UPI Study › Courses › Leadership and Organizational Behavior › Free lessons › Lesson 9.4 Free with a free account
Goal-Setting Theory, Self-Determination Theory, and Cognitive Evaluation Theory
Leadership and Organizational Behavior · Chapter 9: Theories of Motivation and Their Organizational ApplicationsSection 9.4 · lesson 50 of 12211 min · free with a free account
Free preview
Create a free account to keep watching
It takes a minute and costs nothing. Your free account unlocks all of Chapter 1 and 3 more lessons of Leadership and Organizational Behavior.
Lesson complete
Earn the 3 college credits for Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Enrolling adds a quiz after each lesson, the graded work and the official transcript. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
Next lesson: Applying Motivation Theory: Diagnosis, Job Design, Recognition, and Remote Work →← Behavior-Based Theories: Equity Theory, Vroom's Expectancy, and Reinforcement TheoryNext lesson: Applying Motivation Theory: Diagnosis, Job Design, Recognition, and Remote Work →
In this lesson
Goals, autonomy, and the rewards that quietly destroy motivation.
- Apply the five goal characteristics
- Judge SMART against the original theory
- Place motivation on the SDT continuum
- Protect intrinsic motivation from controlling rewards
Free study notes
Get this lesson's notes by email
The key points and 4 practice questions with answers, in your inbox. One email, free.
One email. Unsubscribe in one click.
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,436 words). Read along, or search it.
Theories of Motivation and Their Organizational Applications
Goal-Setting, Self-Determination, and Cognitive Evaluation Theory
The theories in the previous sections were mostly about rewards and fairness. This section shifts to goals, autonomy, and intrinsic motivation. Three frameworks carry that shift, and they build on each other. Goal-Setting Theory is the most empirically validated theory in organizational psychology. Self-Determination Theory explains what sustains motivation when nobody is watching. And Cognitive Evaluation Theory explains how a well-meant reward can destroy both. That third framework is the reason to take the first two carefully. It is entirely possible to set excellent goals, attach a reward, and end up worse off. So we will take goal-setting first, with its conditions attached. Then the three psychological needs, and the continuum of motivation types. Then the specific circumstances under which an external reward backfires.
A Shift Of Focus
From Rewards to Goals and Autonomy
Equity, expectancy and reinforcement all share a focus. They explain motivation through rewards and perceptions of fairness. A complementary set of frameworks looks somewhere else entirely. Goal-Setting Theory asks what a well-formed goal does to attention and persistence. Self-Determination Theory asks which psychological needs produce intrinsic motivation. Cognitive Evaluation Theory asks how external events act on that intrinsic motivation. Rewards, deadlines, feedback, and surveillance are all such events. Each of the three contributes a distinct and practically powerful insight. Notice why they travel together, though. The third exists largely to warn you about applying the first two carelessly. Good goals plus a badly designed reward can leave you behind where you started.
Goal-Setting
The Most Validated Theory in the Field
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham developed Goal-Setting Theory over decades. The empirical work began in the nineteen sixties and has continued since. It is one of the most robustly validated theories in organizational psychology. Its central proposition is straightforward, though the implications are not. Specific, challenging goals produce higher performance than vague exhortations to do your best. Sit with what that rules out. A manager who cares deeply and communicates enthusiastically has not yet done the thing that works. Asking for someone's best effort is not a goal. It provides no target for attention, no standard for effort, and no way to tell progress. Do your best sounds generous and demanding at the same time. It reliably underperforms a specific number, which is one of the field's most replicated findings.
Five Characteristics
What Makes a Goal Work
Five goal characteristics determine whether a goal actually works. Specificity directs attention and effort precisely. In practice, replace improve sales with increase sales by fifteen percent in the third quarter. Difficulty is the second characteristic, and it has a ceiling. Higher goals produce higher effort, up to the limit of ability. So set goals that stretch, but remain achievable. Commitment is third, and without it goal difficulty has no effect at all. Involving employees in goal-setting is the most reliable way to build it. Feedback is fourth. Progress information sustains effort and enables adjustment. Fifth is task complexity, which changes what kind of goal to set. Complex tasks require learning goals alongside performance goals, so separate process goals from outcome goals.
SMART
A Useful Acronym With One Real Flaw
You have almost certainly met the SMART acronym. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. It operationalizes many of these principles in a memorable format, which is genuinely useful. But it has attracted a serious criticism, and the criticism lands on one letter. SMART overemphasizes achievability, at the expense of challenge. Truly motivating goals, according to Locke and Latham, should push beyond what is comfortable. Merely being achievable was never the standard. So a team that writes flawless SMART goals can still set targets that motivate nobody. This is worth noticing as a general pattern. When a research finding gets compressed for memorability, the acronym survives. The part that made the theory interesting is frequently the part that gets dropped.
Conditions
When Goal-Setting Fails
Goal-setting has conditions, and outside them the effect disappears. First, employees must have the ability and the resources to achieve the goal. A stretch target with no tools attached is just an announcement. Second, goals must be accepted. Participation in goal-setting enhances commitment. Third, feedback must be accessible, so people can regulate their own effort. Fourth, goal conflict between competing goals must be actively managed. That fourth condition is violated constantly in organizations with many stakeholders. Fifth, and most counterintuitively, learning goals outperform performance goals on novel or complex tasks. Think about why that would be true. On unfamiliar work, telling someone to hit a number does not tell them how. It adds pressure to confusion, where a learning goal would have added direction.
