research paper topics on performance management

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Performance Management

Seven truths about hybrid work and productivity.

Hybrid work presents trade-offs for organizations, and measuring its impact on productivity remains complex.

Lynda Gratton

Organizational Behavior

Hybrid work: how leaders build in-person moments that matter.

Companies find greater success with hybrid work schedules when they make in-person time count.

Brian Elliott

Don’t Sacrifice Employee Upskilling for Productivity

Overemphasizing output at the expense of employees’ skill development and long-term growth is short-sighted.

Stacia Garr and Priyanka Mehrotra

When Hybrid Work Strategy Aggravates 20-Somethings

Gen Z — already adept at online communication — can model ways for hybrid teams to develop stronger digital connections.

Brian Elliott and Amanda Schneider

How to Improve Employee Engagement With Job Crafting

Job crafting empowers workers to proactively transform jobs they have into jobs they want.

Benjamin Laker and Kaushik Viswanath

AI & Machine Learning

The hazards of putting ethics on autopilot.

Digital nudges can encourage reactive thinking and limit employees’ ethical thinking.

Julian Friedland, David B. Balkin, and Kristian Ove R. Myrseth

Talent Management

Why you should let your favorite employee move to another team.

Managers who stymie their high performers’ internal advancement do so at their own expense, research shows.

JR Keller and Kathryn Dlugos

The Invisible Barriers Holding Top Talent Back

New research shows that learning about hidden workplace inequities can shift perceptions of fair employment practices.

Alyssa Tedder-King and Elad N. Sherf

Return-to-Office Mandates: How to Lose Your Best Performers

Executives should be focusing on employee outcomes and accountability rather than performative in-office appearances.

Technology Implementation

How tech fails late-career workers.

Age-related cognitive changes can hinder workers’ technology use, but these strategies can help managers support them.

Stefan Tams

What We’re Still Getting Wrong About Performance Management

Measuring and improving employee performance are different tasks most effectively addressed by two separate processes.

Amy Leschke-Kahle

Thorny Talent and AI Challenges Now: 5 Experts Speak

Management experts share advice for leaders on talent and AI challenges in this video.

Laurianne McLaughlin

Skills & Learning

The why, what, and how of skills-based talent practices.

A presenter at an MIT SMR symposium answers questions about using skills, not degrees, as the benchmark for hiring.

Beth Berwick

Identify Critical Roles to Improve Performance

Executing strategy requires understanding your critical roles and putting your best people in them.

Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin, Abhijit Naik, and Sascha L. Schmidt

Thriving in the New World of Work

A presenter from MIT SMR ’s Work/23 symposium answers questions about resilience and self-efficacy.

Gabriella Rosen Kellerman

Dismantle Career Roadblocks for More Equitable Outcomes

A presenter at an MIT SMR symposium answers questions on how gender, age, and race can affect career advancement.

Haig R. Nalbantian

How Robots Can Enhance Performance Management for Humans

Researchers describe how having robots work alongside humans can help companies measure performance more accurately.

Bryan Hong and Lynn Wu

Flexible and Effective: Leadership Strategies for the Hybrid Workplace

Brian Elliott, a presenter at MIT SMR ’s Work/23 symposium, answers questions about going hybrid.

Work-Life Balance

The four-day workweek: how to make it work in your organization.

Andrew Barnes, a presenter at MIT SMR ’s Work/23 symposium, answers questions about reducing the length of the workweek.

Andrew Barnes

It’s Time to Face the Three Challenges of Learning

Learning needs to be personalized, presented in a hybrid manner, and focused on transferable skills.

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The future of feedback: Motivating performance improvement through future-focused feedback

Jackie Gnepp

1 Humanly Possible, Inc., Oak Park, Illinois, United States of America

Joshua Klayman

2 Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Ian O. Williamson

3 Wellington School of Business and Government, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

Sema Barlas

4 Masters of Science in Analytics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files ( S1 Dataset ).

Managerial feedback discussions often fail to produce the desired performance improvements. Three studies shed light on why performance feedback fails and how it can be made more effective. In Study 1, managers described recent performance feedback experiences in their work settings. In Studies 2 and 3, pairs of managers role-played a performance review meeting. In all studies, recipients of mixed and negative feedback doubted the accuracy of the feedback and the providers’ qualifications to give it. Disagreement regarding past performance was greater following the feedback discussion than before, due to feedback recipients’ increased self-protective and self-enhancing attributions. Managers were motivated to improve to the extent they perceived the feedback conversation to be focused on future actions rather than on past performance. Our findings have implications for the theory and practice of performance management.

