Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T06:55:16.768Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Working With Social Comparisons in the Appraisal and Management of Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

R. Blake Jelley
R. Blake Jelley*
Affiliation:
School of Business, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to R. Blake Jelley, School of Business, University of Prince Edward Island, 550 University Avenue, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, CanadaC1A 4P3. E-mail: bjelley@upei.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Research and practice in performance appraisal and performance management seem to suffer from the same “delusion of absolute performance” that Rosenzweig (2007, p. 112) described with respect to commentators’ evaluations of company performance in a competitive market economy. Commentators on business success factors have tended to speciously neglect or downplay the relative nature of performance (Rosenzweig, 2007). Downplaying the relative nature of performance is apparently the strategy endorsed by most performance appraisal scholars, too. Goffin, Jelley, Powell, and Johnston (2009) estimated that less than 4% of the published performance rating research has involved relative or social-comparative approaches, despite demonstrable advantages for relative over absolute rating formats (discussed below). Similarly, social comparison research and organizational scholarship have not traditionally been closely integrated (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007; Greenberg, Ashton-James, & Ashkanasy, 2007).

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 288 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, S., Campion, M., Colquitt, A., Grubb, A., Murphy, K., Ollander-Krane, R., & Pulakos, E. D. (2016). Getting rid of performance ratings: Genius or folly? A debate. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 9 (2), 219–252.Google Scholar
Arigo, D., Suls, J. M., & Smyth, J. M. (2014). Social comparisons and chronic illness: Research synthesis and clinical implications. Health Psychology Review, 8 (2), 154–214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bommer, W. H., Johnson, J. L., Rich, G. A., Podsakoff, P. M., & MacKenzie, S. B. (1995). On the interchangeability of objective and subjective measures of employee performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 48, 587–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buunk, A. P., & Gibbons, F. X. (2007). Social comparison: The end of a theory and the emergence of a field. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102, 3–21.Google Scholar
Buunk, B. P., Collins, R. L., Taylor, S. E., Van Yperen, N. W., & Dakof, G. A. (1990). The affective consequences of social comparison: Either direction has its ups and downs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59 (6), 1238–1249.Google Scholar
DeNisi, A. S., & Gonzalez, J. A. (2000). Design performance appraisal systems to improve performance. In Locke, E. A. (Ed.), The Blackwell handbook of principles of organizational behavior (pp. 60–72). Malden, MA: Blackwell Business.Google Scholar
Dominick, P. G. (2009). Forced rankings: Pros, cons, and practices. In Smither, J. W. & London, M. (Eds.), Performance management: Putting research into action (pp. 585–625). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffin, R. D., Gellatly, I. R., Paunonen, S. V., Jackson, D. N., & Meyer, J. P. (1996). Criterion validation of two approaches to performance appraisal: The Behavioral Observation Scale and the Relative Percentile Method. Journal of Business and Psychology, 11, 37–47.Google Scholar
Goffin, R. D., Jelley, R. B., Powell, D. M., & Johnston, N. G. (2009). Facilitating social comparisons in performance appraisal: The Relative Percentile Method. Human Resource Management, 48, 251–268.Google Scholar
Goffin, R. D., & Olson, J. M. (2011). Is it all relative? Comparative judgments and the possible improvement of self-ratings and ratings of others. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6 (1), 48–60.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J., Ashton-James, C. E., & Ashkanasy, N. M. (2007). Social comparison processes in organizations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102 (1), 22–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heneman, R. L. (1986). The relationship between supervisory ratings and results-oriented measures of performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 39, 811–826.Google Scholar
Jelley, R. B., & Goffin, R. D. (2001). Can performance-feedback accuracy be improved? Effects of rater priming and rating-scale format on rating accuracy. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 134–144.Google Scholar
Jelley, R. B., Goffin, R. D., Powell, D. M., & Heneman, R. L. (2012). Incentives and alternative rating approaches: Roads to greater accuracy in job performance assessment? Journal of Personnel Psychology, 11 (4), 159–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 254–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latham, G. P., & Wexley, K. N. (1977). Behavioral observation scales for performance appraisal purposes. Personnel Psychology, 30, 255–268.Google Scholar
Lindner, M., Rudorf, S., Birg, R., Falk, A., Weber, B., & Fliessbach, K. (2015). Neural patterns underlying social comparisons of personal performance. SCAN Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 569–576.Google Scholar
Nathan, B. R., & Alexander, R. A. (1988). A comparison of criteria for test validation: A meta-analytic investigation. Personnel Psychology, 41, 517–535.Google Scholar
Roch, S. G., Sternburgh, A. M., & Caputo, P. M. (2007). Absolute vs. relative performance rating formats: Implications for fairness and organizational justice. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 15, 302–316.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, P. (2007). The halo effect . . . and the eight other business delusions that deceive managers. New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Seijts, G. H., & Latham, G. P. (2012). Knowing when to set learning versus performance goals. Organizational Dynamics, 41 (1), 1–6.Google Scholar
Swencionis, J. K., & Fiske, S. T. (2014). How social neuroscience can inform theories of social comparison. Neuropsychologia, 56, 140–146.Google Scholar
Van Yperen, N. W., & Leander, N. P. (2014). The overpowering effect of social comparison information: On the misalignment between mastery-based goals and self-evaluation criteria. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40 (5), 676–688.Google Scholar
Wagner, S. H., & Goffin, R. D. (1997). Differences in accuracy of absolute and comparative performance appraisal methods. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 95–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar