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Performance Management Within the Workplace Essays

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Performance Management Within the Workplace

The basis of the mainstream of performance appraisals within the modern workplace is one person (a manager or executive) rating one more, an intrinsically individual process. There are distinction such as 360 degree appraisals that include the judgment of others such as clientele and peers/colleagues in the process but it is the action of one person transitory judgment upon another that is subjective in nature and the root cause of many of the problems encountered in the research associated with performance appraisals.

Performance appraisals are of importance to the organisation, as they often provide the only measure of an individual's contribution and …show more content…

The earliest appraisal systems, despite focusing on just one measure; quantity output, could perhaps be viewed as the most objective of all. Employees on a production line could be accurately rated on 'piece rate' or have their simple repetitive movements timed. As managers recognised the quality of work produced also affected an individual's impact on the organisation, and work output gradually shifted from directly-measurable physical activity to more complex tasks requiring the application of greater skill, knowledge and ability, more elaborate performance standards became necessary. Early performance management was highly subjective, allowing rating officials far too much personal latitude. It often included a supervisor's assessment of personality and character traits such as loyalty, honesty, attitude, initiative, cooperation, resourcefulness and ambition (Pratt 2001).

When the concept of management by objectives (MBO) became widely recognised in the 1950s, performance management systems moved towards those based on achieving goals, or success in key accountabilities (or key job impact areas)(Pratt 2001). Research between 1950 and 1980 was focussed primarily on improving the instruments used in making performance

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