Introduction

Once again, Taylor Devani is hoping to be promoted to Regional Manager. Chris Sinopoli, Taylor’s new boss, has arranged a meeting to provide performance feedback, especially regarding ways Taylor must change to succeed in a Regional Manager position. Like Taylor’s previous boss, Chris is delighted with Taylor’s award-winning sales performance. But Taylor was admonished in last year’s performance appraisal about cavalier treatment of customers and intolerant behavior toward employees. Taylor was very resistant to that message then and there have been no noticeable improvements since. What can Chris say to get through to Taylor?

This vignette highlights three points that will be familiar to theorists, researchers, and practitioners of performance feedback. First, the vignette reflects that performance feedback often includes a mix of both positive and negative feedback. Second, it reflects the common experience that the recipients do not always accept the feedback they get, let alone act on it. Third, it raises the question of what a feedback provider should say (and perhaps not say) in order to enable and motivate the feedback recipient to improve.

The present research focuses on feedback conversations in the context of work and career, but it has implications far beyond those contexts. Giving feedback about performance is one of the key elements of mentorship, coaching, supervision, and parenting. It contributes to conflict resolution in intimate relationships [ 1 ] and it is considered one of the most powerful activities in education [ 2 ]. In all these instances, the primary goal is to motivate and direct positive behavior change. Thus, a better understanding of where performance feedback conversations go wrong and how they can be made more effective is an important contribution to the psychology of work and to organizational psychology, but also to a broad range of psychological literatures, including education, consulting, counseling, and interpersonal communications.

Across three studies, we provide the first evidence that performance feedback discussions can have counterproductive effects by increasing the recipient’s self-serving attributions for past performance, thereby decreasing agreement between the providers and recipients of feedback. These unintended effects are associated with lower feedback acceptance and with lower motivation to change. Our studies also provide the first empirical evidence that feedback discussions promote intentions to act on the feedback to the extent they are perceived as focusing on future performance, rather than past performance. These findings suggest a new line of investigation for a topic with a long and venerable history.

Performance feedback in the workplace

Performance feedback can be distinguished from other types of managerial feedback (e.g., “production is up 12% from last quarter”) by its focus on the recipients’ conduct and accomplishments–doing the right things the right way with the right results. It is nearly universal in the modern workplace. Even the recent trend toward doing away with annual performance reviews has come with a directive for managers to have more frequent, if less formal, performance feedback conversations [ 3 ].

Psychologists have known for decades that the effects of performance feedback on performance are highly variable and not always beneficial: A meta-analysis by Kluger and DeNisi found that the modal impact on performance is none [ 4 ]. Such findings fostered a focus on employee reactions to performance appraisals and the idea that employees would be motivated to change behavior only if they accepted the feedback and believed there was a need to improve [ 5 – 7 ]. Unfortunately, unfavorable feedback is not easily accepted. People have been shown to cope with negative feedback by disputing it, lowering their goals, reducing commitment, misremembering or reinterpreting the feedback to be more positive, and engaging in self-esteem repair, none of which are likely to motivate efforts to do a better job next time [ 8 – 16 ].

We are not recommending that feedback providers avoid negative feedback in favor of positive. Glossing over discrepancies between actual performance and desired standards of performance is not a satisfactory solution: Both goal-setting theory and ample evidence support the idea that people need summary feedback comparing progress to goals in order to adjust their efforts and strategies to reach those standards or goals [ 17 , 18 ]. The solution we propose is feedback that focuses less on diagnosing past performance and more on designing future performance.

Diagnosing the past

Managers talk to employees about both the nature and the determinants of their performance, often with the goal of improving that performance. Indeed, feedback theorists have long argued that managers must diagnose the causes of past performance problems in order to generate insight into what skills people need to improve and how they should change [ 19 ]. Understanding root causes is believed to help everyone decide future action.

Yet causality is ambiguous in performance situations. Both feedback providers and feedback recipients make causal attributions for performance that are biased, albeit in different ways. Whereas the correspondence bias leads the feedback provider to over-attribute success and failure alike to qualities of the employee [ 20 – 22 ], this bias is modified by a self-serving bias for the feedback recipient. Specifically, feedback recipients are more inclined to attribute successes to their positive dispositional qualities, and failures to external forces such as bad luck and situational constraints [ 23 – 26 ]. These self-enhancing and self-protective attributions benefit both affect and feelings of self-worth [ 27 , 28 ].

