Performance Management
Julia Brugman
Exam questions:
- Description and explanation
- Examples
- Critique: pros and cons
- Contrast and compare
- Apply
- Connect topics from different sessions
Week 1. Performance and Performance Management
1. What is performance?
2. Is it relevant to know how people perform? If so, why?
3. What is performance management?
4. Should organizations manage performance? If so, why?
5. Which trends in performance management can be observed?
1.1. A look back and a leap forward: A review and synthesis of the individual work
performance literature (Carpini, Parker, & Griffin, 2017)
Work performance = individual behavior that generates value for the organization.
There are 5 clusters in the overall map of individual work performance that indicate a breadth
of perspectives:
1. Management cluster (green): the role of individual performance in achieving
organizationally relevant outcomes.
2. Personnel selection perspective (blue): measurement and prediction of job
performance.
3. Motivation cluster (yellow): underlying motivational mechanisms of task performance.
4. Good citizen cluster (red): OCB (Organizational Citizenship Behavior).
5. Job attitudes cluster (purple): the “happy productive” worker debate, and job design.
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Julia Brugman
4 scientific maps that each represent a 10-year period, about the emergence of performance
research:
1. “Understanding the core” (1972 – 1982).
2. “Flowering of dimensions” (1983 – 1993) → new concepts.
3. “Scattering in the wind” (1994 – 2004) → scattering concepts (some terms in the map
have little connection to task performance or one another).
4. “New concepts take root” (2005 – 2015) → continuing rapid growth of the field.
Understanding the Core:
Vroom’s (1964) expectancy theory = performance is a function of ability and motivation.
Goal setting theory (Locke, 1968) = how setting goals facilitates task performance.
Flowering of dimensions:
OCB = behavior that cannot be prescribed or required in advance for a given job → lubricate
the social machinery of the organization but do not directly inhere in the usual notion of task
performance.
- OCB-O: behaviors that benefit the organization, e.g. compliance.
- OCB-I: behaviors directed at specific individuals, e.g. helping.
POB = Prosocial Organizational Behavior = behaviors targeted toward an individual, group, or
organization with the intention of improving the target’s welfare.
OCB and POB overlap: both are types of prosocial behavior.
Contextual performance = behaviors that do not support the technical core itself as much as
they support the organizational, social, and psychological environment in which the technical
core must function → encompasses both OCB and POB constructs.
Scattering in the wind:
Role-based model of performance = incorporates role theory and identity theory → 5 distinct
employee roles: job, organization, team, innovator, and career roles.
Hierarchical taxonomy of individual performance = 3 distinct dimensions: task performance,
citizenship performance, and adaptive performance.
New concepts take root:
Great eight competency framework = how work is accomplished as opposed to just the
outcomes of behavior.
Model of positive work role behaviors (Griffin et al., 2007) = specifies 9 performance
dimensions derived from the combination of 2 overarching dimensions: forms of role
behavior (related to uncertainty; proficiency, adaptivity, proactivity) and levels of contribution
(related to interdependence).
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Julia Brugman
The individual work performance literature has largely developed, but lack a comprehensive
theory to bridge topic areas → little understanding how various performance constructs
relate to one another → goal of this article to bring various networks together.
The Griffin et al. (2007) integrative performance model: to analyze how various performance
constructs fit together → classifies work behaviors into proficient, adaptive, and proactive
forms of performance; each from being directed toward outcomes at the individual, team,
and organization level; resulting in 9 broad performance dimensions.
- Proficient performance = behaviors that can be formalized and anticipated in advance →
incl. formal and informal requirements and expectations of organizational members.
- Adaptive performance = the degree to which individuals cope with, respond to, and/or
support changes that affect their roles.
- Proactive performance = the presence of self-initiation, a future-focus, and change.
Distinction between capacity (e.g., knowledge and skills, and ability), willingness (e.g.,
motivational states and personality), and opportunity (e.g., equipment, working conditions,
and social elements).
Construct recommendations:
- Performance is about observable behaviors, rather than cognitive, motivational, and
affective states, or the outcomes of behavior.
- Outcomes or indicators are referred to as performance too often, although they are no
behaviors (e.g., sales, salary or efficiency).
Skipped all recommendations (too much…)
Important to work toward a more theoretically oriented understanding of performance over
time and the unfolding dynamics of individual behaviors.
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Julia Brugman
1.2. The economic impact of employee behaviors on organizational performance
(Cascio, 2006)
The fully loaded cost of replacing a worker who leaves: 1.5 to 2.5 times the annual salary.
Example: employees at Costco earn more than employees at Sam’s Club, thus when an
employee leaves the costs are lower. However, there are more employees leaving Sam’s Club,
therefore total costs at Sam’s Club are higher.
Costco’s strategy: with innovative ideas and a productive workforce, consumers, workers, and
shareholders all can benefit.
Financial impacts of employee behavior:
- Retention: e.g. SYSCO → high satisfaction leads to lower costs on different aspects →
organizations need to be able to retain current employees and to attract a steady supply
of new ones → by developing an employer brand that attracts the right kind of applicants.
- Absenteeism and presenteeism:
o Absenteeism = any failure of an employee to report for or to remain at work as
scheduled, regardless of reason → leading cause: family-related issues.
o Presenteeism = slack productivity from ailing workers.
- Unhealthy lifestyles (e.g., weekly exercises, obese workers, or smoking) → encourage
healthy living by educating employees, serving healthier food, instituting work/life
programs to reduce stress levels.
- Employee attitudes: e.g. “I know what is expected of me at work” → related to employee
satisfaction/engagement.
Improved performance = there have been measurable changes in knowledge, skills, attitudes
and/or social behavior → level of individual, team, or organization.
Trainings have overall positive effects and economic benefits → however, it is necessary to
evaluate each training program separately before drawing conclusions about the overall
impact of the training.
Selection vs. training: better to choose selection → will enable the high-caliber selected
employees to learn more and learn faster from subsequent training programs than low-
caliber employees.
Validity = the job-relatedness of a measure → most important characteristic of any procedure
used as a basis for an employment decision (e.g., hiring or promotion) → hiring/promoting
those who score high on valid measures of performance.
Policy implications for employers:
- Enhancing employee retention: opportunities for career development, a sense of
confidence about the future, feelings of accomplishment, the amount of joy at work, and
employment security. Also:
o Be a company people want to work for.
o Get employees off to a great start.
o Provide regular coaching and rewards to sustain commitment.
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