绩效考核的困境外文翻译.doc

1、原文一：The Dilemma of Performance AppraisalBy Peter Prowse and Julie Prowse It will outline the development of individual performance before linking to performance management in organizations.The outcomes of techniques to increase organizational commitment, increase job satisfaction will be critically

2、evaluated. It will further examine the transatlantic debates between literature on efficiency and effectiveness in the North American and the United Kingdom) evidence to evaluate the HRM development and contribution of performance appraisal to individual and organizational performance. Appraisal pot

3、entially is a key tool in making the most of an organisations human resources. The use of appraisal is widespread estimated that 8090%of organizations in the USA and UK were using appraisal and an increase from 69 to 87% of organisations between 1998 and 2004 reported a formal performance management

4、 system (Armstrong and Baron, 1998:200).There has been little evidence of the evaluation of the effectiveness of appraisal but more on the development in its use. Between 1998 and 2004 a sample from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD, 2007) of 562 firms found 506 were using p

5、erformance appraisal in UK. What is also vital to emphasise is the rising use of performance appraisal feedback beyond performance for professionals and managers to nearly 95% of workplaces in the 2004 WERS survey (seeTable 13.1).Clearly the use of Appraisals has been the development and extension o

6、f appraisals to cover a large proportion of the UK workforce and the coverage of non managerial occupations and the extended use in private and public sectors. Critiques of appraisal have continued as appraisal shave increased in use and scope across sectors and occupations. The dominant critique is

7、 the management framework using appraisal as an orthodox technique that seeks to remedy the weakness and propose of appraisals as a system to develop performance. This “orthodox” approach argues there are conflicting purposes of appraisal (Strebler et al, 2001). Appraisal can motivate staff by clari

8、fying objectives and setting clear future objectives with provision for training and development needs to establish the performance objective. These conflicts with assessing past performance and distribution of rewards based on past performance (Bach, 2005:301). Employees are reluctant to confide an

9、y limitations and concerns on their current performance as this could impact on their merit related reward or promotion opportunities(Newton and Findley, 1996:43).This conflicts with performance as a continuum as appraisers are challenged with differing roles as both monitors and judges of performan

10、ce but an understanding counsell or which Randell(1994)argues few manager shave not received the raining to perform.Appraisal Managers reluctance to criticise also stems from classic evidence fromMcGregor that managers are reluctant to make an egative judgement on an individuals performance a sit co

11、uld be demotivating,leadto accusationsoftheirown supportand contributiontoindividual poor performance and to also avoid interpersonal conflict (McGregor, 1957). One consequence of this avoidance of conflict is to rate all criterion as central and avoid any conflict known as the central tendency.In a

12、 study of senior managers by Long neckeretal.(1987),they found organisational politics influenced ratings of 60 senior executives.The findings were that politics involved deliberate attempts by individuals to enhance or protect self-interests when conflicting courses of action are possible and that

13、ratings and decisions were affected by potential sources of bias or inaccuracy in their appraisal ratings (Longeneckeret al., 1987). There are methods of further bias beyond Longeneckers evidence. The political judgements and they have been distorted further by overrating some clear competencies in

14、performance rather than being critical across all rated competencies known as the halo effect and if some competencies arelower they may prejudice the judgment acrossthe positive reviews known as the horns effect (ACAS, 1996). One consequence of this avoidance of conflict is to rate all criterion as

15、 centralThereare methods Some ratings may only cinclude recent events and these are known as the recency effects. In this case only recent events are noted compared to managers gathering and using data throughout the appraisal period .A particular concern is the equity of appraisal for ratings which

16、 may be distorted by gender ,ethnicity and the ratings of appraisers themselves .A range of studies in both the US and UK have highlighted subjectivity in terms of gender (Alimo-Metcalf, 1991;White, 1999) and ethnicity of the appraise and appraiser(Geddes and Konrad, 2003). Suggestions and solutions

