毕业论文：XX企业绩效考核体系的现状分析及对策研究

《学科前沿文献读写议》课程作业

学生姓名： 金莎

学 号： 201001013307

专 业： 工商管理

班 级： 工本103

浙江树人大学管理学院

2013年11月

ZHEJIANG SHUREN UNIVERSITY

毕业论文题目：XX企业绩效考核体系的现状分析及对策研究

英文文献原文：

Performance Appraisal as a Guide for Training and Development: A Research Note on the Iowa Performance Evaluation System

by

Dennis Daley

Iowa State University

This paper examines one facet of performance appraisal-its use as a guide for the drafting of employee training and development plans. The scope is limited in that it excludes any consideration as to whether these plans are actually implemented. Our interest focuses only on the extent to which supervisors endeavor to assist employees in correcting or overcoming weaknesses and in enhancing or developing perceived strengths. The findings reported here are based on a 1981 monitoring of the performance appraisal system used by the State of Iowa.

As civil service reform has been instituted in one jurisdiction after another in order to further assure objective, performance based personnel practices, performance appraisal has emerged as one of the key issues in the personnel management of the 1980s. This heightened sense of importance and seriousness has, in turn, led to a renewed interest in the study of the actual workings of performance appraisal systems.

The uses to which performance appraisal can be put are myriad. The recent Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 serves as a model in this respect. Here we find enunciated what may be taken as the typical orientation toward the uses of performance appraisal, recommending that personnel managers and supervisors "use the results of performance appraisal as. a basis for training, rewarding, reassigning, promoting, reducing in grade, retaining, and removing employees." Performance appraisal systems can also serve to validate personnel testing and selection procedures, although such systems are themselves also subject to affirmative action validation requirements.

The economic recessions of the 1970s and 1980s have placed significant restraints on these uses, however. The imposition of hiring freezes, the diminishment of promotional opportunities, the advent of reductions-in-force, and the near abandonment of merit pay provisions by financially strapped governmental entities have contributed to the loss of enthusiasm for performance appraisal in many quarters. Under such circumstances, performance appraisal一limited in its use to the more negative functions of employee evaluation-takes on the dreaded image ascribed to them by Douglas McGregor (1957).

In their search to salvage something positive from amidst these circumstances personnel specialists have alighted upon the use of performance appraisal as a guide for employee training and development. This offers them the opportunity of providing public employees with a service that employees view as beneficial. Although public employees have shown little confidence in specific performance appraisal systems or in the managerial abilities of those responsible for their implementation (McGregor, 1957; Levinson, 1976; Nalbandian,1981), they have tended to demonstrate a more favorable attitude when the purpose of performance appraisal has been perceived to be employee development (Decotiis and Petit, 1978;Cascio, 1982).

This, of course, still poses a significant problem to a multipurpose system such as that found in the State of Iowa. Disenchantment or distrust with one aspect of the performance appraisal system may significantly contribute to the weakening of the entire evaluation system.

THE IOWA PERFORMANCE EVALUATION SYSTEM

In all public service systems employees are evaluated periodically; most often this is done informally. The introduction of formal systems of performance appraisal, usually in addition to continued informal assessment, is a relatively recent event. Formal systems of performance appraisal are designed to provide a systematic and objective measure of individual job performance and/or potential for development.

Although the use of formal performance appraisal in Iowa can be traced back at least to the early 1950s (limited, for the most part, to such rudimentary methods as the essay or graphic rating scale), these occurred within a fragmented setting. Individual departments and agencies retained descretion over the choice of such personnel practices until well into the 1960s.

