6]. We obtained neither.
Two observations, ours.
Note the four listed mechanisms: direct behaviour, motivate behaviour, increase persistence, focus attention. Three of those are about effort and one is about attention, and the attention mechanism is the one the critique turns against the theory.
And the word difficult is doing load-bearing work. The claim is not that goals help, it is that hard, specific goals outperform vague or easy ones. A business that sets soft targets is not testing this theory.
The Critics' Opening Concession
How the critique begins, which is not how critiques usually begin.
The executive overview opens: "Goal setting is one of the most replicated and influential paradigms in the management literature."[1]
Three observations, ours.
The authors are conceding the evidence base in their first sentence. This is not a paper arguing the effect is not real.
Which makes the critique harder to dismiss, and it also constrains what the paper can be about. If the effect is real, the argument has to be about consequences rather than existence.
And it puts this dispute in a different category from most in this series. The fourth article covered two camps disagreeing about whether an effect existed. Here both sides agree it exists and argue about what follows, which is a more advanced and more useful stage of a literature.
The Six Side Effects
The list, quoted from the abstract.
"We identify specific side effects associated with goal setting, including a narrow focus that neglects nongoal areas, distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation."[2]
Two observations before taking them in turn, ours.
The word is systematic, in the paper's title. The claim is not that goals sometimes go wrong but that these failures follow predictably from the mechanism that makes goals work.
And notice that the last one is the subject of the fourth article in this series. Reduced intrinsic motivation is the crowding-out literature, which we found contested across four meta-analyses. Its appearance here is a claim that goal setting produces the same effect incentives were argued to produce.
Narrow Focus
The first and, on our reading, the parent of several others.
The paper states plainly: "With goals, people narrow their focus."[4]
And later: "Overall, the narrow focus of specific goals can inspire performance but prevent" other things, with our source truncating there[4].
Three observations, ours.
Narrowing is the mechanism, not a malfunction. Focusing attention on goal-relevant knowledge is one of the four things the theory says goals do. Attention directed at the target is attention withdrawn from everything else, by definition.
Which means the benefit and the cost are the same event. You cannot have the focus without the neglect, and a manager who wants the first while avoiding the second is asking for something the mechanism does not offer.
And it connects directly to the seventh article in this series, where feedback that redirected attention impaired performance. Both literatures describe a finite attentional resource being pointed somewhere, with consequences wherever it is no longer pointed.
Distorted Risk Preferences
The second effect, with one specific citation we could partially read.
The paper notes an example: "Galinsky et al. (2002) found that stretch goals increased the" and our source truncates[4]. The surrounding text concerns negotiation, and the paper's reference list includes Neale and Bazerman (1985) on the effect of externally set goals on reaching integrative agreements in competitive markets[2].
We did not obtain either study and report no findings from them.
Two observations, ours.
The logic is straightforward and does not need the studies. If you are below a target with time running out, the options that could still reach it are the risky ones. Safe options guarantee a miss.
Which means a target does not merely raise effort; it changes which choices look acceptable, and it does so most strongly at exactly the moment someone is falling short. That is a prediction any business can check against its own quarter-ends.
Unethical Behaviour
The third and most serious, reported with care about our sourcing.
The abstract names a rise in unethical behavior[2].
A commercial summary of the paper reports two supporting strands: that Sears auto-repair mechanics inflated invoices to hit revenue targets, and that in experimental work participants cheated on a goal-tied task at higher rates than those without a goal[3].
We did not obtain the paper's treatment of either and report both only as that commercial source describes them.
Two observations, ours.
The paper also notes that when senior management gives lawyers and consultants specific, challenging targets, our source truncating mid-word, in a passage concerning billable hours[4]. We record the fragment because the professional services setting is directly relevant to this publication's readers, and we do not complete the sentence.
And the mechanism follows from the first two effects rather than being separate. If attention narrows to the metric, and falling short makes risky options attractive, then misreporting the metric is simply the cheapest remaining route to it. No dishonest disposition is required.
Inhibited Learning
The fourth, and the one most likely to be invisible.
The abstract names inhibited learning[2], and the paper's reference list includes Wood, Bandura and Bailey (1990)[4], which we did not obtain.
Two observations, ours.
A performance goal asks how much. A learning goal asks how. Someone under a hard performance target has every reason to use the method they already know and none to try a better one, because experimentation risks the number.
And this cost is structurally invisible, in the way this series has now documented eight times. The method not tried leaves no record. A team that hit every target using a deteriorating approach shows a clean scorecard right up until it does not.
