Predictors of Participation in Performance Appraisal: A Voluntary System in a Blue-Collar Work Environment

Organisations have long acknowledged the value of performance appraisal in both administration decisions and in motivating employees. However, it would appear that most empirical research has focused on compulsory systems designed for use with executives and managers (Bannister and Balkin 1990; Ilgen, Fisher and Taylor 1979; Klein 1989). The reluctance to implement appraisal systems with lower level and base-grade employees may be due to several factors, including employee and union resistance to compulsory systems of appraisal (Nankervis 1990). Faced with this problem, appraisal can be viewed by appraisees and appraisers as an `innovation'. In a climate with growing emphasis on participative management styles, self-regulated or voluntary systems of performance appraisal may become increasingly prevalent and important. Thus, 476 base-grade (shop floor) employees of an Australian government business enterprise completed a survey regarding issues such as attitude to performance appraisal, source credibility, system satisfaction, anticipated feedback, perceived consequences of participation and intention to enter the system. Roger's (1983) innovation-decision model was utilised in the structure and analysis of the data and provided useful insights regarding the factors which are related to participation in a voluntary system of performance appraisal. Findings indicated that attitude towards, and support of, performance appraisal in general, perception of consequences of performance appraisal, satisfaction with the supervisor, anticipated feedback, and awareness and knowledge of the system in place in the organisation, were important in predicting the decision to adopt or reject the performance appraisal scheme.     

Creativity and performance appraisal: Shall never the twain meet?

This article explores the need for performance appraisal systems that are designed to meet the unique motivational and performance needs of creative employees. The dimensions and special needs of creative behavior are drawn from the literature and defined; the state of performance appraisal is reviewed; and a preliminary investigation to determine what can be learned on the subject from the current practice of performance appraisal is reported. Implications for further research and improvement in the practice of performance appraisal for creative employees are discussed.     

Performance Appraisal Process Research in the 1980s: What Has It Contributed to Appraisals in Use?

In the early 1980s, Landy and Farr (1980) and Feldman (1981) redirected performance appraisal research from issues related to the development of psychometrically sound rating scales to those involving the cognitive processes of raters. Since that time, several reviews have attempted to translate principles from social cognition and cognitive psychology to the specific conditions of formal appraisal systems in work-oriented organizations. In addition, a number of empirical studies have been conducted on this topic. This article reviews empirical research during the 1980s that focused on performance appraisal processes, particularly the research that has focused upon rating accuracy. The review is structured around a three-stage process model of gathering, storing, and retrieving information about social stimuli for the purposes of rating performance. Factors affecting this process are clustered into four categories: appraisal settings, ratees, raters, and the nature of the scales used for the appraisal. Once reviewed, the research is evaluated in terms of its contributions to improving the quality of appraisal systems as they are used in organizations.     

Reactions to Appraisal Discrepancies: Performance Ratings and Attributions

The traditional top-down approach to performance appraisal has been criticized as not keeping pace with the move toward more participative organizations of the last decade. This has led many organizations to adopt newer performance appraisal systems that use multiple feedback sources (e.g., 360-degree feedback systems). However, research indicates that multiple feedback sources often disagree on performance ratings and attributions. The current paper reports the results of one laboratory and one field study that show the importance of performance and attributional rating discrepancies on the appraisal process.     

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL, PROMOTION AND THE COURTS: A CRITICAL REVIEW

Twenty-three Title VII court cases were reviewed in order to determine the standards set by the courts in their assessment of performance appraisal systems when used as the basis for promotion decisions. The topics covered were adverse impact determination, the courts' adjudication strategy, and the evidence needed to justify the performance appraisal procedures. Among the major findings was the courts': (1) failure to adhere to the "applicant flow technique" of adverse impact determination, (2) interest in assessing performance appraisal systems regardless of their adverse impact, (3) ignorance regarding acceptable validation procedures, and (4) focus on objectivity in lieu of validity. The discussion offered suggestions to employers for developing a professionally sound and legally defensible appraisal system.     