17、 on resolving bias will be reviewed later. The second analysis is the radical critique of appraisal. This is the more critical management literature that argues that appraisal and performance management are about management control(Newton and Findley, 1996;Townley, 1993). It argues that tighter mana

18、gement control over employee behaviour can be achieved by the extension of appraisal to manual workers, professional as means to control. This develops the literature of Foucault using power and surveillance. This literature uses cases in examples of public service control on professionals such a te

19、achers (Healy, 1997) and University professionals(Townley, 1990).This evidence argues the increased control of public services using appraisal as a method of control and that the outcome of managerial objectives ignores the developmental role of appraisal and ratings are awarded for people who accep

20、t and embrace the culture and organizational values . However, this literature ignores the employee resistance and the use of professional unions to challenge the attempts to exert control over professionals and staff in the appraisal process (Bach, 2005:306).Thisevidence argues One of the different

21、 issues of removing bias was the use of the test metaphor (Folgeretal.,1992).This was based on the assumption that appraisal ratings were a technical question of assessing “true” performance and there needed to be increased reliability and validity of appraisal as an instrument to develop motivation

22、 and performance. The sources of rater bias and errors can be resolved by improved organisational justice and increasing reliability of appraisers judgement. However there were problems such as an assumption that you can state job requirements clearly and the organization is “rational” with objectiv

23、es that reflect values and that the judgment by appraisers are value free from political agendas and personal objectives. Secondly there is the second issue of subjectivity if appraisal ratings where decisions on appraisal are rated by a “political metaphor”(Hartle, 1995). This “political view” argu

24、es that a appraisal is often done badly because there is a lack of training for appraisers and appraisers may see the appraisal as a waste of time. This becomes a process which managers have to perform and not as a potential to improve employee performance .Organisations in this context are “politic

25、al” and the appraisers seek to maintain performance from subordinates and view appraises as internal customers to satisfy. This means managers use appraisal to avoid interpersonal conflict and develop strategies for their own personal advancement and seek a quiet life by avoiding censure from higher

26、 managers. This perception means managers also see appraisee seeks good rating and genuine feedback and career development by seeking evidence of combining employee promotion and pay rise.This means appraisal ratings become political judgements and seek to avoid interpersonal conflicts. The approach

27、es of the “test” and “political” metaphors of appraisal are inaccurate and lack objectivity and judgement of employee performance is inaccurate and accuracy is avoided.The issue is how can organisations resolve this lack of objectivity? Grint(1993)argues that the solutions to objectivity lies in par

28、t with McGregors (1957) classic critique by retraining and removal of “top down” ratings by managers and replacement with multiple rater evaluation which removes bias and the objectivity by upward performance appraisal. The validity of upward appraisal means there moval of subjective appraisal ratin

29、gs.This approach is also suggested to remove gender bias in appraisal ratings against women in appraisals (Fletcher, 1999). The solution of multiple reporting(internal colleagues, customers and recipients of services) will reduce subjectivity and inequity of appraisal ratings. This argument develops

30、 further by the rise in the need to evaluate project teams and increasing levels of teamwork to include peer assessment. The solutions also in theory mean increased closer contact with individual manager and appraises and increasing services linked to customer facing evaluations. However, negative f

31、eedback still demotivates and plenty of feedback and explanation by manager who collates feedback rather than judges performance andfail to summarise evaluations.There are however still problems with accuracy of appraisal objectivity asWalker and Smither (1999)5year studyof 252 managers over 5 year

32、period still identified issues with subjective ratings in 360 degree appraisals.There are still issues on the subjectivity of appraisals beyond the areas of lack of training. The contribution of appraisal is strongly related to employee attitudes and strong relationships with job satisfaction(Fletch

33、er and Williams, 1996). The evidence on appraisal still remains positive in terms of reinvigo rating social relationships at work (Townley,1993)and the widespread adoption in large public services in the UK such as the national health Service (NHS)is the valuable contribution to line managers discus

