REPORT on performance management REPORT

UNIVERSITY OF UK

Performance Management

Does It Help Poor Performers

STUDENT NAME

April 2008

1735 words Contents Page Page No

1 . Introduction 3

2 . Performance Management : A Concept Definition 3

2 .1 Traditional Performance Management 3

2 .2 Contemporary Performance Management 3

3 . Purposes and Effects Performance Management 4

4 . Evaluating Performance 4

5 . Future Directions 5

6 . Recommendations 5

7 . Works Cited 6

INTRODUCTION

The emergence of performance management can be traced back to just after the Second World War

and situated in the United States . Through a process of generalisation , however , its concept of performance steadily altered and expanded during the last half of the twentieth century , as did its field of application . Performance management , as asserted by Thorpe and Beasley (2004 , is not a unified research paradigm , but rather a gathering of diverse conceptual models , discourses , and practices . Its passage to paradigm occurs through such schools as human relations , systems theory , information processing and decision making organisational development , and more recently , the peak performance cult composed of theorists and practitioners of excellence , high performance and maximum performance

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT : A CONCEPT DEFINITION

Performance management , as succinctly defined by Banks and May (as cited in Landy and Conte , 2007 ,

. 217 , is the `system that emphasises the link between individual behaviour and organisational strategies and goals by defining performance in the context of those goals , jointly developed by managers and the people who report to them . It , according to Stankard (2002 , has three distinct components . The first component consists of the definition of performance , which includes organisational objectives and strategies . The second component is the actual measurement process itself . The third component is the communication between supervisor and subordinate about the extent to which individual behaviour fits with organisational expectations

Traditional Performance Management

Performance management develops out of scientific management by challenging many of its basic tenets and seeking to redress its drawbacks . First and foremost , performance management attempts to displace the rational control of workers by empowering them to improve efficiency using their own intuition , creativity , and diversity . Second performance management seeks to counter the monolithic , `machine ' model of bureaucracy described by Max Weber and instituted by Taylor , Ford and others , offering instead a more `organic , systems-oriented model one that resituates performance within larger organisational and socioeconomic environments (Thorpe and Beasley , 2004

Third , while scientific management was developed and deployed in an industrialising economy , performance management has become the organisational paradigm for an information economy hardwired to computer and communications technologies , wherein information processing and decision-making no longer take place only from the top down , but are diffused throughout an organisation . Fourth , at its most progressive performance management challenges the challenge of efficiency itself , or at least its exclusivity , by introducing a diversity of values and organisational cultures

Contemporary Performance Management

Performance management in the current times best thought of as a philosophy like that of a learning organisation , rather than a particular set of policies and practices (Williams , 1998 . According to some commentators , performance management involves...