Examining the Role of Narrative Performance Appraisal Comments on Performance

Despite their prevalence in performance appraisal systems and purported importance in theory, narrative performance appraisal comments have been rarely examined. This study aimed to contribute to the literature by developing and testing a theory of quality narrative feedback. The author argues that managerial feedback that is both directive (i.e., lengthy, specific, and includes goals) and motivational (i.e., positive and high in interactional justice) would be related to year-lagged performance. Negative and positive emotions are also proposed as mediators of this relationship. Performance appraisal comments were coded for a sample of 1,019 clinical nurses. The structural equations modeling results provided preliminary evidence that feedback favorability and interactional justice demonstrated significant direct and indirect (through positive and negative emotion) effects on year-lagged employee performance.     

Toward Computational Model of Emotion from Individual Difference in Perceiving Facial Expressions

We propose a computational model for identifying emotional state of a facial expression from appraisal scores given by human observers utilizing their differences in perception. The appraisal model of human emotion is adopted as the basis of this evaluation process with appraisal variables as output. We investigated the performance for both categorical and continuous representation of the variables appraised by human observers. Analysis of the data exhibits higher degree of agreement between estimated Indian ratings and the available reference when these are rated through continuous domain. We also observed that emotional state with negative valence are influential in the perception of hybrid emotional state like ‘Surprise’, only when appraisal variables are labeled through categories of emotions. Thus, the proposed method has implications in developing software to detect emotion using appraisal variables in continuous domain, perceived from facial expression of an agent (or human subject). Further, this model can be customized to include cultural variability in recognizing emotions.     

DEVELOPMENT OF A BEHAVIORALLY BASED PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL SYSTEM

This paper describes the development of a behaviorally based performance appraisal system. Blanz and Ghiselli's Mixed Standard Scale was used as the basis for developing the performance appraisal system for assessing the performance of highway patrol personnel. However, the particular developmental procedures described here differ in some respects from those reported in the literature. Rather than developing rating items describing general traits such as "diligence,""initiative," or "enthusiasm" in behavioral terms, the items in the present scale were developed to describe proficiency levels of specific job tasks. This characteristic is expected to enhance the objectivity of the evaluation system for both appraisal and job counseling purposes. The appraisal instrument was subjected to a series of reliability and validity tests that demonstrated its high reliability and validity. Although the content of the appraisal sytem desribed here included highway patrol tasks, a similar system could be developed using the procedures described for a wide variety and level of jobs.     

The role of appraisal purpose: Effects of purpose on information acquisition and utilization

Past research on the role of appraisal purpose in the appraisal decision-making process has concentrated on the motivational role of purpose. Research has found that raters are less willing to give poor ratings when appraisals are to be used for some purposes rather than others. The present paper describes two experiments which explore how appraisal purpose might affect rater cognitive activities as well. The first experiment investigated how appraisal purpose and outcomes affect how raters differentially utilize information to make appraisal decisions. Few differences were found. The second experiment investigated how raters differentially search for performance information to make appraisal decisions for different purposes and outcomes. Raters were found to search for more comparative information when they had to select one of several ratees for some treatment. The results also indicated a discrepancy between how information is collected and how it is used. Implications for defining the role of purpose in the appraisal process, as well as for recent process approaches to performance appraisal, are discussed.     

Do You See What I See? An Exploration of Congruence in Ratings From Multiple Perspectives1

This paper provides a comparative analysis of behavioral observations made on 152 service providers in a business advisory and professional services firm from 5 distinctly different ratings sources (self, direct reports, peers, supervisor, and clients). Results focused on differences in ratings level and degree of congruence with self-assessments by observer type. The data suggested that service providers and their clients may have a different perceptual frame of reference than do internal observers (e.g., direct reports, peers, and supervisors). Moreover, congruence in self-others' ratings was found to be a significant predictor of performance assessments from the same observer source. Implications of these results for the use of multirater appraisal systems are discussed.     

