published_or_final_version / abstract / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1986 R533 / Master of Science / Psychological Sciences

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Management University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management. February 1999. / One of the levers of competitiveness is innovation. with the increased cost pressures, it is recognised that the innovative potential of all employees must be leveraged. The literature suggests that innovation is innate. It follows, therefore, that an appropriate performance management system, based on an understanding of the requirements of innovative individuals, must harness and encourage innovation to a greater or lesser extent in all employees. The purpose of this study was to assess whether there are any differences in the performance management preferences of innovative and non-innovative employees, with a view to designing appropriate performance management systems. The data was collected by means of a questionnaire distributed among the employees of the retail banking arm of a financial services sector organisation. Responses were elicited from 34 employees. These were then subjected to statistical analysis. The findings point to no real differences between the preferences of innovative and non innovative employees, with the exception of 4 dimensions. The absence of many differences is consistent with the view that innovative capability is a continuum and is an innate ability that is developed to different extents in different people. It suggests that other aspects of the individual personality are equally important in defining a suitable enviromnent of work. The recommendation is that a single performance management system is employed in an organisation with opportunities for customisation for the individual. / AC2017

This dissertation examines to what extent social comparison is emphasized in performance evaluations of work organizations, how employees react to it, and whether there is an alternative to it. Operationalizing social comparison as an evaluation process that compares an employee’s performance to their coworkers’ performance, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that social comparison is emphasized to a stronger extent in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures. Studies 3 and 4 find that employees in collectivistic cultures perceive higher procedural fairness when they receive social comparison evaluations as compared to employees in individualistic cultures. The mediation analyses from Studies 2 and 4 indicate that these findings are explained by the perceived descriptive and injunctive norms of social comparisons within collectivistic versus individualistic cultures, which shape people’s general attitudes toward using social comparison in evaluation settings. In collectivistic cultures that put strong emphasis on people’s social context, social comparison is considered to be a necessary component of performance evaluations. In contrast, in individualistic cultures where people focus on the specific characteristics of each person, social comparison is believed to be more or less irrelevant. Given the aversive effect of social comparison in individualistic cultures, the second chapter of this dissertation investigates whether there is a proper alternative to social comparison in the context of performance evaluations. It finds that temporal comparison—which compares an employee’s performance to his or her own past performance—can be such an alternative. Temporal comparison secures employees’ perceptions of fairness by providing the beliefs that their evaluators are focusing on them and their specific characteristics. These findings imply that employees in individualistic cultures want their independent identities to be acknowledged at work, and providing temporal comparison evaluations is one way to fulfill such needs.

This study was an attempt to gain insight into differing conceptions of job performance and job performance factors held by supervisors, employees in general, and of employees rated high and low on overall job performance by their supervisors. The discrepancy in the perceptions of job performance is an element in a general pattern of a well-documented discrepancy in the perception of subordinates’ wants, needs and desires by superiors. To assess employees’ perceptions about their own job performance, self-ratings were taken, along with estimate ratings of how employees thought their supervisors would rate them. A graphic rating scale was used, Format III, with seven job performance factors; Ability to work with others, Amount of work done, Quality of work done, Leadership potential, Ability to do complicated jobs, Ability to work with minimum supervision, Conscientiousness, and an eight scale, Overall Performance. Subjects were 78 female assembly workers along with their eight immediate male supervisors.

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No abstract available. / Thesis (MA)-University of Durban-Westville, 1986.

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The purpose of this study was to find out if the performance appraisal system (the PMP) of non-academic nonunionized personal of a Quebec university was developed, implemented, administered and maintained adequately. / The literature emphasizes certain elements essential to the successful or adequate development, implementation and administration of a performance appraisal system, and it is in reference to this body of literature that the PMP was examined. To find out how the PMP was developed, implemented and administered in practical terms, the researcher interviewed four Human Resources staff members directly responsible for these processes. / The findings of this descriptive study showed that in order for a performance appraisal system to be successful, an organization must be thorough in addressing certain essential elements within each step of its development implementation and administration. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)