Why should we care about job performance?

• Organizational level:
  • Performance is what the organization hires an employee to do       and to do well.
• Individual level:
  
  • Selection/Termination
  • Promotion/Development
  • Remuneration (i.e., salary and bonuses)

Performance is the bottom line in any organization.

Effective Performance  Productivity

• Productivity varies between individuals
  •  The ratio of productivity between highest performer and lowest performer is significant (Campbell, Gasser, & Oswald, 1996)
    • • Low difficulty jobs: 2:1 to 4:1
      • High difficulty jobs: 10:1
• Productivity varies within individuals
  
  •  One person’s performance can change across time (Doerr et al., 2004)
• Productivity varies by situational factors

What is job performance?

Multi-dimensional approach to performance

Job performance includes:

1. 1.  Task performance (in-role behavior)

• • • How well (or poorly) employees perform their job duties compared to expectations for the job. Every performance has an idea how people should do it correctly.
    • Attempts to measure in-role performance:

Over periods of time:

• • • Objective measure (sales volume, output)
    • Judgmental measure (supervisor ratings)
    • Electronic performance monitoring (work output but also surveillance [e.g., web browsing/texting])

Immediately:

• • • Hands-on (“show me”)
    • Walk-through testing (“tell me”)
    • Control: does the employee have complete control over his/her performance?
    • Content: does the criterion measure the “right” things (i.e., is it a valid measure)?

Actual performance, all of it, and nothing else

• A criterion is “contaminated” if it measures something that is unrelated to the behavior one is trying to measure
  50. E.g. an intelligence test that also measures general knowledge
  50. Limited control = contaminated criterion

Understanding performance

• Job analysis:
  50. Task-oriented analysis: what needs to be done?
  50. Worker-oriented analyses: what kind of attributes does the person need to accomplish the tasks? KSAO -> Knowledge, Skills, Ability, Other characteristics. Use to make a job advertisement and select an indicidual
• Performance models (J.P. Campell’s performance model):

[note: deze afbeelding uit het college is door de WorldSupporter redactie verwijderd wegens vermoedelijke inbreuk op het auteursrecht] 

• Fair comparison between different employees’ performance (the same for everyone)
• It protects against criterion contamination
  • Everything that is included in the model is relevant (if the model is good)
• It protects against criterion deficiency
  • Things that are not included in the model are not relevant (if the model is good)
• The achievement goal approach:

An approach for understanding how people define, approach, experience, and react to competence-relevant, or achievement situations.

How to define competence?

Mastery: become a better you. Intrinsic motivation. Intrapersonal competence.

Performance: meeting standards. Interpersonal competence.

The valence of achievements goals

[note: deze afbeelding uit het college is door de WorldSupporter redactie verwijderd wegens vermoedelijke inbreuk op het auteursrecht] 

Beware: firms favor performance over mastery goals

Individual goals

employee comparison methods

Team goals

Relative to other teams, departments, or offices

Organizational goals

Competitors, financial needs

Can your organization afford to care whether or not you improved?

1. 2.  Organizational citizenship behavior (extra-role or contextual performance)

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)

• Work behavior that goes above and beyond the required duties of the job (explain something when they are already free to go home)
• Is not part of formal job description, and yet it contributes to the effectiveness of the team, department etc…
• also known as contextual performance or extra-role behavior
• E.g., helping a colleague with computer problems; putting new toner into the printer etc…

Types of OCB

Interpersonal: between individualis

• Altruism (Helping)
• Courtesy
• Sportsmanship

Organizational:

• Compliance with organization
• Civic virtue
• Boosterism: talking in a positive manner, positive culture in organization

Determinants of OCB

• Attitudinal Factors
  50. Job satisfaction
  50. Perceived fairness
  50. Commitment
  50. Leader supportiveness
• Dispositional Factors
  
  50. Conscientiousness
  50. Agreeableness

What is job performance?

Multi-dimensional approach in performance

1. 3. Counterproductive work behavior (deviant behavior)

• • • Voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and threatens the organization, its members, or both
    • Intentionality. Mistakes and errors are not included.
    • part of contextual performance and also known as deviant behavior
    • E.g., stealing office supplies, bullying, sabotaging the work-place

Typology of counterproductive work behavior

[note: deze afbeelding uit het college is door de WorldSupporter redactie verwijderd wegens vermoedelijke inbreuk op het auteursrecht] 

A model of workplace deviance:

[note: deze afbeelding uit het college is door de WorldSupporter redactie verwijderd wegens vermoedelijke inbreuk op het auteursrecht] 

 There are mediators for this relation.

Performance Management:

An HRM process concerned with getting the best performance from:

• • individuals in an organization
  • Teams
  • the organization as a whole

Common performance appraisal errors

• Halo/horn error
  • Overly focusing on a specific performance rating or stereotyping employee by a single personal characteristic and “tainting” all other ratings. Halo: If you give a chocolate before judgment. Horn: If you sleep in class before judgment.

• Leniency error
  • Rating all employees higher than they should be.
• Severity error
  
  • Rating all employees lower than they should be. Be harch
• Central tendency error
  
  • Rating employee as ‘average’ when performance actually varies (avoiding extreme points).
• Primacy effects
  
  • Using initial information that supports the rating decision while ignoring later information that does not.
• Recency effects
  
  • Basing the rating decision primarily on the most recent performance information while placing much less emphasis on past performance.
• Contrast effects
  
  • Comparing one employee (stronger) to another (weaker) rather than applying a common standard to all employees.

Impediments to clear feedback communication

• Recipient of communication
  • Positive self-illusions: We only want to hear and selectively recall positive information about the self

• Sender of communication
  • Illusion of transparency: We overestimate degree to which others know what we are thinking. ‘You know what you can do better.” “You need to improve your writing.”
  • Sugarcoat negative information

Ways to give effective feedback

Ask questions and get their perspective

• • Include a high degree of subordinate participation in the appraisal and development process.
  • Don’t just lecture, test to ensure clear understanding

Provide positive feedback first

• • People are receptive to negative feedback when their self has been affirmed
  • Positive feedback must be sincere

Provide negative feedback second

• • Negative feedback must be clear, candid, and tactful. Not an attempt to hurt.
  • Be descriptive and specific rather than evaluative and general.
  • Concentrate on behavior the individual can control

End with actions that can be taken. Focus on the positives going forward

• • Solve job problems which may be hampering job performance
  • Mutual setting of specific goals or objectives.
  • Agree on actions to be taken

Take home messages

• Performance plays a central role in organizational practice and I/O research.
• Performance is more than simple task performance.
• There is a “dark side” to job performance.