MGT 463 EXAM 1 Performance Management Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, definitions, and concepts from Chapters 1 through 5 of Performance Management.

Performance Management

A continuous process of identifying, measuring, and developing the performance of individuals and teams and aligning performance with the strategic goals of the organization.

Performance Appraisal

A formal evaluation completed periodically that serves as one component of performance management.

Strategic Congruence

A characteristic of an ideal performance management system requiring it to be consistent with the organization's strategy and aligned with unit and organizational goals.

Context Congruence

A characteristic of a performance management system where it fits the organization's culture and the broader cultural context of the region or country.

Thoroughness

Evaluating all employees, all major job responsibilities, the entire review period, and both positive and negative performance within a system.

Practicality

A quality of a performance management system being available, easy to use, acceptable to decision makers, and delivering benefits that outweigh its costs.

Meaningfulness

Measuring important and relevant performance that employees can control, evaluated regularly with actual consequences.

Distributive Justice

Fairness regarding the relationship between work performed, performance ratings received, and rewards given.

Procedural Justice

Fairness of the procedures used to decide performance ratings and rewards.

Interpersonal Justice

Fairness reflecting whether employees receive respectful treatment during the performance management process.

Informational Justice

Fairness reflecting whether employees receive clear explanations about expectations, feedback, and decisions.

Voice Behavior

Expressing constructive challenges with the goal of improvement, challenging the status quo positively, making innovative suggestions, and recommending modifications to standard procedures.

KSA

An acronym for Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities needed to perform a job.

Job Description

A summary of job duties, KSAs, and working conditions that serves as a roadmap for what employees should do, how they should do it, and what results to produce.

O*NET

The Occupational Information Network; an online database providing occupational information, task requirements, activities, KSAs, working conditions, education, and experience, used as a source for generic job descriptions.

Results (in Performance Planning)

Outcomes of employee behaviors comprising key accountabilities, specific objectives, and performance standards.

Declarative Knowledge

Information about facts, labels, principles, goals, and a given task's requirements that provides the understanding needed to perform a task.

Procedural Knowledge

Knowing what to do and how to do it when executing job tasks.

Motivation (in Performance)

The expenditure of effort involving choices to expend effort, choices regarding the level of effort, and choices to persist in that level of effort.

Context (in Performance)

HR practices and work environments—including HR policies, leadership, culture, timing, resources, and opportunities—that affect employee performance.

Task Performance

Activities that directly produce or support the organization's products or services.

Contextual Performance

Behaviors that contribute to organizational effectiveness by providing a good environment in which task performance can occur, such as prosocial and citizenship behaviors.

Counterproductive Performance

Voluntary behavior that violates organizational norms or harms the organization or its members.

Adaptive Performance

An employee's ability to adjust to changes in the job or work environment.

Absolute System

A performance measurement system that compares an employee's performance against pre-specified performance standards rather than directly comparing employees to each other.

Comparative System

A performance measurement system that compares employees with one another, effective at controlling rater biases like leniency, severity, and central tendency.

Indicator

An observable behavior used to measure the extent to which a competency is present or not present.

Performance Standard

A yardstick used to evaluate how well employees have achieved each objective using measures such as quality, quantity, cost, and time.

Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS)

A measurement tool assessing job behaviors by using critical incidents as scale anchors at different performance levels.

Key Accountabilities

Broad areas of a job for which the employee is responsible for producing results.

Competencies

Measurable clusters of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) critical in determining how results will be achieved.

Differentiating Competencies

Competencies that distinguish between superior and average performance.

Threshold Competencies

Minimum capabilities needed to perform a job acceptably.

Self-Serving Bias

A tendency for individuals to attribute success to themselves (exaggerating their own work/KSAs) and attribute failure to external causes.

Social Projection Bias

A bias where employees assume other people think and behave the same way they do.

False Consensus Bias

A bias where individuals overestimate how many other people agree with their opinions.

Carelessness Bias

Differences in how carefully participants pay attention when rating tasks and KSAs during job analysis.

Leverage (Gap Analysis)

A gap analysis combination resulting from combining an external opportunity with an internal strength.

Constraint (Gap Analysis)

A gap analysis combination resulting from combining an external opportunity with an internal weakness.

Vulnerability (Gap Analysis)

A gap analysis combination resulting from combining an external threat with an internal strength.

Problem (Gap Analysis)

A gap analysis combination resulting from combining an external threat with an internal weakness.

Mission Statement

A statement defining why an organization exists, the scope of its activities, primary products or services, target markets, unique benefits, technology, and core managerial philosophy.

Vision Statement

A statement of an organization's future aspirations that is brief, verifiable, timeline-bound, focused, understandable, inspiring, and a stretch.

Behavior Approach

An evaluation approach measuring how employees perform their jobs, most appropriate when the link between behaviors and results is unclear, outcomes occur in the distant future, or poor results are beyond employee control.

Heavy-Tailed Distribution

A distribution indicating that there are more star performers than a normal distribution predicts and that performance differences between top and average performers are much greater.

Balanced Scorecard

A strategic tool connecting strategy to measurable goals across four perspectives: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth.

Leniency Bias

A rater error characterized by rating employee performance higher than deserved.

Severity Bias

A rater error characterized by rating employee performance harsher or lower than deserved.

Central Tendency Bias

A rater error where most employees are incorrectly rated near the middle of the evaluation scale.