Industrial and organizational psychology/Module 5

Performance Measurement

Module 5.1 - Basic Concepts in Performance Measurement

Performance information is used for criterion data, employee development, motivation/satisfaction, rewards, promotions or layoffs.

Types of Performance Data

• Objective
• Personnel
• Judgmental
• Relationships among performance measures
• Hands-on performance measures (walk-through testing, essentially the employee describes how to do a job).
• Electronic performance monitoring (improving performance)

Performance management

Emphasizes link between individual behavior & organizational strategies & goals.

3 components include:

1. Definition of performance
2. Actual measurement and how that is conducted
3. Communication between supervisor and subordinate regarding individual behavior and organization expectations.

Fairness?

• Appraisal frequency in relation to fairness perceptions
• Joint planning with supervisor to reduce weaknesses
• Supervisor's knowledge of duties of person being measured
• Supervisor's knowledge of actual performance of person being rated

There is also...

• Distributive justice: Fairness of outcomes related to decisions made.
• Procedural justice: Fairness of process by which ratings are assigned and a decision is made.
• Interpersonal justice: Respectful all across the board.

Module 5.2 - Performance Rating---Substance

Theories of performance rating are as follows:

• Process model - Addresses various factors comprising of rating process
• Content model - Addresses content input to supervisory ratings
• Rating context - Includes both announced purpose and other, non-announced agendas surrounding ratings.

Performance ratings are influenced by task performance, contextual performance, and counter-productive performance. Trait ratings serve as a warning, while task-based ratings are on the productivity and efficiency of the employee. Critical incidents method focuses on the critical behaviors that influence performance (effective, average, and ineffective).

The structural characteristics of performance rating scale are as follows:

• Extent to which one's duty is being rated is behaviorally defined.
• Extent to which meaning of response categories is defined.
• Degree that person interpreting ratings can understand response that rater intended.

Rating Formats

1. Graphic rating scales
2. Checklist
3. Weighted checklist (checklist + assigned values or weights)
4. Forced-choice format (2/4 sentences that describes the ratee well)
5. BARS for firefighters (behaviorally anchored rating scales) - rating format that includes behavioral anchors describing what the worker has done, or might be expected of them to do, in a certain duty area.

Employee Comparison Methods

These involve the direct comparisons of 1 person with another person. These could be simple ranking (employees ranked from top to bottom according to their efficiency) or paired comparison (each employee within a group is compared to another individual within a group).

These are useful in deciding whether to lay someone off or downsize decisions. Though, feedback is hard in this case because no real standard of performance is defined - and paired comparisons is simply difficult to accomplish.

Module 5.3 - Performance Rating | The Process!

Supervisors are authority figures that deal with rating. One's peers are most likely to have the most knowledge on a co-worker's performance, but a COI does arise when they compete for fixed, limited resources.

With supervisors present to reduce inaccuracy, self-ratings are discussions of ratings that make the process of assessing for fairness more fair. But a COI arises if it is used for administrative purposes.

Rating Sources

• Subordinate ratings - Subordinate feedback must be anonymous
• Customer and supplier ratings - Essential when looking at it from a business-strategy vantage point.
• 360 degree systems - Collect and provide an employee with feedback originating from several sources (supervisor, vendor, customer, peer, etc.). This is usually used for feedback and employee development.

How can ratings get distorted?

• Central tendency error: Raters may choose the middle option on a scale when they should use a more extreme point.
• Leniency-severity error: Raters may be too lenient or harsh.
• Halo error: Similar ratings throughout the board result in a lack of strengths/weaknesses.

These errors may be corrected through rater training or psychometric training (make raters aware of common rating errors for awareness purposes).

Frame of Reference Training

Raters need context for provided ratings:

1. Provide information about multi-dimensional nature of performance.
2. Ensure rates understand the meanings of the scales used.
3. Practice
4. Feedback on practice excersises.

Is it reliable? Up for debate, but inter-rater reliability is poor due to the subjective nature of raters.

Is it valid? Depends on the development of the rating scales used.

Module 5.4 - Social and Legal Context of Performance Evaluation

Rates use the rating process as a means to an end, either personal or organizational.

Organizational goals

• Between-person uses
• Within-person uses
• Systems-maintenance uses

Goal Conflict

When a single system is being used to satisfy multiple goals from different stakeholders, raters must choose which goal to satisfy before assigning a rating.

Possible solutions include:

1. Use multiple performance evaluation systems
2. Obtain involvement of stakeholders in developing the system
3. Reward supervisors for accurate ratings

Performance Feedback

...becomes problematic when the same info is being used for multiple purposes. Negative feedback especially should be stretched over several sessions, and not "dogged" in at once. Think of the "praise-criticism-praise" sandwich.

The employee is more likely to digest negative feedback if they believe that the supervisor...

• Has proof for their claims
• Agree on the subordinate's duties
• Agree on what is good performance and what is bad performance.
• Focuses on the ways to improve performance and not to slander the subordinate

Destructive criticism is feedback that is cruel, general, and directed towards the person.

What is the 360 Degree Feedback?

• Anonymous
• Rater and ratee should identify the evaluator
• Use feedback for developmental purposes
• Train the information sources and the messengers for such feedbacks.
• Follow-up feedback session with regular opportunities for progress assessment.

Performance Evaluation & Culture

Hoftsede's 5 dimensions of culture might affect performance evaluations. This includes the modesty bias, where rates give themselves lower ratings than needed. This is usually prevalent in cultures with high power distance.

In terms of law, judges are more concerned with issues of fairness vs. technical characteristics of the system. Lawsuits go against trait-based systems and not behavior-based systems (subjective ratings), overall performance evaluations do not discriminate against protected subgroups.

Mental Disorder

50% of American adults suffer from a mental disorder during their lifetime. Depression is "the common cold of mental illness".

There are two opposing views on what mental disorder is:

• Biomedical - Mental illness is a physical disease (the accepted view).
• Psychological - Emotional problem of psychological origin.

Mental illness is divided into two types:

• Organic [disorder] - Damage to the brain
• Functional [disorder] - From interpersonal conflict/social stress. Examples arepsychosis and loss of touch with reality, a personality disorder, or extreme self-absorption.

Psychosis is the most serious disorder, schizophrenia is the most common type. Neurosis is less severe than psychosis (happy is limited here). A type of neurosis is anxiety reaction. The second type of neurosis is an unhealthy obsession that restricts the person. The third type of neurosis is a combo of obsession and compulsion. Third type of neurosis is a depressive reaction (extreme sadness). The fourth type is psychophysiological disorder (hysteria, conversion reaction).

Personality Disorders

What is a personality disorder? Deviant behavior that can't be diagnosed as either psychotic or neurotic.

What's the purpose in classifiying mental illness? Shows differences in mental disorders and encouraging psychiatrists to analyze patients' pasts.

DSM-IV is just descriptive, but doesn't explain how disorders differ from one another. It simply defines disorders by its specific number of symptoms.