Assignment

Your reaction paper should be a minimum of 500-words long and should cover:

1. The main points that were presented by each team

2. Your critical assessment of the arguments available. In this case, I am not looking for your subjective opinion or how you "feel" about the debate. I am interested in your assessment of the logic used in the debate and the evidence presented.

3. Your opinion (based on #2) as to which team won the debate.

Be sure to include references and citations for any source that you use in writing your paper, including your textbooks, but remember that you do not have to use sources outside what is presented in the debate if you do not want to. Additional

points will be deducted if you fail to follow any of the instructions.

The debate question was:

Is performance appraisal an effective tool for performance management?

Notes on the debate:

Team pro performance appraisal:

· It Identifies strengths and weaknesses.

· Helps in dividing tasks according to the point above.

· Helps determining who gets promotions fairly.

· Compensation guidelines can be made accordingly.

· Motivates employees and gives goal for excellency and improvement.

· Opens communications with management.

· Communicate the company's goals to the employee.

· Provides a document of employee's performance to help them improve.

· Provides structure.

· A method for compensation ranking.

· Figure out employees' performance.

· Identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the company itself.

· Creates trust between the employee and employer.

· Boosts morale.

· Eliminates surprises as bad issues could be projected.

· Provides immediate positive reinforcement.

· Documentation for reasonable cause

· Gives employees an idea on their performance periodically.

· Must be comprehensive to work.

· It's a good frame of reference for training purposes.

· Recognizes efforts and improves training.

· Allows for correction of behavior if needed before it becomes an issue.

· Know the employees' needs and expectations.

· It's been called the most critical HR function.

Team con performance appraisal:

· It's complicated.

· Could be subjective.

· Bias. (First impression or similar to them effects could be in effect)

· Research shows that the top 3 people in performance appraisal aren't the top 3 performers so it's not accurate.

· Stanford study shows that reacting to negative appraisal could cause an employee to do unethical practices to reach the goal.

· It's susceptible to error.

· Ranking employees is not fair nor useful

· Recency effect could play a factor.

· Leniency effect could be in play as well.

· It's too pushy and causes anxiety which affects performance.

· Research shows that a laid back approach is better.

· It causes tunnel vision.

· 40 veterans died from having it fabricated once.

· It's overly ambitious which could be risky.

· It doesn't communicate company goals well enough.

· An open conversation is better than a traditional grading system.

· According to a Stanford study it negatively effects employees' performance.

· It inaccurately identifies top performers.

· Pressure leads to unethical behavior.

· They had a really good closing statement that summed up all the points.