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In many large organisations appraisal systems are an essential component in professional personnel practice. However, there are many difficulties in managing formal appraisals and in some places the system has decayed into disrepute and disuse. To managers in the small company the costs of implementing such a system may appear to outweigh the potential benefits. This paper examines some of these issues and describes how one small company attempted to develop its own appraisal system.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the specific steps organizations can take to create value-added appraisal systems.

The authors synthesize 30 years of their research, including countless focus groups and surveys with managers at all levels, to identify the specific steps organizations can take to create value-added appraisal systems.

The paper explains ten key lessons for improving any organization’s performance appraisal system.

The authors believe that the lessons described in this paper can be applied in all organizations, and not to apply these lessons invites ineffective and potentially destructive appraisal practices.

The paper provides a unique set of lessons that organizations can use to design or re-design their performance appraisal systems and practices.

It would be hard to say when companies became concerned with appraising their managers' performance. It may be that it has always been a concern, but it has really only manifested itself in formal appraisal methods and systems over the past decade or so. (Doubtless having said that we will be inundated with letters proving that appraisal can be traced back to Plato's ‘Republic’ or the Bible.) However, despite the concern and the large amount of material written and spoken about appraisal, much of what takes place appears to have become an annual form‐filling ritual with little influence, either on the individuals or the organisation. Managers, who are frequently on the receiving end of this ritual, are hard put to identify the usefulness of appraisal, nor are they usually in a position to assess how well an appraisal fits the needs of their particular company. This article is an attempt to describe for managers a framework for examining the usefulness and appropriateness of an appraisal system. The analyses resulting from the framework should help managers to design an appraisal system better suited to the needs of their organisation.

The aim of this article is to investigate how managers see, interpret and make sense of their performance management system experiences and recommend the way forward for both policy and practice, in what makes effective appraisal systems.

The study applied the repertory grid to elicit the personal constructs of how managers make sense of their appraisal experiences. The cognitive mapping methodology allows the researcher to go deep into the respondents' “theories in use” to provide new insights on how they “think”. This, in turn, allows a better understanding of the language managers use to make sense of the experiences.

Core conceptual dimensions, cognitive maps and cluster diagrams were generated, providing implications for research, practice and new directions for future research.

Although the application of the grid technique was time‐consuming, the finer grain level of analysis provided a deeper appreciation of managers' “theories in use”. The study provides a cross‐sectional view of the current state of managerial cognitions. Findings open up new ways of thinking and new way of doing in appraisal research and practice.

The findings provided very meaningful insights on what managers look for in appraisal system effectiveness, along with the documentation of how they make connections between their own elicited personal constructs on system effectiveness.

The paper makes a modest contribution to both theory and practice from the perspective of managerial cognitions about the entire appraisal systems using a method originating from clinical psychology.

This paper aims to review the challenges of performance appraisal in organizations and argue that these challenges can and must be overcome.

The authors review research on performance appraisal in organizations and on claims that organizations are abandoning performance appraisal.

Structured performance appraisals are still the norm in organizations around the world. There are clear and practical strategies for improving appraisals. These include improving feedback and removing unnecessary complexity, clarifying the goals of appraisal systems, focusing appraisal on behaviors and outcomes under the employee's control and increasing the fairness of appraisal systems.

Research is needed on the effects of changing the ways performance appraisals are conducted in organizations.

Practical strategies for improving performance appraisal are outlined.

Better performance appraisals will benefit organizations and their members.

This paper refutes the growing claim that organizations are abandoning performance appraisal and illustrates practical strategies for improving performance appraisal.

Compares the traditional performance appraisal systems with Deming′s philosophy of operating a production system focused on quality for the consumer. W. Edwards Deming has long challenged the effectiveness of traditional performance appraisal systems used by American managers. He criticizes the traditional performance appraisal system of rewarding “win‐lose” results rather than supporting “win‐win” aims, thereby placing so much emphasis on judging and ranking people and using extrinsic motivational means. He recommends replacing the traditional performance systems that encourage win‐lose behaviour with systems that promote co‐operative and supportive behaviour. The Deming approach to performance appraisal involves a complete change of the traditional system to one that concentrates on managers being highly focused on quality and long‐term improvement. The successful implementations of Deming′s management approach in several American organizations were examined as available means of integrating performance appraisals into their quality system. The more successful companies have found remarkable improvement in consumer recognition, sales, market share, operating costs, customer satisfaction, employee morale, and of course quality. Such actions will not only help to strengthen these companies′ market position, but will help to improve the overall global competitiveness of American industry.

