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As one of the most influential theories in strategic management, Hambrick and Mason’s Upper Echelons Theory has yielded significant conceptual and empirical advancements linking executive characteristics and perceptions to decision-making. Specifically, work on this theory consistently shows that CEOs’ decisions are biased by personal characteristics to the benefit and detriment of firms. While this stream of research links executive decision processes to outcomes such as executive dismissals, analyst evaluations, and press coverage, surprisingly little is understood about if and whether the information CEOs convey is subject to the same filtering process by a firm’s key evaluators. Thus, in this chapter, we aim to extend Upper Echelons Theory by positing that a double filtering process occurs whereby the cognitive aids CEOs use can be informed by not only their cognitive base and values but also the characteristics and priorities of those who evaluate the nonverbal and verbal signals they send. To do so, we build on recent conceptual and empirical advancements to make a case for the decision-making biases and tendencies that influence signal interpretation by three key evaluator groups internal and external to the firm: boards of directors, financial analysts, and the media. We conclude by considering the implications of evaluators’ information filtering and how this more holistic view of Upper Echelons decision-making can enable executive teams to be strategic with the cognitive aids they use to influence evaluations.

The erosion of autonomy in traditional professions has been explained by client capture – professionals increasingly work under close control of powerful corporate clients. However, research is missing on how knowledge workers in rapidly rising knowledge professions of the twenty-first century experience and respond to the risk of client capture. Evaluation is one such exploding field. This study examines the narratives of professional evaluators to understand how they navigate their mandate to deliver independent assessments of complex social programs under the threat of client capture. Data come from 29 interviews with evaluators of 65 interdisciplinary graduate training projects funded by the US National Science Foundation in the first two years of the program (2015–2016). Evidence of client capture is found in how evaluators discuss scope creep with limited resources, being asked to misrepresent their findings, and burying of evaluation reports. The authors also find evidence of evaluators navigating client capture by rationing their labor, using state-based rules to mediate demands, drawing on professional expertise, and generating savvy emotional labor. But this study argues the client capture concept obscures the dynamics of knowledge production, in which evaluators shape scientific programs in innovative ways. This study sheds new light on the context in which inequalities operate in this emerging profession, and how the structure of knowledge work may generate novel pathways of professional influence where work conditions might otherwise rule against it.

Commentators express concern that when auditors investigate for but fail to detect fraud, jurors might effectively penalize the auditors for having investigated for the fraud (AICPA, 2004; Coffee, 2004; Golden, Skalak, & Clayton, 2006). Consistent with these concerns, Reffett (2010) finds that, in a between-participants setting, evaluators in cases of undetected fraud are more likely to hold auditors liable for damages when the auditors identified the perpetrated fraud as a fraud risk and then investigated for the fraud, relative to when the auditors did neither. What remains unclear, however, is the extent to which identifying versus investigating fraud risks increases evaluators’ between-participants assessments of auditor liability. That is, when auditors investigate for, but fail to detect fraud, is the increase in evaluators’ liability assessments due to the fact that the auditors identified (i.e., were aware of) the fraud risk but did not detect the fraud, or that the auditors unsuccessfully investigated for the fraud (or both)? This study addresses these questions by reporting evidence that both identifying and investigating fraud risks can each, in isolation, increase evaluators’ perceptions of auditor negligence. The processes by which identifying and investigating fraud risks increase evaluators’ negligence verdicts, however, appear to differ.

A successful process of design concept evaluation has positive influence on subsequent processes. This study aims to consider the evaluation information at multiple stages and the interaction among evaluators and improve the credibility of evaluation results.

This paper proposes a multi-stage approach for design concept evaluation based on complex network and bounded confidence. First, a network is constructed according to the evaluation data. Depending on the consensus degree of evaluation opinions, the number of evaluation rounds is determined. Then, bounded confidence rules are applied for the modification of preference information. Last, a planning function is constructed to calculate the weight of each stage and aggregate information at multiple evaluation stages.

The results indicate that the opinions of the evaluators tend to be consistent after multiple stages of interactive adjustment, and the ordering of design concept alternatives tends to be stable with the progress of the evaluation.

Updating preferences according to the bounded confidence rules, only the opinions within the trust threshold are considered. The attribute information of the node itself is inadequately considered.

This method addresses the need for considering the evaluation information at each stage and minimizes the impact of disagreements within the evaluation group on the evaluation results.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of school principals of the evaluator’s role and to learn about their requirements of school evaluators.

The current study is based on the qualitative paradigm of data collection and analysis. This paradigm provides a profound a description of the phenomenon in the context in which it takes place, based on the respondents’ perceptions and how they interpret their experiences. In the course of the study, the authors used semi-structured in-depth interviews.

Findings indicated that principals had regarded the role of the school evaluator mainly as that of an expert, a managerial partner and an implementer of school evaluation culture.

The interviewers were the teachers who had been trained for the school evaluator’s position.

The “school evaluator” and the principals bear the complex task of evaluation on their shoulders, and their success in fulfilling it depends on their insights about how to delineate and implement the evaluator’s role. The paper outlines some crucial benchmarks for resolving the issue of role definitions between them.

As a relatively new profession, derived from other professions and research areas, evaluation has no solid, historical occupational legacy in schools. This paper broadens the merit of school evaluator as the facilitator of quality assurance.

The increased responsibility placed on schools, the demand of accountability as well as transparency, have obliged the schools to broaden and deepen the internal evaluation activities. This paper reveals the essence of school evaluator’s role and suggests some key points for his/her valuable work.