Organizational scholars have theorized since the 1970’s that such attribution differences between leaders and subordinates are a likely source of conflict and miscommunication in performance reviews [ 12 , 29 – 31 ]. Despite this solid basis in social psychological theory, little evidence exists regarding the prevalence and significance of attribution misalignment in the context of everyday workplace feedback. In the workplace, where people tend to trust their colleagues, have generally positive supervisor-supervisee relations they wish to maintain, and where feedback often takes place within a longer history of interaction, there may be more agreement about the causes of past events than seen in experimental settings. In Study 1, we explored whether attribution disagreement is indeed prevalent in the workplace by surveying hundreds of managers working in hundreds of different settings in which they gave or received positive or negative feedback. (In this paper, “disagreement” refers to a difference of opinion and is not meant to imply an argument between parties.) If workplace results mirror experimental findings and the organizational theorizing reviewed above, then our survey should reveal that when managers receive negative feedback, they make more externally focused attributions and they view that feedback as lacking credibility.

Can feedback discussions lead the two parties to a consensual understanding of the recipient’s past performance, so that its quality can be sustained or improved? One would be hard pressed these days to find a feedback theorist who did not advocate two-way communication in delivering feedback. Shouldn’t the two parties expect to converge on the “truth” of the matter through a sharing of perspectives? Gioia and Sims asked managers to make attributions for subordinates’ performance both before and after giving feedback [ 32 ]. Following the feedback conversation, managers gave more credit for success and less blame for failure. However, Gioia and Simms did not assess whether the recipients of feedback were influenced to think differently about their performance and that, after all, is the point of giving feedback.

Should one expect the recipients of workplace feedback to meet the providers halfway, taking less credit for success and/or more responsibility for failure following the feedback discussion? There are reasons to suspect not. The self-serving tendency in attributions is magnified under conditions of self-threat, that is, when information is conveyed that questions, contradicts, or challenges a person’s favorable view of the self [ 33 ]. People mentally argue against threatening feedback, rejecting what they find refutable [ 11 , 34 ]. In Studies 2 and 3, we explored the effects of live feedback discussions on attributions, feedback acceptance, and motivation to improve. We anticipated that feedback recipients would find their self-serving tendencies magnified by hearing feedback that challenged their favorable self-views. We hypothesized that the very act of discussing performance would create or exacerbate differences of opinion about what caused past performance, rather than reduce them. We expected this divergence in attributions to result in recipients rejecting the feedback and questioning the legitimacy of the source, conditions that render feedback ineffective for motivating improvement [ 7 , 14 , 35 ].

Focusing on the future

Given the psychological obstacles to people’s acceptance of negative feedback, how can managers lead their subordinates to want to change their behavior and improve their performance? This question lies at the heart of the challenge posed by feedback discussions intended both to inform people and motivate them, sometimes referred to as “developmental” feedback. Despite its intended focus on learning and improvement [ 36 , 37 ], developmental feedback may nonetheless explicitly include a diagnostic focus on the past [ 38 ], such as “why the subjects thought that they had done so poorly, what aspects of the task they had difficulty with, and what they thought their strong points were” (p. 32). In contrast, we propose that the solution lies in focusing on the future: We suggest that ideas generated by a focus on future possibilities are more effective at motivating change than are ideas generated by diagnosing why things went well or poorly in the past. This hypothesis is based on recent theory and findings regarding prospective thinking and planning.

Much prospection (mentally simulating the future) is pragmatic in that it involves thinking about practical actions one can take and behavioral changes one can make to bring about desirable future outcomes [ 39 ]. In the context of mixed or negative performance feedback, such desirable outcomes might include improved performance, better results, and greater rewards. Research comparing forward to backward thinking suggests that people find it easier to come up with practical solutions to problems in the future than to imagine practical ways problems could have been avoided in the past: People are biased toward seeing past events as inevitable, finding it difficult to imagine how things might have turned out differently [ 40 – 42 ]. When thinking about their past failures, people tend to focus on how things beyond their control could have been better (e.g., they might have had fewer competing responsibilities and more resources). In contrast, when thinking about how their performance could be more successful in the future, people focus on features under their control, generating more goal-directed thoughts [ 43 ]. Thinking through the steps needed to achieve desired goals makes change in the future feel more feasible [ 44 ]. And when success seems feasible, contrasting the past with the future leads people to take more responsibility, initiate actions, engage in effortful striving, and achieve more of their goals, as compared to focusing on past difficulties [ 45 ]. For all these reasons, we hypothesize that more prospective, forward looking feedback conversations will motivate intentions toward positive change.

