Edwin A. Locke

Edwin Locke is Dean’s Professor (Emeritus) of Leadership and Motivation at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his BA from Harvard in 1960 and his Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology from Cornell University in 1964. Dr. Locke has published over 260 chapters, notes and articles in professional journals, on such subjects as work motivation, job satisfaction, incentives, and the philosophy of science.

He is also the author or editor of more than ten books, including Study Methods and Study Motivation (Second Renaissance Books, 1998), Goal Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works (Prentice Hall, 1984, with G. Latham) and A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance (Prentice Hall, 1990, with G. Latham), Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior (Blackwell, 2000), The Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators (AMACOM, 2000) and Postmodernism and Management: Pros, Cons and the Alternative (JAI: Elsevier, 2003).

Dr. Locke is internationally known for his research on goal setting. A recent survey found that his goal setting theory (developed with G. Latham) was ranked #1 in importance among 73 management theories.

Dr. Locke has been elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Academy of Management, and has been a consulting editor for leading journals. He was a winner of the Outstanding Teacher-Scholar Award at the University of Maryland, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Career Contribution Award from the Academy of Management (Human Resource Division), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management (Organizational Behavior Division), and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society. He is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute and is interested in the application of the philosophy of Objectivism to behavioral sciences.