GUIDEPOST: What Makes Writing about Goals Work?

Goal setting theory (GST), developed by myself and Gary Latham (Locke & Latham, 1990) and focused on task performance, was the product of induction, based on some 400 studies, and thus totally at variance with the conventional deductive approach demanded by our journals. The theory included main effects, mediators, and moderators, and showed generalization across tasks, measures, subjects, countries, time, units of analyses (teams, business units), and experimental designs (experimental, correlational). It also included an analysis of all partly or totally disconfirming studies.