Culture And Intrinsic Motivation
The fifth and sixth, taken together because our sourcing on both is thin.
The abstract names corrosion of organizational culture and reduced intrinsic motivation[2]. The paper's reference list includes Mossholder (1980), Effects of externally mediated goal setting on intrinsic motivation: A laboratory experiment[2], which we did not obtain.
Two observations, ours.
On intrinsic motivation, the fourth article in this series examined that literature directly and found it genuinely contested, with four meta-analyses reaching two answers. We therefore treat this side effect as the weakest of the six, not because this paper is wrong but because the underlying literature it draws on is unsettled.
On culture, we obtained no supporting material at all beyond the phrase in the abstract, and report nothing further.
The Metaphor They Chose
The paper's own framing, which is the most quotable thing in it.
"Rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for motivation, managers and scholars need to conceptualize goal set"ting differently, with our source truncating[2]. The paper's title describes the problem as overprescribing[1].
Three observations, ours.
The pharmaceutical framing is precisely chosen. A prescription medication is not a bad thing. It is an effective thing with known side effects, a dosage, contraindications, and a requirement that somebody qualified decides whether this patient should have it.
Which reframes the whole argument. The critics are not saying stop using targets. They are saying stop treating targets as free.
And it is a useful test for any management practice. Anything strong enough to change behaviour is strong enough to change behaviour you did not intend. A tool with no side effects is usually a tool with no effects.
The What The Hell Problem
An observation in the paper that we think is the most immediately actionable thing in it.
The paper describes a "CEO who receives a bonus for hitting targets. This CEO may set a mix of easy goals (that she is sure to meet) and 'what the hell' difficult goals (that she does not plan to meet). On average, the goal levels" appear reasonable, with our source truncating[4].
Three observations, ours.
This is about who sets the target. When the person being measured also chooses the measure, the distribution of difficulty gets gamed even if the average does not.
The paper also notes that "setting the right goals is itself a challenging affair"[4], which is a concession that the theory's prescription is harder to follow than it sounds.
And it means reviewing a target list by its average difficulty is worthless. The next section shows why, arithmetically.
What That Looks Like In Numbers
Our own illustration. The figures are invented to demonstrate a mechanism the critics describe qualitatively, and no source states them.
Suppose six annual targets with the following chances of being hit: renew two existing clients, 95 percent. File on time, 98 percent. Hold costs flat, 90 percent. Triple new business, 5 percent. Enter a new market, 10 percent. Cut delivery time by sixty percent, 8 percent.
The average probability is 51 percent, which looks like a well-calibrated stretch. The expected number hit is about three of six, which also looks reasonable.
The probability of hitting all six is roughly three hundredths of one percent.
Two observations.
Nobody experiences the average. The person experiences six targets, three of which are free and three of which are unreachable.
And not one of the six sits in the range where the theory says the effect lives. Goal setting theory concerns specific, difficult but attainable goals. A ninety-five percent target is not difficult and a five percent target is not attainable. The average conceals that the list contains no goals of the kind the research is about.
The Response
What the theory's founders said, and our sourcing on it is limited.
Locke and Latham replied in the same issue. A publisher record lists their piece and dates it to 1 February 2009, Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 1[5], and a commercial source gives its title as "Has goal setting gone wild, or have its attackers abandoned good scholarship?"[3].
We did not obtain this paper. We have its existence and date from a publisher record and its title and characterisation from a commercial website.
Two observations, ours.
The title is combative, and it is worth saying that a response accusing critics of abandoning good scholarship is not a neutral document. Neither, of course, is a critique titled "Goals Gone Wild".
And the fact that both appeared in the same issue means the journal solicited and published the exchange together, which is closer to the adversarial format praised in the twentieth article of this series than an ordinary comment-and-reply cycle is.
What The Founders Conceded
The substance of the reply, on thin sourcing.
A commercial summary reports that Locke and Latham "conceded that the failure modes are real while disputing that the theory itself is to blame"[3].
This reaches us from a single commercial website and we could not verify it. We report it because if accurate it changes the shape of the dispute substantially, and we would rather flag a load-bearing claim than omit it.
Two observations, ours, conditional on that being right.
If both sides agree the failures occur, then the disagreement is about attribution rather than fact, and a practitioner does not need it resolved. The failures happen either way.
And the founders' position would be that the failures arise from misapplication, which is a defensible claim about a theory that has always specified conditions. That is the subject of the reconciliation section below.
And A Third Round
The exchange did not stop there.