Overview of studies

We report three studies. The first explored the prevalence and consequences of differing attributional perspectives in the workplace. Managers described actual, recently experienced incidents of work-related feedback and the degree to which they accepted that feedback as legitimate. The second study was designed to examine and question the pervasive view that a two-way feedback discussion leads the parties to a shared explanation of past performance and a shared desire for behavior change. We hypothesized instead that the attributions of feedback providers and recipients diverge as a consequence of reviewing past performance. In that study, businesspeople role-played a performance review meeting based on objective data in a personnel file. The third study is a modified replication of the second, with an added emphasis on the developmental purpose of the feedback. Finally, we used data from Studies 2 and 3 to model the connections among provider-recipient attribution differences, future focus, feedback acceptance, and intentions to change. Our overarching theory posits that in the workplace (and in other domains of life), feedback conversations are most beneficial when they avoid the diagnosis of the past and instead focus directly on implications for future action.

We conducted an international survey of managers who described recent work-based incidents in which they either provided or received feedback, positive or negative. We explored how the judgmental biases documented in attribution research are manifested in everyday feedback conversations and how those biases relate to acceptance of feedback. Given well-established phenomena of attribution (correspondence bias, actor-observer differences, self-serving bias), we expected managers to favor internal attributions for the events that prompted the feedback, except for incidents in which they received negative feedback. We hypothesized that managers who received negative feedback would, furthermore, judge the feedback as less accurate and the feedback providers as less qualified, when compared to managers who received positive feedback or who provided feedback of either valence.

Participants

Respondents to this survey were 419 middle and upper managers enrolled in Executive MBA classes in Chicago, Barcelona, and Singapore. They represented a mix of American, European, and Asian businesspeople. Females comprised 18% of participants. For procedural reasons (see Results), the responses of 37 participants were excluded from analysis, leaving a sample of 382. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Chicago, which waived the requirement for written consent as was its customary policy for studies judged to be of minimal risk, involving only individual, anonymized survey responses.

Managers completed the survey online, using the Cogix ViewsFlash survey platform. When they accessed the survey, they were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Each participant was instructed to think of one recent work-related incident in which they gave another person positive feedback (provider-positive condition), gave another person negative feedback (provider-negative condition), received positive feedback from another person (recipient-positive condition), or received negative feedback from another person (recipient-negative condition). They were asked to describe briefly the incident and the feedback.

The managers were then asked to complete the statement, “The feedback was __% accurate,” and to rate the qualification of the feedback provider on a scale from 0 = unqualified to 10 = completely qualified. Providers were asked, “How qualified were you to give the feedback?” whereas recipients were asked, “The person who gave you the feedback—how qualified was he or she to give the feedback?”

Lastly, the managers were instructed to make causal attributions for the incident. They were told, “Looking back now at the incident, please assign a percentage to each of the following causes, such that they sum to 100%.” Two of the causes corresponded to Weiner’s internal attribution categories (ability and effort) [ 28 ]. The other two causes corresponded to Weiner’s external attribution categories (task and luck). The wording of the response choices varied with condition. For example, in the provider-positive condition, the response choices were __% due to abilities he or she possessed, __% due to the amount of effort he or she put in, __% due to the nature of what he or she had to do, __% due to good luck, whereas for the recipient-negative condition, the attribution choices were __% due to abilities you lacked, __% due to the amount of effort you put in, __% due to the nature of what you had to do, __% due to bad luck. (Full text is provided in S1 Text .)

A review of the incidents and feedback the participants described revealed that 25 managers had violated instructions by writing about incidents that were not work-related (e.g., interactions with family members) and 12 had written about incidents inconsistent with their assigned condition (e.g., describing feedback received when assigned to a feedback provider condition). The data from these 37 managers were excluded from further analysis, leaving samples of 96, 92, 91, and 103 in the provider-positive, provider-negative, recipient-positive, and recipient-negative conditions, respectively. We tested the data using ANOVAs with role (providing vs. receiving feedback) and valence (positive vs. negative feedback) as between-subjects variables.

There were three dependent variables: managers’ ratings of feedback accuracy, of provider qualifications, and of internal vs. external causal attributions (ability + effort vs. task + luck). Analyses of the attribution variable used the arcsine transformation commonly recommended for proportions [ 46 ]. For all three dependent measures, there were significant main effects of role and valence and a significant interaction between them (see Table 1 and Fig 1 ).

