PAIRED COMPARISON EVALUATIONS OF MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS BY PEERS AND SUPERVISORS

Paired comparison evaluations were solicited for a relatively small group ( N = 20) of savings and loan association branch managers. Peer evaluations were obtained from 16 of these managers; supervisory evaluations were obtained from 4 officers. Inter-judge agreement (both within and between groups) was high. Further, this agreement extended beyond the derived paired comparison score to certain independently measured psychological characteristics of the persons evaluated. The peer-generated evaluations assisted the officers in making acceptable promotional decisions. In addition, discussion by the 4 officers of differences between their independently made evaluations made explicit a previously covert but potentially important difference in perspective about the determinants of managerial effectiveness. Ratings assigned by one officer reflected his implicitly heavy weight to human relations skill as a component of branch manager effectiveness; those assigned by the other 3 tended to give more weight to knowledge about financial matters related to the savings and loan industry.