evaluated as good ones. This ‘hindsight bias’ reXects the fact that most people view
the outcome of performance as the most important criterion for making a judge-
ment of an employee, even though the outcome may have been aVected positively
or negatively by factors beyond a person’s control.
This hindsight bias also aVects evaluations of one’s own team. Staw ( 1975 ) found
that individuals who were led to believe erroneously that they had performed well
rather than poorly evaluated the cohesiveness within their teams more favorably
than those who were told the opposite. In short, performance outcomes serve as
potent cues to infer or ‘see’ various work behaviors that may exist only in the
imagination of the appraiser.
The ‘availability bias’ is a heuristic whereby appraisers form a judgement on the
basis of what is readily brought to mind. Hence, salient events are likely to bias an
overall appraisal of a person’s performance. A ‘conWrmation bias’ is the tendency to
seek information that conforms to one’s own deWnition of a solution to a problem.
Hence, appraisers sometimes look for data to support their preconceived evalu-
ation of an employee. Still another decision-making error is the illusion of man-
ageability. Das and Teng ( 1999 ) found that managers are prone to the erroneous
belief that outcomes can be contained, corrected, or reversed, given extra eVort on
the part of an employee.
Bazerman ( 1994 ) has identiWed thirteen of these types of errors. Ways to keep
these errors from contaminating the performance management process have yet to
be discovered.
18.6 Conclusions
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In this chapter, we hopefully make clear that the answers required to move theWeld
of performance management forward are much less straightforward than the
questions. We know a great deal more about ways to manage the performance of
an individual than about ways to manage a team. We know what to observe and
how to observe an individual objectively. We are at a loss as to how to overcome
political considerations that lead people not to do so. Advances in knowledge have
been made with regard to technology that managers embrace to assist them in the
appraisal process, and that in the eyes of employees their managers misuse. We
know that making decisions is inherent in performance management, yet solutions
to decision-making errors remain a mystery. Two great strides in this domain
include recognition that ongoing performance management is more eVective than
an annual appraisal in bringing about a positive change in an employee’s behavior,
and that context must be taken into account in doing so.
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