PSYCH 658 Week 2 Goal Setting, Expectancy and Equity Example

A Box-Packing Target, a Bonus Nobody Believed In and a Pay Gap Between Drivers: Cognitive Motivation Theories at a Food Bank

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/658: Work Motivation and Job Attitudes

Week 2 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The food bank, its staff, volunteers and figures are composites written for a model paper; theories and research findings come from the sources listed.

Need theories describe what people want; process theories describe how people decide how much effort to give. Three process theories, goal setting, expectancy and equity, each explain a different kind of motivational problem. This paper applies them to three situations at the Phoenix food bank where I manage operations.

Problem One: Packing Shifts With No Target

Volunteers on weekday morning shifts pack emergency food boxes, each with twelve standard items. Output varied widely, from about 180 boxes per shift to 420, with no clear relationship to the number of volunteers. Shift leads told volunteers to "pack as many as you can."

Locke and Latham (2002) pulled together three and a half decades of goal studies. Study after study found that a concrete, demanding target beat both a vague plea to do one's best and an easy target. Goals worked through four mechanisms: directing attention to goal-relevant activities, energizing effort, prolonging persistence and prompting the discovery and use of task strategies. The goal-performance relationship was strongest when people were committed to the goal, received feedback on progress and had the ability to reach it, and when tasks were not so complex that a learning goal would be more useful.

"Pack as many as you can" is a do-your-best instruction. The research predicts that a specific, challenging goal with progress feedback would raise output.

What Changed on the Packing Line

For four weeks, leads opened each shift by setting a goal based on the number of volunteers, such as 350 boxes for twelve people, and a large whiteboard counter tracked progress every thirty minutes. Volunteers could suggest raising the goal. Average output rose from 285 to 362 boxes per shift, and variation narrowed. Volunteers described the counter as "fun" and said it made their effort visible.

Problem Two: A Bonus Nobody Believed In

Last year the board introduced a $500 annual bonus for all warehouse staff if the warehouse-wide order error rate fell below one percent. Errors stayed near two and a half percent, and staff said the target was "a joke." Several said that errors came from volunteers' packing or from donated items with missing labels, things they could not control.

Vroom treated effort as the product of three judgments a worker makes: Can I hit the target if I try? Will hitting it actually bring the reward? Do I care about that reward? If any belief is weak, motivation falls. A meta-analysis of studies testing Vroom's model (Van Eerde & Thierry, 1996) found that its components related to performance, effort, intention and preference, with valence, instrumentality and expectancy each showing modest correlations. The components were more strongly related to attitudes and intentions than to behavior, and within-subject designs supported the theory better than between-subject designs.

The bonus failed at expectancy: staff did not believe their effort could bring the error rate under one percent, because many errors came from sources they did not control.

The bonus was worth having; the problem was that no one believed working harder could win it.

Redesigning the Bonus

We replaced the warehouse-wide target with crew-level targets based on errors each crew could control, such as picking the wrong pallet or mislabeling an outgoing order, measured monthly with a baseline for each crew. Crews meeting a ten percent reduction from their own baseline earned a quarterly bonus of $150 per person. Volunteer packing errors were addressed separately through training. Within two quarters, four of five crews met their targets, and the warehouse error rate fell to 1.7 percent.

Problem Three: Drivers on Two Pay Scales

Two years ago the food bank raised the starting pay for truck drivers from $19 to $22.50 an hour to compete with delivery companies. Drivers hired earlier, some with ten years of experience, now earn $21 after raises. Long-serving drivers were angry, and one filed a complaint.

Adams (1963) argued that people judge fairness by a private ledger: what they get, in pay and credit, set against what they give, in effort, years and skill, and then checked against the same ledger for someone they compare themselves with. When ratios are unequal, people experience inequity, which is unpleasant and motivates them to restore equity by changing inputs, changing outcomes, distorting perceptions, changing the comparison person or leaving. Adams noted that underpayment produces anger and overpayment can produce guilt, though people tolerate overpayment more readily.

Our senior drivers compared themselves with new hires who brought less experience but earned more. Their responses fit Adams's predictions: some reduced inputs by refusing extra routes, one filed a complaint to change outcomes and two applied elsewhere.

Restoring Equity

The fix had to change the comparison itself, not just soothe feelings about it.

The board approved a pay adjustment that placed every driver on a scale based on years of service, so no experienced driver earns less than a new hire, and committed to reviewing pay annually against the market. The cost was about $38,000 a year, less than the cost of replacing two experienced drivers.

Goals for Volunteers Need Care

Goal setting with volunteers carries risks that paid settings do not. Volunteers can leave at any time, and pressure that feels like a production quota could drive away people who come for friendship and meaning. We kept the goals collaborative, invited volunteers to suggest the number, celebrated reaching it without singling out slow packers and paused the counter on days with mostly first-time volunteers, whose goal was simply learning the task. Locke and Latham's research suggests that participation in setting goals matters most for commitment when goals are not otherwise accepted, which fits a volunteer setting where acceptance cannot be assumed.

Fairness Beyond Pay

Equity concerns extend beyond wages. Warehouse staff noticed that volunteers from corporate groups received lunch and branded shirts, while staff working the same shifts did not. The comparison was not about pay, but it registered as an imbalance in recognition. We began providing lunch for staff on corporate volunteer days, a small change that several staff mentioned in the next survey.

Comparing the Theories

Each theory explained one problem well because its mechanism fit. Goal setting addressed missing direction; expectancy addressed a broken effort-performance link; equity addressed an unfair comparison. Applying the wrong theory, such as adding goals for drivers angry about pay, would have done little.

Over the summer, the changes cost little beyond the drivers' adjustment, and each produced a measurable result that the board could see.

Limits

Volunteer goals rose output in the short term; whether the effect lasts, and whether some volunteers feel pressured, needs monitoring. Crew error baselines may encourage underreporting, so audits continue.

Conclusion

Cognitive process theories explain how people decide how much effort to give. Specific goals with feedback raised packing output, a reachable crew-level target repaired the expectancy link that made the old bonus useless and a fairer pay scale addressed drivers' perceived inequity.

References

Adams, J. S. (1963). Towards an understanding of inequity. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(5), 422-436. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040968

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705

Van Eerde, W., & Thierry, H. (1996). Vroom's expectancy models and work-related criteria: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(5), 575-586. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.81.5.575