Criterion Shaped Behaviour: Pitfalls of Performance Appraisal

Behavioural consequences of performance appraisal, of students, teachers, and schools, or of workers, managers, and offices, are analyzed in terms of a newly proposed theory of Criterion Shaped Behaviour (CSB). Unstated assumptions of advocates for the extensive use of performance appraisal, using performance-based rewards and punishments, are scrutinized, and many are found to be insupportable. CSB Theory predicts that numerous behavioural effects, not all of which are desirable, will be shaped by the use of rewards and punishments made contingent upon criterion measure scores. Using cognitive expectancy theories of learning and performance, in conjunction with traditional measurement theory, it anticipates the types of behaviour change likely to result from imposition of different performance appraisal systems, and suggests alternatives less likely to result in undesirable effects.     

ORGANIZATION AND RATER DIFFERENCES IN PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS

This study examines the effects of organizational differences and rater differences on performance appraisals. Self, peer, and supervisory ratings of performance for nurses in four hospitals and self, student, peer, and supervisory ratings for resident advisors in seven university dormitory complexes were used in this study. The analyses indicate that both organization and rater differences have significant, independent effects on performance ratings. The findings suggest that organizational differences may restrict the generality of the findings of performance appraisal studies across organizational settings. They also may have a negative impact on the usefulness of any particular performance appraisal form in different settings, and on the ability of managers to accurately interpret and compare performance ratings for individuals in different organizational subunits.     

Training Appraisees to Participate in Appraisal: Effects on Appraisers and Appraisees

This study examined the role of behavior modeling training (BMT) in enhancing appraisee participation during a performance appraisal discussion. In addition, the study examined the effects of enhanced participation on appraisee and appraiser perceptions toward several appraisal outcome variables; in particular, the fairness and accuracy of performance appraisal were of interest. The experimental design was a 2 × 3 completely crossed factorial design consisting of two levels of training (behavior modeling vs. lecture/discussion) and three levels of bogus evaluation feedback (low, neutral, and high). A series of multivariate and univariate comparisons were used to test the hypothesized outcomes. The findings suggest that appraisers exposed to the BMT group perceived appraisees as more proactive and better performers and, in addition, reported liking the appraisees more, and perceiving the appraisal process as more fair. The study also found support for the egocentric bias in perceived outcome fairness: appraisees in both training conditions who received a high evaluation perceived the appraisal evaluation as more fair than appraisees who received a low evaluation. In addition, the study found that favorable evaluations were also perceived as being more accurate. The results of the study are discussed in terms of procedural justice theory and related research examining the role of performance feedback on both the appraisee and the appraiser. Suggestions for future research in the areas of behavior modeling, voice-giving (high-input) procedures, and procedural justice are discussed.     

The Impact of Computerized Performance Monitoring and Prior Performance Knowledge on Performance Evaluation1

Despite claims that computerized performance monitoring (CPM) systems provide objective performance data and thus foster accurate employee evaluations, few research studies have examined the impact of CPM data on the performance appraisal process. A laboratory experiment was conducted to assess the impact of prior performance level on requests for computerized performance information, and the influence of both prior performance level and requested information on performance evaluation. Forty-four male and female undergraduates electronically monitored four simulated employees whose prior performance was either high or low and whose performance during the monitoring period was either high or low. Results indicated that prior performance level and employee performance during the monitoring period independently influenced both current and future performance ratings. Further, when the simulated employee performed at a level incongruent with her prior performance, subjects requested more data about the employee's performance, were less certain about their ratings of the employee's current and future performance, and rated the employee's current performance as more variable than when the employee performed at a level congruent with prior performance. These results indicate that use of CPM systems that allow on-line access to employee performance and that record requested information may increase performance evaluation accuracy by facilitating the implementation of search strategies best suited to specific appraisal tasks and minimizing memory-related biases. However, such systems may not eliminate the effects of attention/encoding biases.     

