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Seeing the Forest but Missing the Trees: The Role of Judgments in Performance Management

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

John P. Meriac ,
C. Allen Gorman  and
Therese Macan
John P. Meriac*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri—St. Louis
C. Allen Gorman
Affiliation:
Department of Management, East Tennessee State University
Therese Macan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri—St. Louis
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John P. Meriac, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri—St. Louis, 425 Stadler Hall, One University Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499. E-mail: meriacj@umsl.edu
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Extract

Various solutions have been proposed to “fix” performance management (PM) over the last several decades. Pulakos, Mueller Hanson, Arad, and Moye (2015) have presented a holistic approach to improving PM in organizations. Although this approach addresses several key elements related to the social context of PM, namely the buy-in of organizational stakeholders, timely and regular feedback, and future-directed feedback, we believe that several robust findings from the PM research literature could further improve this process. Are Pulakos et al. looking at the forest but missing the trees? In the following commentary, we offer several reasons that performance judgments and perhaps even informal ratings are still operating and occurring in the proposed holistic system. Therefore, advancements in other areas of PM research may offer additional ways to fix PM.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 102 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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