The same publisher record lists a further piece by Latham and Locke, Science and Ethics: What Should Count as Evidence Against the Use of Goal Setting?, dated 1 August 2009, Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 3, alongside a further contribution from Ordóñez and colleagues in the same volume and issue[5].
We obtained neither and report titles and dates only.
Two observations, ours.
The third-round title asks what should count as evidence, which means by the second exchange the parties had moved from arguing about findings to arguing about the standards for assessing them. That is usually where a dispute stops being productive.
And it is the contrast with the twentieth article in this series. There, two authors with contradictory results pooled their data. Here, four rounds of publication, and on the evidence we obtained, no joint reanalysis.
The Reconciliation
Where we think this actually lands. This section is our own reasoning.
A commercial summary offers a formulation we find persuasive: "a hard performance target, applied where the moderators do not hold, redirects effort toward the metric and away from the underlying work"[3].
Goal setting theory has always specified conditions. The standard list includes commitment to the goal, feedback on progress, task complexity, and the ability to do the task. We did not obtain the primary sources for these and report them as the framework is commonly described.
Three consequences, ours.
If the failures cluster where the conditions are absent, then both parties are right. The theory works within its stated boundaries, and the harms occur where it is applied outside them.
Which makes this the same structure as the third article in this series, where choice overload appeared only under four specific moderators and vanished on average. A conditional effect deployed as a general rule produces exactly this pattern of reported successes and reported disasters.
And it gives a practical test that does not require the dispute to be settled: before setting a target, check whether the conditions hold. If the person cannot do the task, has no feedback on progress, or the work is genuinely complex, the theory itself does not predict a benefit.
Setting Targets In A Small Firm
The application, and it is ours.
Four features of a small business change how this lands.
The owner sets their own targets, which is the "what the hell" problem with nobody to catch it.
Nongoal areas are fewer and more load-bearing. In a large firm, neglecting an area means another department notices. In a firm of six, the neglected area is simply neglected.
Feedback on progress is often absent, because monthly management accounts may not exist. That is one of the theory's own stated conditions.
And the ethical exposure is concentrated. A revenue target that encourages aggressive recognition or optimistic invoicing sits with the person who signs the return.
Our own view, offered as reasoning: the small-firm version of the critique's advice is that the target list is a portfolio. Look at its spread rather than its average, check that each target has a feedback mechanism attached, and name explicitly which areas are being deprioritised, because they are being deprioritised whether or not you name them.
What To Do
Treat targets as prescription strength, not over-the-counter. That is the critics' own metaphor, and it means dosage, contraindications and a decision about whether this case warrants them.
Accept that focus and neglect are the same event. Narrowing attention is the mechanism that makes goals work, so the cost is not avoidable by better intentions.
Name the nongoal areas explicitly. They are being deprioritised regardless; writing them down at least makes the trade deliberate.
Check the theory's own conditions first. Commitment, feedback on progress, task complexity and ability. Where these do not hold, the theory does not predict a benefit and the critique predicts harm.
Never review a target list by its average difficulty. On our own arithmetic, six targets averaging a 51 percent hit rate can contain three that are free and three that are impossible, and none in the range that matters.
Watch the quarter end. Distorted risk preferences bite hardest on someone falling short with time running out, which is a prediction you can check against your own records.
Be careful where the metric is self-reported. If attention narrows to a number and safe routes to it have closed, misreporting is the cheapest route left, and no dishonest disposition is required.
Separate performance goals from learning goals. A hard performance target gives someone every reason to use the method they already know.
Do not let anyone set their own difficulty unchecked. The what-the-hell pattern is documented and it is the default when the measured party chooses the measure.
The Limits Of This Analysis
Several caveats matter. This article reviews management research and is not management, human resources or compensation advice. Everything is verified to August 2026. We obtained the critique's abstract and executive overview plus fragments of its body, several of which are truncated mid-sentence; we say so at each use and do not complete them. We did not obtain the founders' response, and know its title and characterisation only from a single commercial website, including the load-bearing claim that they conceded the failure modes are real, which we could not verify. We did not obtain the third-round papers and report titles and dates only. We did not obtain any of the primary goal-setting research, including Locke and Latham (2002) and (2019), nor any of the supporting studies cited within the critique, and report citations only with no findings. The Sears case and the experimental cheating finding reach us through a commercial website, not the paper. The theory's moderating conditions are reported as the framework is commonly described, not from a primary source. All arithmetic is ours and uses invented probabilities to demonstrate a mechanism the critics describe qualitatively. The reading that focus and neglect are the same event, the analysis of how the unethical-behaviour effect follows from the first two, the portfolio framing, and the small-firm section are our own reasoning, not findings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does goal setting work?