Results for each dependent variable are shown by role (provider vs. recipient of feedback) and valence (positive vs. negative feedback). Error bars show standard errors.

All F (1, 378), all p < .001; effect size measures are partial η 2 . Correlations among dependent measures are shown in S1 Table .

Providers of feedback reported that the incidents in question were largely caused by the abilities and efforts of the feedback recipients. They reported that their feedback was accurate and that they were well qualified to give it. These findings held for both positive and negative feedback. Recipients of feedback made similar judgments when the feedback was positive: They took personal credit for incidents that turned out well and accepted the positive feedback as true. However, when the feedback was negative, recipients judged the failures as due principally to causes beyond their control, such as task demands and bad luck. They did not accept the negative feedback received, judging it as less accurate ( t (192) = 7.50, p < .001) and judging the feedback provider less qualified to give it t (192) = 5.25, p < .001). One manager who defended the reasonableness of these findings during a group debrief put it this way: “We are the best there is. If we get negative feedback for something bad that happened, it probably wasn’t our fault!”

Study 1 confirms that attributional disagreement is prevalent in the workplace and associated with the rejection of negative feedback. Across a large sample of real, recent, work-related incidents, providers and recipients of feedback formed very different impressions of both the feedback and the incidents that prompted it. Despite the general tendency of people to attribute the causes of performance to internal factors such as ability and effort, managers who received negative feedback placed most of the blame outside themselves. Our survey further confirmed that, across a wide variety of workplace settings, managers who received negative feedback viewed it as lacking credibility, rating the feedback as less accurate and the source as less qualified to provide feedback.

These results are consistent with attribution theory and the fact that feedback providers and recipients have access to different information: Whereas providers have an external perspective on the recipients’ observable behavior, feedback recipients have unique access to their own thoughts, feelings, and intentions, all of which drove their performance and behavior [ 24 , 47 ]. For the most part, feedback recipients intend to perform well. When their efforts pay off, they perceive they had personal control over the positive outcome; when their efforts fail, they naturally look for causes outside themselves [ 48 , 49 ]. For their part, feedback providers are prone to paying insufficient attention to situational constraints, even when motivated to give honest, accurate, unbiased, and objective feedback [ 20 ].

In this survey study, every incident was unique: Providers and recipients were not reporting on the same incidents. Thus, the survey method permits an additional mechanism of self-protection, namely, biased selection of congenial information [ 50 ]. When faced with a request to recall a recent incident that resulted in receipt of negative feedback, the managers may have tended to retrieve incidents for which they were not to blame and that did not reflect poorly on their abilities. Such biased recall often occurs outside of conscious awareness [ 51 , 52 ]. For the recipients of feedback, internal attributions for the target incident have direct implications for self-esteem. Thus, they may have tended to recall incidents aligned with their wish to maintain a positive self-view, namely, successes due to ability and effort, and failures due to task demands and bad luck. It is possible, of course, that providers engaged in selective recall as well: They may have enhanced their sense of competence and fairness by retrieving incidents in which they were highly qualified and provided accurate feedback. Biased selection of incidents is not possible in the next two studies which provided all participants with identical workplace-performance information.

In Study 2 we investigated how and how much the feedback conversation itself alters the two parties’ judgments of the performance under discussion. This study tests our hypotheses that feedback discussions do not lead to greater agreement about attributions and may well lead to increased disagreement, that attributional misalignment is associated with rejection of feedback, and that future focus is associated with greater feedback effectiveness, as measured by acceptance of feedback and intention to change. The study used a dyadic role-play simulation of a performance review meeting in which a supervisor (newly hired Regional Manager Chris Sinopoli) gives performance feedback to a subordinate (District Manager Taylor Devani, being considered for promotion). The simulation was adapted from a performance feedback exercise that is widely used in management training. Instructors and researchers who use similar role-play exercises report that participants find them realistic and engaging, and respond as they would to the real thing [ 32 , 53 ].

