What's Wrong With Performance Appraisals? A Critique and A Suggestion

Abstract

Keith Grint, who is a Fellow in Organizational Behaviour at Templeton College, Oxford, offers a critical evaluation of performance appraisal systems. He argues that the traditional criticism of appraisals – their subjectivity – leads to a fruitless search for ever more objective appraisal criteria that are illusory. the consequence need not be that appraisals should be abandoned but they should be treated much more sceptically and reflexively. In particular, he suggests, there are strong arguments for supplementing traditional downward appraisals of subordinates with upward appraisals of superordinates.