Objective and Goal Setting in Government Agencies in Nigeria and its Implications on Operational Outcomes

Abstract

The design of corporate plans is hierarchical in nature with corporate objectives determining the specific achievable goals and strategies to achieve set objectives. Government agencies in Nigeria use established templates for setting specific goals followed by broad objectives for achieving the goals; explaining the non-achievement of results annually in contravention of the empirically tested pattern of objective setting, followed by specific goals setting and determination of strategies for achieving the set goals necessitating the reversal of the planning steps to broad objective setting, followed by specific goals setting for the achievement of the broad objectives and the deployment of necessary strategies to achieve the goals.