Revisiting appraisal politics from assessors' perspective

Abstract

Past research on performance appraisal focusing on assessorzs ability to assess accurately has not made much progress because practitioners have not adopted most of the recommendations. One of the arguments has been that enhancing assessorzs ability to is useless unless s/he intends to appraise accurately. The focus of this paper is to understand assessorzs intention to appraise performance and it draws from political view of organisation, which considers assessor as a politician and proposes that certain contextual factors cause assessorzs to adopt goals other than accuracy. Specifically, it is proposed that, instrumentality of outcomes, ambiguity in the process/ policies, and accountability pressures shape the assessorzs perception of appraisal politics, which determine assessorzs intention to achieve specific goals through appraisal. Accountability research reveals that only specific accountability conditions have favourable affect on decision. While procedural accountability reduces assessorzs perception of appraisal politics, the outcome accountability will increase this perception and affect appraisal accuracy.