The present study aims to show the role of performance appraisal in the motivating and compensating of academic staff. The goal of the paper is achieved through comparing performance appraisal and compensation policies and systems in the University of Tartu. One of the aims is also to find out the level of satisfaction of the academic staff with the appraisal and compensation systems in two faculties of the University of Tartu.

Research was carried out on the academic staff at the faculty of Economics and Business Administration (hereafter FEBA) and the Faculty of Education (hereafter FE) at Tartu University. It is based on the analysis of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The author carried out document analysis and two original and anonymous questionnaires. In order to achieve this aim, 125 lecturers were questioned, from whom 52 percent returned their filled in questionnaires. In addition to that, qualitative data from five semi‐structured interviews with senior management and lecturers, incorporating individual interviews were analyzed.

Firstly, results showed that the performance appraisal and compensation system (pay‐for‐performance system) has guaranteed a highly motivated core of staff. Secondly, teaching loads and research activities of the academic staff have increased over the years. Faculties need to establish performance appraisal and compensation systems in order to show clearly defined causality between compensation and performance of academic staff. A good and well functioning performance appraisal system would help the educators to make their mark in the organizational setting of their faculty.

In addition to suggestions for improvement, limitations of the results will be addressed. The survey was carried out in two faculties at the University of Tartu. Unfortunately, the survey yielded only 65 usable responses, thus it could be claimed that the dataset is too small for making any conclusive generalizations. However, when taking into consideration that the survey was anonymous, the author believes that a 52 per cent response rate can be considered a very good result. Another limitation involves the dynamic nature of appraisal systems. Since, the appraisal procedures are still being developed, the systems described might now be out of date.

The present paper is valuable as it is the first one to examine the role of performance appraisal and compensation (pay‐for‐performance) systems in Estonian and Baltic Universities.

The purpose of this paper is to construct an instrument to assess employee‐perceived performance appraisal congruency and then to use the scale to predict employee attitudes about their performance appraisal systems.

The scale was developed using 28 subject‐matter experts and researcher knowledge of the extant literature. The scale was then completed by a sample of 135 individuals using internet administration.

Regression analyses showed that performance appraisal congruency predicted overall system satisfaction, perceived usefulness and fairness. Supplementary analyses of the performance appraisal congruency items were conducted so as to refine the original instrument for future research.

Limitations of the study include: the interviews conducted to develop the instrument were conducted in a single organization; the study used an internet sample that was made up of university alumni; all measures were self‐report; and single item measures were used as the criterion variables. The findings support the utility of the use of the P‐E fit model in performance management systems. Future research should assess outcomes that would be of interest to organizations, such as the relationships with performance system satisfaction and employee commitment and turnover.

If employees perceive that the performance appraisal system is congruent with their expectations, then positive outcomes should be expected.

While congruency has been linked to important outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and actual turnover, it has not been used within a performance appraisal framework.

Examines the types and characteristics of the new forms of the brand management system in marketing organizations as identified in previous research and previous existing research on performance appraisal systems. Draws linkages between the two systems to provide a framework for maximizing individual product manager’s performance, thereby maximizing overall organizational performance. Sets out a number of managerial implications and suggests areas for future research.

Reports findings from a research designed to investigate the main issues of the current human resource (HR) performance evaluation systems in over 150 UK‐based quality‐focused organisations. The study identified the main characteristics of HR performance evaluation systems currently conducting in total quality management (TQM)‐based organisations. The research approach consisted of a questionnaire survey in a sample of cross‐section organisations in different economic sectors with enough experience of quality management to reflect the widest possible range of characteristics in the HR performance evaluation practices. The survey results provide the most recent details of the performance appraisal systems currently conducting in TQM organisations and their effectiveness in improving and achieving TQM objectives. Also discusses implications of these findings for HR performance evaluation system in general, and a quality‐driven HR performance evaluation in particular.