34、sion with staff on their past performance, discussing personal development plans and training and development as positive issues.One further concern is the openness of appraisal related to employee reward which we now discuss. Appraisal and performance management have been inextricably linked to emp

35、loyee reward since the development of strategic human resource management in the 1980s. The early literature on appraisal linked appraisal with employee control (Randell, 1994;Grint, 1993;Townley, 1993, 1999) and discussed the use of performance related reward to appraisals. However therecent litera

36、ture has substituted the chapter titles employee “appraisal” with “performance management”(Bach, 2005; Storey, 2007) and moved the focus on performance and performance pay and the limits of employee appraisal. The appraisal and performance pay link has developed into debates to three key issues: The

37、 first issue is has performance pay related to appraisal grown in use? The second issue is what type of performance do we reward? and the final issue is who judges management standards? The first discussion on influences of growth of performance pay schemes is the assumption that increasing linkage

38、between individual effort and financial reward increases performance levels. This linkage between effort and financial reward increasing levels of performance has proved an increasing trend in the public and private sector (Bevan and Thompson, 1992;Armstrong and Baron, 1998). The drive to increase p

39、ublic sector performance effort and setting of targets may even be inconsistent in the experiences of some organizational settings aimed at achieving long-term targets(Kessler and Purcell, 1992;Marsden, 2007). The development of merit based pay based on performance assessed by a manager is rising in

40、 the UK Marsden (2007)reported that the: Use of performance appraisals as a basis for merit pay are used in65 percent of public sector and 69 percent of the private sector employees where appraisal covered all nonmanagerial staff(p.109). Merit pay has also grown in use as in 1998 20% of workplaces u

41、sed performance related schemes compared to 32% in the same organizations 2004 (Kersley et al., 2006:191). The achievements of satisfactory ratings or above satisfactory performance averages were used as evidence to reward individual performance ratings in the UK Civil Service (Marsden, 2007).Table

42、13.2 outlines the extent of merit pay in 2004. The second issue is what forms of performance is rewarded. The use of past appraisal ratings as evidence of achieving merit-related payments linked to achieving higher performance was the predominant factor developed in the public services. The evidence

43、 on Setting performance targets have been as Kessler (2000:280) reported “inconsistent within organizations and problematic for certain professional or less skilled occupations where goals have not been easily formulated”. There has been inconclusive evidence from organizations on the impact of perf

44、ormance pay and its effectiveness in improving performance. Evidence from a number of individual performance pay schemes report organizations suspending or reviewing them on the grounds that individual performance reward has produced no effect in performance or even demotivates staff(Kessler, 2000:2

45、81).More in-depth studies setting performance goals followed by appraisal on how well they were resulted in loss of motivation whilst maintaining productivity and achieved managers using imposing increased performance standards (Marsden and Richardson, 1994). As Randell(1994) had highlighted earlier

46、, the potential objectivity and self-criticism in appraisal reviews become areas that appraisees refuse to acknowledge as weaknesses with appraisers if this leads to a reduction in their merit pay.Objectivity and self reflection for development becomes a weakness that appraises fail to acknowledge a

47、s a developmental issue if it reduces their chances of a reduced evaluation that will reduce their merit reward. The review of civil service merit pay (Makinson, 2000)reported from 4 major UK Civil Service Agencies and the National Health Service concluded that existing forms of performance pay and

48、performance management had failed to motivate many staff. The conclusions were that employees found individual performance pay divisive and led to reduced willingness to co-operate with management ,citing managerial favorites and manipulation of appraisal scores to lower ratings to save paying rewar

49、ds to staff (Marsden and French, 1998). This has clear implications on the relationship between line managers and appraises and the demotivational consequences and reduced commitment provide clear evidence of the danger to linking individual performance appraisal to reward in the public services. Employees focus on the issues that gain key performance focus by focusing on specific objectives related to key performance indicators rather than all personal objectives. A study of banking performance pay by Lewis(199