In the world of work, there are not many things that are as widely acknowledged yet largely misunderstood as the notion of job performance. It is such a large and nebulous concept that many of us consultants have our own ideas of what it is and what it looks like. This has also been an issue in the field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology, where job performance has undergone more than a few conceptualizations over the years.
In this article, I will provide a complete, empirically based definition of job performance. Because much of what we as consultants do is targeted at improving performance at some level, understanding the theoretical underpinnings of this construct should prove valuable, or at the very least provide some insight.