Performance At Work: Summary 2.8

Performance at Work

• Relevance of Individual Performance: High individual performance is crucial for a company to meet its goals and is a source of satisfaction, mastery, pride, and financial benefits for individuals.

Definition of Performance

• Action Aspect: What an individual does in a work situation (e.g., assembling an engine or teaching math).
• Outcome Aspect: The consequence or result of an individual's behavior, which doesn't only depend on their behavior (e.g., teaching math perfectly might not increase children's scores if they have intellectual deficits).

Performance as a Multi-dimensional Concept

• Task Performance: Individual's proficiency contributing to the organization's technical core (e.g., direct contribution - production worker, indirect contribution - managers or staff).
• Contextual Performance: Supports the organizational, social, and psychological environment to pursue the organization's goals (e.g., helping coworkers, being reliable, suggesting improvements).

Task Performance

• 5 Factors:
  • Job-specific task proficiency
  • Non-job-specific task proficiency
  • Written and oral communication proficiency
  • Supervision (for supervisory or leadership positions)
  • Management/administration (planning, guiding, training, communicating)

Contextual Performance

• 2 Types:
  • Stabilizing: Smooth functioning of the organization (e.g., organizational citizenship behavior, altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, courtesy, and sportsmanship).
  • Proactive Behaviors: Aim to change and improve work procedures and organizational processes (e.g., organizational spontaneity, prosocial organizational behavior, taking charge).

Relationship between Task and Contextual Performance

• Conceptually and Empirically Distinct: Task performance and contextual performance factors contribute uniquely to overall performance in managerial jobs.
• Predicted by Different Variables: Abilities and skills predict task performance, while personality-related factors predict contextual performance.

Performance as a Dynamic Concept

• Individual Performance Varies Over Time: Due to learning processes, long-term changes, and temporary changes (e.g., psycho-physiological state).

Perspectives on Performance

• Individual Differences Perspective: Focuses on individual characteristics (e.g., general mental ability, personality) as sources of variation in performance.
• Situational Perspective: Focuses on situational aspects as facilitators and impediments for performance.
• Performance Regulation Perspective: Describes the performance process and investigates differences between high and moderate performers.

Performance Regulation Perspective

• Action Theory Approach: Describes the performance process as a sequence of actions (goal development, information search, planning, execution, and feedback processing).
• Goal Setting Theory: Assumes that goals affect performance via four mediating mechanisms: effort, persistence, direction, and task strategies.
• Feedback: Enhances performance, especially when coupled with goal setting.

Relations Among the Various Perspectives

• Combining Perspectives: Helpful to develop a model that combines individual differences, situational, and performance regulation perspectives.

Performance in a Changing World of Work

• Continuous Learning: Due to fast technological advancement, learning and competence development become increasingly important.
• Proactivity: Becoming increasingly important, with personal initiative related to company performance.
• Working in Teams: Organizations become more interested in team performance than individual performance, requiring task-related skills, knowledge, and interpersonal and self-management skills.
• Globalization: Workforces become increasingly global, requiring performance appraisal systems to be tailored to each culture.
• Technology: Individual work behavior is closely linked to the use of technology-based systems, making it difficult to separate technology's and the individual's contribution to performance.### Performance Behavior
• Performance behavior is episodic, consisting of individual occasions that make a difference in relation to organizational goals.
• It is not a continuous stream of activity, but rather a series of discrete events.

Performance Domain

• The performance domain is behaviorally multidimensional, consisting of various categories of behavior.
• The aggregated contribution value of an individual's behavioral episodes over a standard interval of time represents their overall job performance.

Task and Contextual Performance

• Task performance is directly related to the organization's technical core, involving activities that transform raw materials into products or services.
• Contextual performance maintains the broader organizational, social, and psychological environment, involving activities such as helping and cooperating with others.

Individual Differences

• Cognitive ability is related to task performance, while personality is related to contextual performance.
• Task knowledge, task skill, and task work habits are important for task performance.
• Contextual knowledge, contextual skill, and contextual work habits are important for contextual performance.

Assessing Performance - Appraisal

• Performance appraisal is the process of assessing an individual's work performance, usually by their line manager.
• The goal of performance appraisal is to solve problems, improve performance, and develop the individual.
• New aspects of appraisal, such as multi-source feedback, have become popular.

Research on Performance Appraisal

• Research has focused on understanding the cognitive processes underlying performance assessments made by managers.
• The organizational justice theory is a key concept, with distributive justice and procedural justice being important factors.

