Developing A Procedurally Just Performance Appraisal Process

Essay, Research Paper

When organizations make decisions about people, such as whom to hire or promote, appraisal ratings or merit raise to give, or how important that the decisions are seen as fair and just. Research has shown that at least two aspects of justice influence employees?? job satisfaction and organizational commitment and both must be considered in organization decisions.

The first type is distributive justice, or the perceived fairness of particular outcomes. It has to do with the distribution of rewards and punishments across people. Distributive justice would exist if employees agreed that the best person had been chosen for a promotion, that the punishment fit the crime in a discipline case, or that the size of merit raises accurately reflected true differences in performance across the people involved. Distributive justice is specific to particular decision. We might agree that one promotion decision was fair, but that is no guarantee that we will think the next one is fair. This is because distributive justice doesn?t include evaluation of the fairness of the merit or process by which the decision was made. The latter is called procedural justice. Presumably, a just policy or procedure should help assure equitable outcomes every time, whereas single instance of distributive justice could occur by chance, favoritism or some other unfair process.

What makes an allocation procedure just following are six rules for procedural justice? Following are six rules for procedural justice

?Consistency Rule: allocation procedures should be consistent across persons and over time

?Bias Suppression Rule: personal self interest in the allocation process should be prevented;

?Accuracy Rule: decisions must be based on accurate information

?Correctability Rule: Opportunities must exist to enable decisions to be modified:

?Representatives Rule: the allocation process must represent the concerns of all recipients;

?Ethicality Rule: allocations must be based on prevailing moral and ethical standards:

Performance appraisal represents a situation in which decisions are made about individuals and the potential for misunderstandings and feeling of injustice are great. This means that a very fair and clear process should be adopted.

Research has shown that appraisals are seen as more fair when consistent standards are applied to all ratees, there is a system by which the ratee can appeal or rebut the evaluation and when raters are familiar with ratee?s work, solicit employee input before assigning ratings, provide prompt feedback, and allow two way communication in the appraisal process. In addition, procedures should be more likely to be perceived as fair if employees understand the rating dimensions and superior?s expectations well before the rating takes place. Ideally, ratees would also have input into determining the rating criteria.