SDT
Three Needs, One Environment
Edward Deci and Richard Ryan developed Self-Determination Theory from the nineteen seventies onward. It proposes that human beings have three fundamental psychological needs. Autonomy is the experience of volition and self-direction. Competence is the experience of effectiveness and mastery. Relatedness is the experience of meaningful connection with others. Now notice where the theory locates the action. When these needs are satisfied by the work environment, intrinsic motivation flourishes. When they are thwarted, motivation and well-being deteriorate. Both of those together, which is a detail worth holding onto. It explains why demotivation and burnout so often show up at the same time. They are not two problems. They are two readings of the same unmet need.
The Continuum
Five Kinds of Motivated
Self-Determination Theory does something unusual. It distinguishes types of motivation, not just amounts. There is a continuum, and it has five positions. External regulation means doing something solely for external reward, or to avoid punishment. The workplace example is working in order to avoid a reprimand. Introjected regulation means doing something to avoid guilt, or to maintain self-esteem. That is working hard so as not to feel bad about yourself. Identified regulation means doing something because you personally value it. The role serves a goal you care about, even if the task itself is dull. Integrated regulation means the activity is fully aligned with your sense of self. And intrinsic motivation means doing something for the inherent satisfaction it provides. These are positions on a line, not personality types. Movement along it is the point.
Quality
Motivation Quality Beats Motivation Quantity
The practical implication for organizations is easy to state and hard to accept. Motivation quality matters as much as motivation quantity. Consider an employee who is highly motivated, but entirely externally. They are driven by fear, or by incentives, and nothing else. That employee may perform perfectly adequately on observable tasks. What they will not generate is discretionary effort, creativity, or organizational citizenship behavior. And here is why that deficit stays invisible for years. The targets are being hit, so the reports look fine. The idea nobody asked for, and the help nobody assigned, never show up as missing. Moving employees toward more autonomous motivation is therefore a design task. It requires work that supports all three basic needs, not merely a better incentive.
CET
Controlling Versus Informational
Cognitive Evaluation Theory is a sub-theory inside Self-Determination Theory. It examines one question specifically. How do external events affect intrinsic motivation? Rewards, deadlines, feedback, and surveillance are all external events in this sense. Its central finding is counterintuitive, and it is the one to remember. Certain external rewards, applied to activities that are already intrinsically motivating, can undermine that motivation. That is the overjustification effect. The theory explains it with a single distinction. Controlling events reduce perceived autonomy, and therefore reduce intrinsic motivation. Informational events provide competence-relevant feedback, and therefore support it. So the question is never whether an event happened. It is how the employee read it.
Two Rewards
A Bribe and a Compliment
Two concrete examples make the distinction sharp. First, a bonus that feels like a bribe. It is given contingently, with no acknowledgment of the work's value. That reduces intrinsic motivation, because it reads as control. Second, praise that acknowledges effort and growth. Delivered in an autonomy-supportive context, it enhances intrinsic motivation. It reads as information about competence. Both are external events, arriving from outside the person. What separates them is only how they are interpreted. This is why identical incentive schemes produce opposite results in different teams. The scheme is the same. The meaning attached to it is not, and meaning is what moves behavior.
Protection
Five Rules for Not Breaking What Works
So Cognitive Evaluation Theory converts into five protective rules. First, avoid contingent, task-non-contingent rewards for inherently engaging work. Second, frame feedback as informational, rather than evaluative and controlling. Those can use identical words, and land completely differently. Third, offer choice and rationale, rather than mandating an approach. Even when the outcome is fixed, the method often does not have to be. Fourth, acknowledge the employee's perspective when external constraints genuinely apply. Constraints are tolerable. Pretending they are choices is not. Fifth, use unexpected rewards rather than promised ones where intrinsic motivation is already high. That last rule contains the whole theory in miniature. A reward announced in advance changes why the work is being done, before any of it happens.
About Leadership and Organizational Behavior at UPI Study
Leadership and Organizational Behavior (Business 206) is a self-paced online course of 122 video lessons in 20 chapters, from personality, perception and motivation to leadership and power, teams, decision-making, conflict, organizational structure, culture, ethics and change. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus All Business courses Every course with PRO →
Compare: Management and leadership courses · Foundations of Leadership vs Leadership and OB
Why take it here
Why students take Leadership and Organizational Behavior with UPI Study
Where the credit goes
Universities that work with NCCRS
Leadership and Organizational Behavior carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Thomas Edison State UniversitySigned partner
University of the PeopleSigned partner
Charter Oak State CollegeSigned partner
Strayer UniversitySigned partner
Columbia Southern UniversitySigned partner
Indiana TechSigned partner
Penn StateWorks with NCCRS
Southern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRS
SUNYWorks with NCCRS
+many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.
FAQ
Questions students ask us
About Goal-Setting Theory, Self-Determination Theory, and Cognitive Evaluation Theory
What is goal-setting theory?
What is wrong with SMART goals?
What are the types of motivation in self-determination theory?
What is cognitive evaluation theory?
About the Leadership and Organizational Behavior course
How many college credits is Leadership and Organizational Behavior?
How much does Leadership and Organizational Behavior cost and what is included?
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
How long does Leadership and Organizational Behavior take?
How are the exams done?
How do my credits reach my college?
Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Leadership and Organizational Behavior.
122 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →