Heisler, William J., and Maureen Hannay.

"ETHICAL ISSUES IN PERFORMANCE

APPRAISAL: A STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVE." The Association on Employment
Practices and Principles (AEPP) (2011): 67.
Ethical Issues In Performance Appraisal: A Stakeholder perspective by William Heisler
and Maureen Hannay evaluates employee and management perspectives on the PA
process to determine what aspects that they think are ethical. To get a perspective of
views, a study was conducted using employed adults in the graduate business and
criminal justice programs of a large Southeastern University. A survey was conducted
which included 30 questions related to PA practices that potentially have ethical
implications. A limited number of demographic variables (i.e, gender, managerial status,
amount of work experience) were also included to assess if ethical responses were
affected by these factors. For each question/situation, the person was asked to respond
with if the act was ethical. One extremely frequent result was that honesty and integrity
are a huge concern in the process. Manipulation was viewed unethical. They viewed
appraisals to be ethical, however, not if they were not provided with the results or an
explanation as to why they got that result and what it meant. There were mixed responses
in regards to terminating employees who scored low on these PAs and to setting goals
higher for those who performed excellent. This was a pilot study with a very small
sample size; therefore, it was hard to draw any specific conclusions from the data.
Nevertheless, one can gather that these tested employees do view PAs as ethical, so long
as honesty is included along with proper explanation of the results.
Sillup, George P., and Ronald Klimberg. "Assessing The Ethics Of Implementing Performance
Appraisal Systems." Journal Of Management Development 29.1 (2010): 38-55. Business Source
Premier. Web. 9 July 2014
In Assessing the Ethics Of Implementing Performance Appraisal Systems. By George
P. Sillup and Ronald Klimberg, they are doing a study to test how effective Performance
Appraisal Systems (PA) conducted by performance evaluators (PEs) help to manage
more effectively and meet employee expectations in a U.S based company. In order to
test this 54 PEs were gathered and interviewed form 5 major corporations (Aetna
Insurance, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Valspar, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals). It was found that
PEs with the highest amount of education and most experience spent the least amount of
time conducting PAs (1.86 vs 3.19 hours). Time became a very important factor in
relation to ethical issues. 20% of PEs also did not solicit peer ratings as part of the PA
process. No PEs had a specific amount of time laid out to preform PAs or to make it an
objective, so this made it increasingly more difficult to find time to perform these PAs.
Older PAs found that PAs helped them to manage more effectively. Race and field of
study also played a factor, in addition to age and education level. PEs who were Black or
White and from Marketing/Sales were most favorable about meeting employees' PA
expectations. There were no significant differences among the PA systems in the 5
corporations. This study shows that PAs need to be an objective for PEs, it is shown
that PAs help to manage more effectively and help employees preform their tasks better
as well, because they know what is expected from the management.
Varma, Arup, Shaun Pichler, and Ekkirala S. Srinivas. "The Role Of Interpersonal Affect In
Performance Appraisal: Evidence From Two Samples The US And India."
International Journal Of Human Resource Management 16.11 (2005): 2029-2044.
Business Source Premier. Web. 9 July 2014.
In The Role Of Interpersonal Affect In Performance Appraisal: Evidence From Two
Samples-The US and India by Arup Varma, Shaun Pichler and Ekkirala Srinivas, they
are trying to determine if the relationship between the PE and the employee affects the
results of the employees PA results. This study used data from 190 supervisors in the US
and 113 in India. Both studies found that intrapersonal affect and performance levels both
played a role in the results of the PA. The US study showed that PEs were able to
separate personal bias from actual performance levels when assigning results, therefore
finding no bias. However, results from the Indian sample showed that employees with
lower performance levels actually got higher ratings. This suggests that local cultural
norms play a bias in PA reports.