This research aims to investigate the differences in evaluations of job performance between male and female managers by those managers’ immediate bosses and peers.

Drawing on gender structure theory, along with ideas about status characteristics, the authors use hierarchical regression to test the hypotheses that male and female bosses and peers deferentially evaluate the male and female manager’s global job performance. The authors hypothesize significant two-way interactions (gender of the manager by gender of evaluator) in predicting a manager’s job performance.

The results suggest that while male peers rate female managers’ job performance significantly lower than that of male managers, female peers do not discriminate between genders in their performance evaluations. Also, managers’ bosses were found not to discriminate between genders of their subordinates.

The limitations of this study have to do primarily with the data. While the data are rich on some dimensions, they are weak on others, especially with regard to the detail about the jobs the respondents did, detailed level of familiarity with the evaluated managers, as well as racial background. The data also do not provide information on the different facets of job performance, the evaluation of which could potentially be impacted by managerial gender; this study is focused exclusively on global job performance.

The authors discuss various theoretical explanations of this pattern of results, as well as its possible influence on female managers’ careers. Although the effect size of the negative bias that male peers exhibit toward female managers is relatively small, it may be argued that lower performance assessments can accumulate over years in multiple job evaluations, negatively affecting the career of female leaders.

The evaluations supplied by different organizational members gain importance with the increased use of 360-degree feedback instruments not just for developmental but also for the job performance appraisal purposes. While the job evaluations of managers’ bosses have been investigated in the past with regard to the possible gender bias, this study provides the first known to the authors’, evidence. Also, this study points to a direct bias in performance assessments, rather than a potentially more subtle, non-performance-based bias that affects the disparities in wages and promotions of female managers. Thus, this study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature on organizations and it may have practical implications for the advancement of female managers. In addition to this contribution, this study also provides data that may be useful in resolving the ongoing debate whether female bosses act more as cogs in the machine or as change agents in organizations.

Managers can influence the evaluation of their performance by advancing various reasons for or making attributions regarding their financial achievement or the financial achievement of their divisions. In this study, an experimental design is used to determine the effect that the advancing of controllable reasons versus uncontrollable reasons, of which evaluators are either aware or not aware, has on the evaluation of managers’ performance in conditions in which they had recorded financial results that are lower or higher than the budgeted figures. The experiment reveals that performance evaluations are higher when variances are explained by means of controllable reasons in the abovebudget setting, whereas higher evaluations result in the below‐budget setting when variances are explained by means of uncontrollable reasons. Furthermore, the evaluator’s prior knowledge of these reasons results in a difference in the performance evaluation rating. Specifically, known reasons result in higher manager evaluation ratings. The experiment reveals that managers that record above‐budget performance are given higher evaluation ratings than managers that record below‐budget performance, even when variances are explained by means of reasons that the managers cannot control. This is known as the outcome effect. However, the findings indicate that the outcome effect is smaller when the evaluator has independent knowledge of the reason(s) advanced.

This paper synthesizes the extant research on the outcome effect in the accounting domain, focusing primarily on the context of performance evaluation. It reviews the current state of our knowledge about this phenomenon, including its underlying cognitive and motivational causes, the contexts in which the outcome effect is observed, the factors that influence its various manifestations, and ways in which undesirable outcome effects can be mitigated. It also considers various perspectives about the extent to which outcome effects represent undesirable judgmental bias, and whether this distinction is necessary to motivate research on this topic. The paper is intended to motivate and facilitate future research into the effects of outcome knowledge on judgment in the accounting context. Therefore, we also identify important unanswered questions and discuss opportunities for future research throughout the paper. These include additional consideration of instances in which the outcome effect is reflective of bias, how this bias can be effectively mitigated, ways in which outcome information influences judgment (regardless of whether this influence is considered normative), and how the underlying causes of the outcome effect operate singly and jointly to bring about the outcome effect. We also consider ways that future research can contribute to practice by determining how to encourage evaluators to retain and incorporate the relevant information conveyed by outcomes, while avoiding the inappropriate use of outcome information, and by enhancing external validity to increase the generalizability of experimental results to scenarios frequently encountered in practice.

The starting point of this article is the problem facing the evaluator of how to make the research findings useful to those involved in the process being evaluated. Underlying this problem is the basic assumption that, as Carol Weiss says, “Basically evaluation research is concerned with finding out how well action programmes work”, and that this is related to a second assumption that such findings should be of use to those involved in making decisions about the programme.

This paper addresses the problem of using accuracy index values based on the squared difference between participant scores and true scores, the D² index, at the practical level. It clarifies ambiguity existing in the literature regarding the use of these index values to evaluate the scoring accuracy of human raters (evaluators). The paper critically investigates the effect of frame‐of‐reference (FOR) training on improving the accuracy of third‐party evaluators’ scores for organisations, such as those going through the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) self‐assessment exercise. It discusses a case study where 90 individual participants took part. The scores of these participants were recorded before training was given to them (no training) and after receiving FOR training. The study showed that providing FOR training has an effect on improving the elevation accuracy index (p < 0.05) in five of the seven categories used in this exercise. An observed leniency effect was also reduced. However, no improvement in the DA was observed. Thus, the evaluators’ ability to assign an accurate overall score was improved, while the ability to discriminate between relative strengths and weaknesses did not show improvement. This implies evaluator training, particularly for heterogeneous pools of volunteers like those of corporate and state and local quality awards, should include more content on the performance dimensions.