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Towards A Practice Theory of Goal-setting: Assessing the theoretical goal-setting of The Leprosy Mission in Nigeria

Goal-setting is indispensable for effective healthcare management. Yet,
literature evidence suggests many organisations worldwide do not know how to
formulate ‘SMART’ goals. Evidence of how existing theories work in practice is
scarce, and the practices in low-income countries are unknown. Therefore, this
research explored how leprosy project goals were formulated to describe the
theoretical practice framework of The Leprosy Mission Nigeria (TLMN).
Using a case-study design, ten managers were interviewed individually
concerning their goal-setting knowledge, experience and perspective; and
documented goals of six projects were reviewed. A five-step constructionist
thematic data analysis generated eleven theoretical frameworks from the
concepts of the emergent core themes of ‘stakeholders’, ‘strategies’ and
‘statements.’ Further theorisation reduced them to one general framework. This
revealed TLMN’s goal-setting practice as a four-stage centre-led, top-down,
beneficiary-focused and problem-based process. The stages were national
preparation, baseline needs-survey, centralised goal formulation and
nationalised planning. The outcome was the formulation of assigned, ‘non SMART’ objective statements, which are then used for planning projects. Other
theoretical models constructed included a Goal Effects Cycle, ‘SMARTA’ goal
attributes and hierarchical criteria for differentiating goal-types.
A theory developed from TLMN goal-setting postulates that: ‘Assigned non SMART goal formulation directly results from centralised goal-setting practice
and is the predictor of unrealistic project planning.’ Therefore, I propose that
goal statements will be ‘SMARTA’ and plans, more realistic and relevant if goal setting is done collaboratively by all stakeholders at all stages of the process.
Also, ‘Change-Beneficiary-Indicator-Target-Timeframe’ and ‘Change- Beneficiary-Location-Timeframe’ frameworks are recommended as templates
for writing SMART objectives and aims respectively.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/19386
Date January 2019
CreatorsOgbeiwi, Osahon J.I.
ContributorsKellehear, Allan, McIntosh, Bryan, McNamara, Barbara
PublisherUniversity of Bradford, Faculty of Health Studies
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, doctoral, PhD
Rights<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>.

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