ACCOUNTABILITY FORCES IN PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL: EFFECTS OF SELF-APPRAISAL INFORMATION, NORMATIVE INFORMATION AND TASK PERFORMANCE

ABSTRACT: This study investigated the effects of self-appraisal information, normative information, and task performance on performance appraisal ratings. Participants rated a fictitious subordinates performance on a clerical task subsequent to receiving self assessment information and normative information (present or absent). Self-appraisals affected performance ratings for poor performers but not for good performers, suggesting that judges are more motivated to please rates than they are merely to adopt the subordinates view of their own performance. Furthermore, objective normative information had greater influence than self appraisals On performance ratings, suggesting that information source credibility has more influence than felt accountability on performance appraisals. Implications of the findings for organizations were discussed. Accountability theory provides a theoretical framework for understanding the potential effects of self-appraisals on supervisory ratings of job performance. Accountability has been defined as social pressure to justify ones judgments of others Participants were 261 undergraduate men (49%) and women students enrolled in business courses at a regional state university located in the Southeast. The mean age of the participants was 25.1 years. When self appraisal is increase then performances of individual increases because when the supervisor come to you and discusses the problem or taking some give feedback . so the employee is motivated, and sample when he is make appraisal then supervisor also discusses the weekness with the employee which is good for both because by doing some thing the employees is tension less and he work hard and hard in result they perform well and good. Task performances have deeply relation with performances. In self assessment a person can do better every any one did. Because a person now how he is working and emotion attached with someone or with organization. Whether self-appraisals have their influence by creating felt accountability or by simply serving as an information source to guide the judge. To address this question, we provided normative information to half of the participants the current findings provided considerable support for the influence of objective normative data on performance evaluations. In the absence of norms, performance ratings were significantly higher for subordinates who rated themselves high than for those who rated themselves low. However, the availability of performance norms greatly reduced the influence of self-assessments resulting in more moderate ratings there was a no significant difference in performance ratings as a function of self-assessments. On the other hand, evaluators do not deflate ratings of good performers when presented with a low self-assessment. Second, we found that objective performance standards appear to reduce the influence of self-appraisals, since the judge is likely to view an objective norm as more credible than a self-appraisal. Thus, these findings suggest that the accuracy of job performance ratings can be increased by withholding self-appraisal information from a manager until the manager completes his or her performance evaluations and by providing an objective performance standard, such as a group norm Finally, it may be more useful for an employee to provide his or her manager with descriptive information about his or her performance than to do a self-rating. This descriptive information may help the manager arrive at a more accurate performance assessment. The practice of asking subordinates to provide descriptive information would retain many of the developmental benefits of a critical examination of ones performance but