Practices

The practice side of performance management

While research produces fragmented findings, practice is realized without any anchorage to scientifically-proven evidence. Research syntheses provide a real advance for theory, aggregating, integrating, interpretating and explaining fragmented evidences and also a guide for implementing evidence-based best practices in the real world.

Posthuma et al. (2018) reviewed almost 2 hundreds scientific articles for providing:

A taxonomy of practices
A framework to link “Practice – Behaviour – Results”
A logic to combine practices within organizations

1. Taxonomy of practices in PM

The taxonomy consists of 50 practices organized within 7 topic categories. For a complete description of each of the practices please see the review (Posthuma et al., 2018).

Strategic connection. Practices that employers use to evaluate the performance of their employees should have strategic connections to business goals and other HR practices
The soundness of the content in the PM practices includes several elements.
Meticulous ratings. The performance rating feedback provided to employees should be meticulously prepared such that it provides useful feedback, differentiates employees, and is understandable.
Professional administration. The PM system should be administered with due care and professionalism.
Prospective development. The PM plan should include a focus not just on evaluations but also on employee development. Evaluations should be developmental (e.g., with indications on how to improve) in addition to evaluative
Rich communication. The PM system should include rich two-way communication. The policies, procedures, uses of the data, and other aspects of the process should be clearly communicated to employees
Review and documentation. The PM system should include review and documentation processes.

2. The framework

The framework ties performance management practices to behaviors and results and can be called “Practice – Behavior – Results (PBR) critical path model”.

The central path in the framework focuses attention on the core expected relationships that flow from practices, to employee behaviors, and, finally, to results.

In addition, the framework contains also two other boxes that represent Social Factors and Cognitive Factors. They moderate or mediate the effects along the core link among Practices-Behaviors-Results.

Moderator relationships tend to focus on more complex questions such as when or for whom these bivariate relationships hold true. Moderator relationships can identify two theoretically meaningful interaction patterns that are relevant to research on employee PM. The first interaction pattern is a synergistic or enhancing effect. The second theoretically meaningful interaction pattern is a buffering effect. In this type of interaction effect, two main effects would have the opposite sign and one main effect weakens the other.
Mediator effects are variables that explain the “ how ” or “ why ” of relationships between other variables. Mediator effects are represented in the figure by the one-diretional arrows.

3. Logic to combine practices

The logic to combine practices is built in light of both their efficiency and effectiveness. Indeed, the identification of 50 practices in this taxonomy suggests many possible avenues for synergistic combinations. Combinations of PM practices are subsets of practices in the taxonomy that can be chosen strategically, but are used without consideration of their sequential order. Not every combination makes sense for organizations.

Posthuma, R. A., Charles Campion, M., & Campion, M. A. (2018). A taxonomic foundation for evidence-based research on employee performance management. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 27(2), 168-187.