Psychological Variables Impacting Appraisal

• The attitude of managers towards carrying out appraisal is often ambivalent, and they may avoid it or manipulate ratings.
• The appraiser's goals, such as projecting a favorable image or avoiding conflict, can influence the appraisal process.
• The appraisee's motivation, self-awareness, self-esteem, and locus of control can also impact the appraisal process.

The Appraiser

• The appraiser's personality, such as Machiavellianism, emotional intelligence, and integrity, can influence the appraisal process.
• The appraiser's goals, such as projecting a favorable image or avoiding conflict, can also impact the appraisal process.

The Appraisee

• The appraisee's motivation, self-awareness, self-esteem, and locus of control can influence their reaction to the appraisal process.
• The appraisee's need for achievement, goal orientation, and feedback attitudes can also impact the appraisal process.

Goal Orientation

• Learning goal orientation (LGO) is focused on developing competence, while performance goal orientation (PGO) is focused on demonstrating competence.
• Goal orientation is related to self-efficacy and feedback seeking.

Self-Awareness, Self-Esteem, and Self-Efficacy

• Self-awareness is the ability to stand back from one's own feelings and needs, and assess performance in an unbiased manner.
• Self-esteem is an individual's overall evaluation of their self-worth.
• Self-efficacy is the belief in one's capabilities to meet the demands of a given situation.

Locus of Control and Attributional Style

• Locus of control (LoC) refers to the degree to which individuals believe that their behavior is controlled by internal or external factors.
• Attributional style refers to the way individuals explain the causes of events.
• LoC and attributional style can influence the appraisal process.

Feedback Attitudes

• Feedback attitudes refer to individual differences in the tendency to seek and respond to feedback.
• Feedback seeking is an important aspect of the appraisal process.### Performance Appraisal and Feedback
• Internal locus and external locus are fundamental elements in attributional style, influencing feedback attitudes.
• Variables affecting AI include:
  • Need for achievement and self-efficacy
  • Self-esteem and goal orientation
  • Self-awareness
  • Internality-externality
  • N.Ach and internality-externality influence reward preferences

The Relationship Between Appraiser and Appraisee

• Key factors in determining appraisal outcomes:
  • Supervisor-subordinate relationship
  • Frequency of communication and discussion about work outside of appraisal
  • Similarity between appraiser and appraisee (e.g., gender match)
  • Trust and loyalty
• Positive regard for subordinates leads to:
  • More lenient appraisal ratings
  • Greater halo effects
  • Reduced accuracy
  • Less inclination to punish poor performance
  • Better interpersonal relationships

Attributional Theory

• Disliked individuals: poor performance is attributed to internal factors
• Liked subordinates: poor performance is attributed to external factors
• Conceptual and methodological problems:
  • Failure to consider duration of relationship and fidelity to organizational appraisal systems

Improving Future Research and Practice

• Suggestions:
  • More studies outside of the USA
  • Research on psychological aspects of appraisal interaction
  • Contingency model-based research
  • Organizational psychologists should understand and describe appraisal interaction at an individual level

Sources of Performance Appraisal Information

• Objective Production Data:
  • Measures job performance (e.g., machine operator's output)
  • Problems:
    • Assumption of true performance differences
    • Variability due to factors beyond individual control
    • Criterion contamination
    • Limited relevance and accessibility
• Personnel Data:
  • Absenteeism and accidents
  • Issues with reflecting real differences in job performance
• Rating Errors:
  • Halo error: general feelings about an employee influence ratings
  • Leniency errors: disproportionate ratings (positive or negative)
  • Central-tendency error: reluctance to assign extreme ratings

Methods of Performance Appraisal

• Judgmental Data:
  • Graphic rating scales
  • Employee-comparison methods (e.g., rank order, paired comparison)
  • Behavioral checklists and scales (e.g., critical incidents, behavioral-observation scales)
• EPM (electronic performance methods)

Rater Training and Motivation

• Rater training: teaching appraisers to minimize errors
• Frame-of-reference training: provides common reference standards
• Rater motivation: organizationally induced pressure to evaluate positively, and rewards for accurate appraisal

Accurate Ratings

• Conditions for accurate ratings:
  • Clearly defined good and poor performance
  • Distinguishing between workers in terms of level of performance
  • High trust in the system
  • Low ratings do not result in loss of rewards
  • Valued rewards are linked to accuracy

General Mental Ability and Job Performance

• GMA predicts occupational level and job performance
• Theoretical background:
  • GMA is a stable, genetically based trait
  • Disconfirming specific aptitude theory
• GMA and attainment of occupational level:
  • Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies
  • Correlation between GMA scores and occupational level
• GMA and performance within occupations:
  • Validity of GMA for predicting job performance
  • Specific aptitudes and specific aptitude theory
  • Job experience, GMA, and job performance

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