SELF-APPRAISAL BASED UPON SUPERVISORY FEEDBACK

Self-appraisals of job performance have historically proven to be weakly related to appraisals conducted by supervisory personnel. Two studies sought to facilitate rater agreement by invoking supervisory performance feedback as a frame of reference for subordinate raters. In the first study, a sample of 401 branch managers from a large lending institution performed a conventional self-appraisal and an appraisal containing instructions referencing supervisory feedback (Feedback Based Self-Appraisal). Feedback Based Self-Appraisals exhibited significantly smaller leniency error, greater total rating variance, and more agreement with superior ratings than conventional self-appraisals. FBSAs produced small improvements over conventional self-appraisals in predicting objective criteria of managerial job performance. Study 2 examined FBSA-supervisory appraisal agreement for two samples of military organization personnel. The relative degree of feedback available in a work environment was found to moderate FBSA-superior agreement.     

Relationships Between Attitudes Toward Organizations and Performance Appraisal Systems and Rating Behavior

Data collected in seven separate samples in three countries (the USA, Canada and Israel) were used to examine the relationships between perceptions of one’s organization (climate, commitment), beliefs about appraisal systems (self‐efficacy, uses of appraisal) and raters’ orientations to appraisal systems (confidence and comfort) and specific rating behaviors. We obtained good fits for structural models suggesting that attitudes and beliefs accounted for substantial variance in raters’ likelihood of giving high or low ratings, willingness to discriminate good from poor performers, and willingness to discriminate among various aspects of job performance when completing actual performance ratings. Proximal attitudes and beliefs (i.e., those directly related to the performance appraisal system) appear to have stronger links to rating behavior than do more distal attitudes (i.e., attitudes toward the organization in general).     

Performance appraisal process and system facets: relationship with contextual performance

Because appraisal-related interactions between supervisors and employees may influence more than task performance, the authors considered the potential effects of social and interpersonal processes in performance appraisal on contextual performance. They hypothesized that performance appraisal process and system facets were associated with employees' contextual performance as well as with their perceptions of appraisal accuracy. After controlling relevant variables, they found that appraisal process facets explained variance in contextual performance and perceived accuracy beyond that accounted for by the system facets. However, when the order of entry for the process and system variable sets was reversed, only for perceived appraisal accuracy, as hypothesized, did the system facets account for variance beyond that explained by the appraisal process facets.     

Investigating Some Neglected Criteria: The Influence of Organizational Level and Perceived System Knowledge on Appraisal Reactions

Researchers have suggested that examining the factors which influence appraisal reactions is important because these reactions are critical criteria of appraisal effectiveness. The current field study investigates how organizational level and knowledge of the performance appraisal system may be related to employees' reactions toward the performance appraisal system. Inferences from past research suggest that supervisory employees' unique perspective on the appraisal system may lead to more positive evaluations. The present study attempts to better explain this relationship by investigating the effect of Perceived System Knowledge (PSK) as a mediator of this relationship. Results revealed that PSK completely mediated the relationship between organizational level and appraisal reactions.     

A PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: RESEARCH,DESIGN, INTRODUCTION AND EVALUATION1

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze a unique and innovative appraisal and development system. The Performance Management System (PMS) is the formal vehicle used by Corning Glass Works managers to measure and improve the performance and potential for advancement of approximately 3,000 managerial and professional employees. The current design of PMS is the result of several years of research and development work by staff psychologists and personnel specialists at Corning along with applied psychological research conducted in other organizations. PMS is distinguished from most appraisal systems by the following characteristics: (1) Its emphasis on both psychometric accuracy and practical utility; (2) Its emphasis on development as opposed to evaluation; (3) Its use of ipsative measurement; (4) Its integration of results with behavior centered appraisal. This paper is comprised of an introduction, reports on the initial research, the design and introduction, the evaluation and revision of PMS, and an overall summary. The strategies, results, and problems encountered at each phase of PMS development will be described and analyzed.