Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior

The organizing idea is that organizational behavior should be presented as a set of evidence-based principles: clear, testable statements about how people behave at work, each supported by research and stated specifically enough that evidence could count against it. Locke rejects the conventional handbook format that surveys theories and topics without committing to conclusions, on the grounds that such surveys leave practitioners without actionable guidance and scholars without falsifiable claims. By requiring each chapter to state a principle and then marshal the evidence, the volume enforces a discipline that is closer to the physical sciences. The result is a reference that is both scholarly and prescriptive, and it functions as a bridge between academic research and managerial practice.

A principle here is a general statement about a relationship between variables — for example, that specific and difficult goals raise performance under certain conditions, or that certain staffing practices predict job performance — accompanied by the evidence for it and its boundary conditions. The format matters because it forces contributors to commit to claims that can be tested and potentially refuted, rather than hedging in literature reviews. This makes the handbook useful for evidence-based management, which asks practitioners to act on the best available research rather than on fashion or anecdote. It also exposes where evidence is thin, since a chapter must either state a principle with support or acknowledge its limits. The format is the book's main methodological contribution.

Goal setting appears in the handbook as one of the most strongly supported principles in organizational behavior, reflecting Locke and Latham's decades of research. More broadly, the handbook applies Locke's methodological preference — clear, falsifiable claims grounded in empirical evidence — to the whole field, not just to motivation. This makes the book an extension of his research program's style rather than a new theory. Readers will find the goal-setting principle stated with its mediators and moderators, consistent with the 1990 monograph, and other chapters follow the same template. The handbook thus shows what Locke's approach looks like when applied across staffing, teamwork, leadership, and organizational design, not only to motivation.

The main limitation is that not all of organizational behavior reduces cleanly to principles. Some important phenomena — culture, power, sensemaking, and contextual variation — resist the kind of specific, falsifiable statement the format demands, which may lead contributors to either oversimplify or omit them. There is also a risk that principles stated at a general level gloss over moderators that matter in practice. Additionally, the volume reflects the state of evidence at its publication, so some principles have since been qualified by replication concerns. Critics of evidence-based management argue that principles can be applied mechanically without attention to context. These are genuine trade-offs, and the handbook's value depends on readers treating its principles as conditional guides rather than laws.

Most organizational-behavior handbooks, such as those published by major academic presses, are organized by topic or theory and aim to review the literature comprehensively for researchers. Locke's volume differs in its principle-based format and its explicit orientation toward practice, making it more prescriptive and more selective. It is closer in spirit to evidence-based management texts than to comprehensive disciplinary surveys. This makes it useful for MBA teaching and for practitioners who want actionable conclusions, but less useful as a complete map of the field. Readers seeking exhaustive coverage of theories should consult a conventional handbook; readers seeking clear, evidence-anchored claims will find this volume's format more directly usable.