Politicking
Organizations usually assume that managers
wantto make accurate PRs, and are prevented
only by unconscious biases which can be
cured by sufficient training or the right rating
format. The in-depth interview research flatly
contradicts this and concludes that “political”
considerations, or “private agendas”, nearly
always influence PRs. The managers list many
reasons for giving inflatedPRs: to maximize
merit increases, to protect persons whose
performance is suffering because of personal
problems, to avoid “washing dirty laundry in
public”, to avoid creating a badly written
record, to avoid confrontation, and to rid
themselves of people by promoting “up and
out”.
The interviews also uncover managers’
reasons for making deliberately lowPRs: to
shock someone back onto a higher “performance track”, to teach a rebellious subordinate who is in charge, to send someone a
message that they should consider leaving the
organization, and to build a well-documented
record of poor performance to speed up
termination.
Gross leniency in appraisal rating is very
apparent, but subtler “politicking” may not
be. Like biases based on appearance or attitude, subtler politicking contaminates the
appraisal rating, and makes it less accurate,
both as a measure of performance, and as a
criterion in research of selection methods.