What are the side effects?
Did the theory's founders accept this?
So should we stop using targets?
What is the what-the-hell problem?
Where does this bite hardest in a small firm?
References
- 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. DOI 10.5465/amp.2009.37007999, hosted copy, executive overview stating that goal setting is one of the most replicated and influential paradigms in the management literature; and reference list confirming 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, and Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2006), New directions in goal-setting theory, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(5), 265–268. Note: a hosted copy; we obtained the executive overview and reference list, not the full text. researchgate.net
- Academy of Management Perspectives publisher record for Ordóñez and colleagues (2009), reproducing the abstract, on the authors identifying specific side effects associated with goal setting including a narrow focus that neglects nongoal areas, distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation; and on the argument that rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for motivation, managers and scholars need to conceptualize goal setting differently; together with the paper's reference list identifying Mossholder, K. W. (1980), Effects of externally mediated goal setting on intrinsic motivation: A laboratory experiment, and Neale, M. A., & Bazerman, M. H. (1985) on the effect of externally set goals on reaching integrative agreements in competitive markets. Note: the publisher's own record. The passage on conceptualising goal setting is truncated in our source and we do not complete it. journals.aom.org
- Commercial website summarising goal-setting theory and the 2009 exchange, on the critique documenting failure modes with case evidence including Sears auto-repair mechanics inflating invoices to hit revenue targets and participants cheating on a goal-tied task at higher rates than those without a goal; on the common thread being that a hard performance target, applied where the moderators do not hold, redirects effort toward the metric and away from the underlying work; on Locke and Latham responding in the same issue in a piece titled Has goal setting gone wild, or have its attackers abandoned good scholarship?; and on their having conceded that the failure modes are real while disputing that the theory itself is to blame. Note: a commercial website, not peer-reviewed. This is our sole source for the response paper's title and for the concession, which is a load-bearing claim in this article and which we could not verify against the paper. goalsandprogress.com
- Hosted copy of Ordóñez and colleagues (2009) with body-text fragments, on people narrowing their focus with goals; on New York City cab drivers; on Galinsky and colleagues (2002) having found that stretch goals increased something our source truncates; on senior management giving lawyers and consultants specific, challenging targets, truncated mid-word, in a passage concerning billable hours; on the narrow focus of specific goals being able to inspire performance but prevent something our source truncates; on setting the right goals being itself a challenging affair; on a CEO who receives a bonus for hitting targets potentially setting a mix of easy goals she is sure to meet and "what the hell" difficult goals she does not plan to meet, so that on average the goal levels appear acceptable; and on goal-setting theory positing that specific and difficult goals direct and motivate appropriate behaviors, increase persistence in goal attainment, and focus attention on goal-relevant knowledge. Note: a hosted copy. Several passages are truncated mid-sentence in our source and we report them as fragments without completing them. We did not obtain any of the studies cited within these passages. researchgate.net
- Academy of Management Perspectives publisher record listing the related exchange, identifying a piece by Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham dated 1 February 2009 in Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 1; a further piece by Gary P. Latham and Edwin A. Locke titled Science and Ethics: What Should Count as Evidence Against the Use of Goal Setting?, dated 1 August 2009, Vol. 23, No. 3; and a further contribution by Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky and Bazerman dated 1 August 2009, Vol. 23, No. 3. Note: a publisher listing only. We obtained none of these papers and report titles, volumes, issues and dates with no content. journals.aom.org
- Systematic review reference list in a peer-reviewed sport psychology journal, identifying Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2019), The development of goal setting theory: A half century retrospective, Motivation Science, 5(2), 93–105; Locke, E., Shaw, K., Saari, L., & Latham, G. (1981), Goal setting and task performance: 1969–1980, Psychological Bulletin, 90(1), 125–152; and Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2013), New developments in goal setting and task performance, Routledge. Note: a reference list in a peer-reviewed review. We obtained none of these works and report citations only. tandfonline.com
This article reviews management research and is not management, human resources or compensation advice. The critique was not obtained in full and several quoted passages are truncated mid-sentence in our sources. The founders' response was not obtained; its title and the claim that they conceded the failure modes are real come from a single commercial website and are unverified. None of the primary goal-setting research was obtained. All arithmetic is the authors' own and uses invented probabilities to demonstrate a mechanism described qualitatively in the critique.