Under Governor Harold Hughes (1963一1969) a number of efforts were undertaken to

strengthen the executive. Among these reforms was the creation of the State Merit System of Personnel Administration, administered by the Iowa Merit Employment Department, in 1967. Even so, there were numerous exemptions limiting the extent of its coverage, both in terms of separate merit systems outside its jurisdiction and of patronage appointments. The executive reform movement was continued throughout the lengthy service of Governor Robert Ray (1969-1983). Strong executive support was placed behind the development of the personnel system. Governor Ray unsuccessfully advocated expanding the IMED jurisdiction through the elimination of the existing coverage exemptions and by integrating the separate merit systems into an executive personnel department. Notwithstanding the somewhat 1imited success of recent Iowa governors,

the basis for a professionalized public service was established during those years.

One reflection of this basis is the fact that the use of a statewide appraisal-by-objectives system was inaugurated in 1977. The implementation of this system followed the introduction of the management-by-objectives concept among a number of the larger state agencies.Since appraisal-by-objectives is a specific application or extension of the MBO approach, it was felt that by this means executive support for performance appraisal could be more readily obtained. It is known, of course, that the lack of managerial support is a significant contributing factor in the failure of many performance appraisal systems. The Iowa performance evaluation system is an ideal-typical descriptive example of the appraisal-by-objectives technique. The introduction of this approach in 1977 was accompained by a series of training sessions (Burke, 1977) and supported with supervisory and employee handbooks. However, training for new supervisors and periodic "refresher courses" appear to have been given a low priority in Iowa, as is generally the case in public sector personnel systems. Iowa's use of appraisal-by-objectives is designed as a participatory system. Employee participation is a hallmark found among most modern management approaches and has been linked to successful public sector performance appraisal systems (Lovrich, et al，1981).

The Iowa performance evaluation process is initiated with joint completion of "Section A:Responsibilities and Standards/Results Expected" (also referred to as the "job description")by the supervisor and employee. This is the first of three sections included in the performante appraisal form/process. Section A is completed at the beginning of the annual appraisal period while sections B and C are written up at its conclusion. The employee is to be given prior notice of the conference and supplied copies of previous evaluation for use as guides. Eight to ten major responsibilities (four to five is the norm) are to be selected and， written down in a results-oriented format with specific standards by which the achievement of these results are to be measured. These individual responsibilities are weighted through the use of an additive formula which factors in the time spent on each task and the evaluation of its importance or the consequence of error (a five point Likert-type scale is used for both). The overall employee rating is the weighted average of these individual responsibility ratings(also based on a five point scale).

In the event that these responsibilities need to be subject to modification due to changing circumstances, a new Section A would be prepared by the supervisor and employee. During the course of the evaluation period the supervisor is also encouraged to use a "critical incident" approach. Both formal (with written copy inserted into the

employee's file) and informal communications between employees and supervisors are encouraged. For negative incidents it is important that a record of corrective action be documented; employees must be notified if they are doing something wrong and the supervision must indicate how they can correct their behavior.

At the end of the evaluation period, again following advanced notice, the employee and supervisor meet to discuss the employee's job performance in light of the responsibilities outlined in the employee's Section A. Worksheets are used at this meeting with a formal evaluation prepared only afterward. At this appraisal interview the supervisor discusses "SectionB: Performance Review/Rating" with the employee. Employees are also given the opportunity to formally comment on the final evaluation form. Historically only five percent do so,of which under two percent can be classified as negative comments.

"Section C: Summary of Total Job Performance and Future Performance Plans" is also completed at this time. Basically, this is an essay evaluation. The supervisor is provided the opportunity to list the employee's "areas of strength- and those "areas needing improvement." In the latter instances "training and developmental plans" for correcting these are supposed to be filed.

DATA COLLECTION

In conjunction with its implementation efforts the Iowa Merit Employment Department engaged in a two-year monitoring of its appraisal-by-objectives evaluation system. The results of this monitoring project, involving the sampling of performance appraisals submitted in between July 1978 and December 1979, were reported to state officials in January 1980.The first monitoring project led to a number of minor changes in the performance evaluation system. For most part these modifications represented "word changes;" e.g., instead of listing"employee weaknesses," "areas needing improvement" were prescribed.

