Literature Review on Theories of Performance Appraisal

Introduction:

Performance appraisal means to evaluate the performance of employees that they are performing their jobs up to the standard of the organizations or not. To evaluate the performance of employees it is very important to establish a proper performance appraisal system in the organization and to give the training to the managers of the organization to appraise the performance of employees correctly. This is a broad topic for research and many researchers have done their researches on performance appraisal to improve the performance appraisal system of organization. In some organizations management has implemented poor system of appraisal in these articles authors have discussed that the have found the negative attitude of employees towards performance appraisal. The main purpose of this project was to explore the appraisal system in work place and identifying the importance of appraise and appraiser role to form a positive and effective system. In these articles they have worked on to give the knowledge to healthcare professionals about difficulties of implanting an appraisal system, including the lack of guidelines on skills and knowledge required. Researchers have used DEA data envelope analysis as a fair evaluating and sorting tool to support appraisal system. This study supports the ideas that rating formats need reexamination with a focus on computer based models as an alternative to traditional rating methods. Another method has already been used (AHP) analytic hierarchy process to evaluate the performance of employees based on the criteria: . Quantity/quality of the work, planning/organization, initiative/commitment, teamwork/cooperation, communication and external factors. All these criteria have been divided into three sub criteria to evaluate the employees.

On performance appraisal researchers have done work on different areas but there is no work has been done on that which performance appraisal tools are more useful for evaluating the performance of employees. I want to do my research on methods of performance appraisal that which methods are more useful and give best result to evaluate the performance of the employees.

Literature review:

T. R. Manoharan (2002) has written In this article authors have discussed that they have noticed that in many organizations appraisal systems are: (a) not relevant to organizational objectives, (b) subject to personal bias, and (c) are often influenced more heavily by personality than by performance. To eliminate these negative things there is a attempt with a computer based tool called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which is used in the working place to evaluate the performance of employees. Sample size is 23 employees. A DEA study provides the following four properties (Paradi, Smith & Schaffnit-Chatterjee 2002).

A piecewise linear empirical envelopment surface to represent the best practice frontier, consisting of units which exhibit the highest attainable outputs in relation to all other DMU’s in the population, for their given level of inputs

An efficiency metric to represent the maximal performance measure for each DMU(Decision Making Units) measured by its distance to the frontier

Specific targets or efficient projections onto the frontier for each inefficient DMU

An efficient reference set or peer group for each DMU defined by the efficient units closest to the DMU

Here regression analysis is used and correlation has been checked in between these factors of DEA data set: Job knowledge, customer relation, work habit, interpersonal relations, quality and quantity. Through this analysis they have measured the efficiency and productivity of each employee.

Rafikul Islam(July 8-10, 2005) has discussed In this article scholars have discussed that to evaluate the performance of organization that it is meeting its goals or not, it is important to evaluate the performance of employees of the organization and for this evaluation effective performance appraisal system should be maintained. They have mentioned two main objectives of this study first is to give rewards to those employees who have performed good in achieving organizational goals and second is to identify those objectives which are not met and make an action plan to ensure that they will achieved in future. In this paper AHP (analytic hierarchy process) to evaluate employee performance. The criteria is used for appraisal is: quantity/quality of the work, planning/organization, initiative/commitment, teamwork/cooperation, communication and

external factors. Their sample size is 294 employees. There are many advantages of using AHP i.e AHP can compare two decision elements at a time, it is easy and simple to use, it can easily accommodate multiple decision makers to solve any specific problem.

AHP can easily accommodate multiple decision makers to solve a particular problem

AHP compares two decision elements (criteria/alternatives) at a time.

AHP is simple and easy to apply.

Graeme Redshaw (2008) has written in this article is about to improve the performance appraisal system of nurses in organization. Author distributed questionnaire to 8 nurses to know about the performance appraisal system of the organization. 7 nurses were nervous before the appraisal and 1 was confident after the appraisal all nurses were agreed with the outcomes of appraisal. If the successful appraisal system is established so there will be clear aims and objectives, and will be able to implement fairly. Proper training will be provided to the managers to appraise the staff correctly.

Diane Shaffer(May 11, 2009) has written in his article writer has discussed that motivation and performance appraisal are interrelated. Motivation is dependent on performance management. Employees who are motivated and happy with their jobs want to stay connected with the company for a long time. Many organizations have not implemented correct performance appraisal system to evaluate the performance of employees. Author has discussed here that they should implement a successful appraisal method/system and also give reward to employees who perform good in the organization. Through this practice employee become motivated towards their jobs and improve their performance and performance of organization as a whole will also improve.

Almuth McDowall (2009)has discussed in his article that due to the high level of competition training and development has become very important. It’s a era of globalization so it is playing a key role for the organization to get competitive advantage. While selection of activities including coaching, 360 degree appraisal and development centers (DCs) are become linked to development. In this article 360 degree appraisal has been discussed that it is very important to give the feedback to the employees about their performances. Positive feedback motivates the employees and they become more willing to work for further development programs. The authors examine different development activities with the aim being to provide a framework with which to assess each one’s effectiveness. They compare the processes incorporating a range of significant factors and highlight several important implications that arise for any aim to meet organizations.

Donald L. Caruth (2009)has discussed that the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the need for and propose a more aligned and integrated standard for performance evaluation to enhance effective strategic control. The paper reviews the various issues creating discontent with the performance appraisal systems within many organizations and demonstrates how these problems inhibit successful strategic control. It attempts to cogently incorporate the performance appraisal characteristics needed for the exercise to function as a critical organizational control metric and a useful feedback mechanism for strategic management of the firm. The paper finds that, whereas performance evaluation has received reasonably robust examination in the human resources literature, explicit guidance toward the integration with strategic control is inadequate. Without consistent alignment between these functions, however, performance appraisal becomes an exercise in futility instead of a vital control measurement, often resulting in not only personnel dissatisfaction, but also, more importantly, an impediment to systematic strategy implementation.

H.C. Shiva Prasad(2010) in this research paper authers have done work to dheck the performance of indian software professionals (SPs) Data were collected from 441 software and senior software engineers from eight Indian software firms. The team leaders assessed the performance of software and senior software engineers on 16 items. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of scores on 16 items of the instrument suggest six dimensions of performance. They are work-efficiency, personal resourcefulness, inter- and intra-personal sensitivity, productivity orientation, timeliness, and business intelligence. The dimensions have reliability and high convergent validity. SPs having more years of experience, higher need for achievement, and higher need for social power are high performers. Human resource managers can evaluate the performance of SPs holistically on six dimensions for training, reward administration, job rotation, and promotion decisions.