Special Merit : Pay For Performance - Evaluating Performance Appraisal

By George T. Milkovich and Alexandra K. Wigdor - his chapter offers a broad-brush picture of contemporary organization performance appraisal, merit pay, and individual and group incentive pay practices as they apply to the managerial and professional jobs that are the focus of the committee's review. As the previous chapters demonstrate, the research on performance appraisal and pay for performance is limited in its ability to offer federal policy makers specific guidelines. A review of contemporary private-sector practice that covers the types of appraisal and pay for performance plans organizations use, the way they design and administer these plans, the contexts in which plans are operating, and the criteria many use to judge the effectiveness of these plans may offer some additional insights. Our aim is to identify points of convergence between sometimes tentative research findings and predominant private-sector practices. (Added: 28-Dec-2009 Hits: 330 )

By George T. Milkovich and Alexandra K. Wigdor - In this chapter, the authors provide some background for looking at pay for performance and merit pay, within the context of creating a more effective civil service through reform. (Added: 28-Dec-2009 Hits: 331 )

By George T. Milkovich and Alexandra K. Wigdor - Our reviews of performance appraisal and merit plan research and practice indicate that plan success or failure are substantially influenced by the context within which they are embedded. Research on performance appraisal now encompasses a broader set of organizational factors, along with the individual and task factors that it has traditionally studied (Murphy and Cleveland, 1991). Research on pay now stresses the importance of viewing pay and pay for performance plans in the context of an organization's personnel system, its structure and managerial styles, and its strategic goals (Balkin and Gomez-Mejia, 1987a, 1990; Carroll, 1987). (Added: 28-Dec-2009 Hits: 284 )

By George T. Milkovich and Alexandra K. Wigdor - his chapter does not aim to provide a comprehensive introduction to methodology in the social and behavioral sciences. Rather, it briefly reviews some of the evidentiary issues that arose in pursuing the committee's charge and summarizes the different kinds of research methods and data that have been brought to bear on performance appraisal and pay for performance plans. The diverse and fragmentary nature of the research evidence available to us turned out to have important implications for how we carried out the study and formulated our conclusions. (Added: 28-Dec-2009 Hits: 312 )