This study is based on the results of a second monitoring project conducted by the IMED.The questions addressed in this study were, in part, raised by the first monitoring project.While the first monitoring focused primarily on the basic or general implementation of the performance evaluation system (i.e., was there compliance with the mandated requirements?), the second is more concerned with how well it is working. The format used here is that of "action research" or "troubleshooting" (Starling, 1979, pp. 495一514; Rossi and Freeman, 1982). IMED staff served as judges who assessed the qualitative aspects of performance appraisals. A stratified approach to sampling was employed in order to assure that sufficient supervisory, professional and managerial appraisals were included. The resultant data base consisted of 535

performance appraisals submitted between July and December of 1981.

DATA ANALYSIS

The primary results assessing how well Iowa's performance appraisal system is working are reported elsewhere (Daley, 1983). This paper focuses only on those aspects related to the specification of training and development plans.

Because Iowa employs a multipurpose approach in the use of performance appraisals it is hardly surprising that there are many instances, 43 percent of those monitored, in which no training and development are specified. This, however, poses the task of somehow separating the cases in which training plans should most definitely be present.

A supervisor may choose to list training and development plans for three reasons. First,unrelated to any individual strengths or weaknesses, he may choose to use this performance appraisal section as a memo or reminder of a training activity which all employees are routinely given. The inclusion of such activities in an "official" performance appraisal may serve to provide added political weight in order to insure their being performed; it is all to easy amidst the pressing, day-to-day concerns of administrative firefighting to let training and development activities slide off the edge.

Second, supervisors may choose to promote employee development. They may either pickup on some strength an individual already possesses or for which he may have an aptitude and attempt to polish, refine, or enhance those skills. While this is not an automatic relationship, not all "strengths" would require additional or follow-up training, it is important for both organizational and individual well-being. Obviously, such activities benefit the organization by increasing its administrative or technical capacity. One can also expect that the individual employee benefits through material rewards and/or enhanced self-esteem. As such, this represents one of the positive uses to which performance appraisal can be put.Hence, it has an added importance.

Finally, training plans should be specified in those instances in which a supervisor notes that an employee "needs improvement." As such remarks may become the basis for an adverse personnel action (reassignment, reduction in grade, removal, etc.) it is legally incumbent that the state demonstrate that it has made a good faith effort to correct such deficienties. Due process demands that public employees not be dealt with a "star chamber" fashion.An employee cannot be expected to correct inadequate work behaviors if he is neither told that they are inadequate nor, it told, not instructed or assisted in how to correct them.

In monitoring Iowa's performance appraisals room was allowed to record up to three "strengths" and "areas needing improvement" for each employee. Supervisors tended to list employee strengths twice as often as they detailed areas needing improvement (1223 to 506),and as one would expect

there is a pronounced tendency to note both strengths and areas needing improvement vis-a-vis individual employees (58 percent of the monitored appraisals combine both strengths and areas needing improvement).

A count of the number of listed strengths and areas needing improvement was made use of (zero to three for each variable) in analyzing this data. While this fails to measure the importance or significance of each strength or area needing improvement, it was felt that in some way the number of such instances would be related to or a rough indicator of the overall seriousness underlying the specification or training plans (i.e., as the number of instances increased so would the need for a training plan to be specified).

Furthermore, training plans were judged not only as to their existence but also as to whether they were deemed to represent a "poor" or "good" relationship between the plan and the listed strengths and areas needing improvement. The nature of this relationship may also be interpreted in terms of partial or full compliance. "Good" plans would be seen as following-up on the listed strengths and/or areas needing improvement and, hence, as complying with the personnel system's intention to use performance appraisals as a guide for training and development.

In addition to the above analysis the count of strengths and areas needing improvement were also compared to the rounded performance ratings given to each individual. It was felt that there should be evidence here, too, albeit tangential in nature, of a relationship; those employees garnering more mentions of strengths and/or of fewer areas needing improvement should possess higher ratings.