EMPLOYEES ATTITUDE TOWARDS PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Employees attitude towards performance appraisal

Abstract

The paper discusses that it has been more than a decade it has been noted that performance appraisal research had focused on issues important to academics (i.e. rater accuracy) instead of variables important to employees and organizations (i.e. attitudes toward performance appraisal systems as a whole). Although there has been some research into these neglected criteria, the number of studies is still relatively low compared to those addressing psychometric and methodological issues.

Employees' attitude towards performance appraisal

Introduction

The theoretical framework used to guide this research is the person-environment fit (P-E fit) model. P-E fit has been one of the most studied topics in industrial and organizational psychology with the literature spanning over a century (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). There are several types of fit that fall under the umbrella of P-E fit, including person-organization (P-O), person-job (P-J), person-group (P-G) and person-supervisor (P-S). “P-E fit is broadly defined as the compatibility between an individual and a work environment that occurs when their characteristics are well matched” (Kristof-Brown et al., p. 281).

The current research is grounded in complementary or needs-supplies fit, as employees' performance appraisal system needs are ones that an organization can supply (Schneider, 1987). While P-E fit (i.e. congruency) has been linked to important outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and actual turnover (Boxx et al., 1991; O'Reilly et al., 1991) it has not been used within a performance appraisal framework. For the current study, we developed a measure of P-E fit within the context of the organization's performance appraisal system. This measure examined the congruence between employees' “ideal” performance appraisal systems and their employing organization's “current” performance appraisal system. This measure of congruence was then related to several attitudinal outcomes. These outcomes included satisfaction with, perceived fairness of, and utility of their current performance appraisal system. The rationale for using these three attitudinal outcomes is that their importance in the performance appraisal literature has been well-established. Each of these will be discussed in turn.

Literature Review: Performance appraisal satisfaction

Employees are satisfied with their performance appraisal systems when there is trust in the supervisor and when supervisors are supportive of their subordinates (Korsgaard and Roberson, 1995), feedback, particularly in the areas of skill development, pay for performance, and career advancement occurs during the appraisal session (Landy et al., 1978; Mount, 1983; Nathan et al., 1991), and subordinates feel that they are given enough time to express their perspectives, have opportunity to influence the outcome, and sufficient explanation of their ratings is provided (Dipboye and de Pontbriand, 1981; Taylor et al., 1995).

H1. Levels of performance appraisal congruency will positively predict levels of satisfaction with the current performance appraisal system above and beyond that of the perceived characteristics of the current system and ideal system.

Employee perceptions of the usefulness of performance appraisal systems have been shown to be affected by:

* Manager training on the appraisal system and its purposes (Dobbins et al., 1990).

* Goal-setting and manager assistance in planning subordinate development (Greller, 1978; ...