Performance appraisal assumptions and implications

Business Management -- Performance Appraisal Concepts

Response B

Modern personnel management strongly emphasizes the counseling and development role of supervisors within the framework of their supervisory responsibilities (Russell-Whalling, 2008). This approach to business management and personnel management is preferable to the more traditional approach that is primarily (if not exclusively) focused on the much narrower evaluation function of the performance appraisal concept.

More specifically, the modern approach is considerably more conducive to high performance throughout the organization because it incorporates the supervisory functions of counseling and helping subordinates improve their individual performance level (Daft, 2005). Conversely, the traditional model largely ignores the role of the supervisor as a motivator of performance improvement except through the age-old dynamic of carrot-and-stick system. Within that traditional approach, good performance is merely reinforced through positive rewards and less-than-optimal performance is associated with negative consequences (Daft, 2005).

In principle, the traditional model that relies on evaluation in conjunction with rewards and punishments is primarily a passive performance management system that provides comparatively little opportunity for supervisors to help subordinates elevate their performance except perhaps in isolated cases where individual supervisors take that initiative independently (Russell-Whalling, 2008). The modern formula is far preferable because it is a much more active performance management system in which performance evaluation is only the starting point for personnel performance improvement instead of the end point (Russell-Whalling, 2008).

The modern approach incorporates contemporary views of cognitive psychologists and educators on the manner in which individuals learn; it also reflects the views of industrial psychologists and personnel management specialists with regard to the types of supervisory input that are conducive to improving employee performance (Russell-Whalling, 2008). While the supervisor still maintains the role of performance appraiser and evaluator, the more modern role also allows the supervisor to solicit input directly from the subordinate (Daft, 2005; Russell-Whalling, 2008).