Performance Appraisal: An Open or Shut Case?
| Published date | 01 January 1977 |
| Date | 01 January 1977 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055326 |
| Pages | 38-42 |
| Author | James Walker,Clive Fletcher,Richard Williams,Keith Taylor |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Performance Appraisal: An
Open or Shut Case?
James Walker
Clive Fletcher
Richard Williams
Keith Taylor
Behavioural
Sciences
Research Division,
Civil
Service Departmenta
Abstract
Over recent years there has been a move towards more open
appraisal, with the individual appraised being shown the writ-
ten assessment of him, but there is little evidence to indicate
what effects this change in practice may have had on the value
of the appraisals. The survey of appraisal schemes in private
and public sector organizations reported in this paper
attempts to gauge the influence of greater openness on the
standards of written appraisals and on the amount of reliance
organizations place upon them in deciding such matters as
promotion.
Introduction
This paper describes a survey of appraisal schemes investigat-
ing the effects on appraisals, and how they are used, of open-
ness,
ie letting the individual appraised see the written record
of
his
assessment. A number of surveys on appraisal practices
have been published over the last few years, and they have
revealed a consistent trend towards greater openness in the
appraisal situation. The BIM survey1 of management prac-
tices in this field, published in 1967, found that 17 out of the
100 organizations covered had wholly or partly open apprais-
als.
By 1973, a larger survey conducted by the IPM2 was
showing that all 360 organizations responding to the enquiry
had systems whereby the person reported on was shown at
least part of the appraisal form. A parallel, but less marked,
trend noted by the IPM was for greater participation by the
appraisee in the completion of the report, ranging from sim-
ply signing that the form has been seen to actual self-rating
(though the latter occurred in only 7.6% of the sample).
Finally, Wraith3 has shown in a recent RIPA monograph that,
in the public sector, while appraisal reports are still usually
kept confidential, here again there is a trend towards greater
openness.
The reasons for these changes in the nature of appraisal
schemes are varied, but one of the points brought out by the
IPM study was the steady growth in the use of results-
oriented appraisals, largely due to the influence of Manage-
ment by Objectives. This has had the dual effects of simplify-
ing
opinions expressed in this article are those
of
the
authors,
and
should not be attributed to the Civil Service
Department.
ing appraisal forms (by leading them away from a personality
trait approach with its attendant plethora of rating scales) and
of making them more open - the latter being a necessity if
objectives are to be set, recorded and reviewed regularly.
Other influential factors in the move to more open and par-
ticipative appraisals are harder to define and include such
vague causes as 'the changing social climate'. However, if the
causes of this change are not always clear or well articulated,
the actual
effects
of this shift from confidential to open report-
ing are even less well understood. There is certainly very little
research (or indeed, any other) evidence that relates directly
to the effects of openness on either the appraiser or the
appraisee, and what has been published in this area is
equivocal in its findings. Some studies suggest that managers
either think they would4 or actually do5 inflate their ratings
when they have to show them to the staff concerned. This is
one of the chief concerns of any organization changing from
confidential assessments to open ones - that many managers
may, when faced with the prospect of communicating adverse
comments, avoid the issue by giving more favourable reports
than are really deserved, with the consequence that the
appraisal reports are of dubious value in deciding such mat-
ters as promotion or pay.
So what effects, if any, do openness and subordinate partici-
pation in appraisal actually have on the assessments recorded
and on the uses to which they can be put? It was one of the
chief aims of the survey reported in this paper to obtain some
evidence on this.
The Sample
Thirty-one organizations were contacted with a view to con-
ducting an intensive enquiry which would take up in detail
some of the trends noted in the surveys done by the IPM and
other organizations. Of the organizations contacted initially,
25 (listed in Figure 1) were visited in the latter half of 1975.
The other
six
were deleted from further investigation because
three of them did not use reports, another two had suspended
their schemes prior to introducing new ones and the remain-
ing company was in the middle of
its
reporting cycle and could
not deal with the survey. In one organization visited the
appraisal practices varied so much within and between the
constituent companies that it was not possible to classify the
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