The decision to use a role-play method involves trade-offs, especially when compared to studying in vivo workplace performance reviews. We chose this method in order to gain greater experimental control and a cleaner test of our hypotheses. In our study, all participants were given identical information, in the form of a personnel file, ensuring that both the providers and recipients of feedback based their judgements on the same information. This control would not be possible inside an actual company, where the two parties might easily be influenced by differential access to organizational knowledge and different exposure to the events under discussion. Additionally, participants in our study completed questionnaires that assessed their perceptions of the feedback-recipient’s performance, the discussion of that performance, and the effects of the feedback discussion. Because this study was a simulation, participants were able to respond honestly to these questionnaires. Participants in an actual workplace performance review might need to balance honesty with concerns for appearances or repercussions; for example, feedback recipients might be hesitant to admit having little intention to change in response to feedback. On the other hand, there are a variety of conditions and motivations that exist in the workplace that cannot be easily simulated in a role-play, such as the pre-existing relationship between the feedback provider and recipient, and the potential long-term consequences of any performance review. Further work will be required to determine how findings from this study apply in workplace settings.

This study comprised two groups that received the same scenarios, but differed with regard to the timing and content of the questionnaires. Recall that the primary goal of Study 2 was to explore how the feedback discussion affects participants’ judgments. For this, we analyzed data from the pre-post group. Participants in this group completed questionnaires both before and after the discussion. Their post-discussion questionnaire included questions evaluating the conduct and consequences of the feedback discussion, including ratings of future focus and intention to change. A second group of participants (the post-only group) completed only a questionnaire after the feedback discussion that did not include future-focus or intention-to-change items. This group allowed us to test whether answering the same questions twice (pre and post the feedback discussion) affected the results.

Participants were 380 executives and MBA students enrolled in advanced Human Resources classes in Australia. They represented an international mix of businesspeople: 59% identified their “main cultural identity” as Australian, 20% as a European nationality or ethnicity, 24% Asian, and 12% other; 5% did not indicate any. (Totals sum to more than 100% because participants were able to choose two identities if they wished.) They averaged 35 years of age, ranging from 23 to 66. Females comprised 35% of the sample. Participants worked in pairs. Five pairs were excluded from analysis because one member of the dyad did not complete the required questionnaires, leaving a sample of 117 dyads in the pre-post group and 68 in the post-only group. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Melbourne. Participants’ written consent was obtained.

Each participant received a packet of materials consisting of (a) background on a fictional telecommunications company called the DeltaCom Corporation, (b) a description of both their role and their partner’s role, (c) task instructions for completing the questionnaires and the role-play itself, (d) a copy of the personnel file for the subordinate, and (e) the questionnaire(s). The names of the role-play characters were pre-tested to be gender neutral. (The full text of the materials is provided in S2 – S7 Texts .)

Personnel file . The personnel file documented a mixed record including both exemplary and problematic aspects of the District Manger’s performance. On the positive side was superior, award-winning sales performance and consistently above-average increases in new customers. On the negative side were consistently below-average ratings of customer satisfaction and a falling percentage of customers retained, along with high turnover of direct reports, some of whom complained of the District Manager’s “moody, tyrannical, and obsessive” behavior. Notes from the prior year’s performance discussion indicated that the District Manager did not fully accept the developmental feedback received at that time, instead defending a focus on sales success and the bottom line.

Questionnaires . Participants in the pre-post group completed a pre-discussion questionnaire immediately following their review of the District Manager’s personnel file. They rated the quality of the District Manager’s job performance on sales, customer retention, customer satisfaction, and ability to manage and coach employees, using 7-point scales ranging from 1 = Very Low to 7 = Very High. They then rated the importance of these four aspects of the recipient’s job performance on 7-point scales ranging from 1 = Not Important to 7 = Very Important. Lastly, participants gave their “opinion about the causes of Taylor Devani’s successes by assigning a percentage to each of the following four causes, such that the four causes together sum to 100%.” They did the same for “Taylor Devani’s failures.” Two response categories described internal attributions: “% due to Taylor’s abilities and personality” and “% due to the amount of effort and attention Taylor applied.” The other two described external attributions: “% due to Taylor’s job responsibilities, DeltaCom’s expectations, and the resources provided” and “% due to chance and random luck.” (We chose the expression “random luck” to imply uncontrollable environmental factors in contrast to a trait or feature of a lucky or unlucky person [ 54 ].) Participants chose a percentage from 0 to 100 for each cause, using scales in increments of 5 percentage points. In 4.4% of cases, participants’ four attribution ratings summed to a total, T , that did not equal 100. In those cases, all the ratings were adjusted by multiplying by (100 / T ).

Participants in both the pre-post group and the post-only group completed a post-discussion questionnaire following their feedback discussion. This questionnaire asked the participants to rate the favorability of the feedback given, on an 11-point scale from 0 = “Almost all negative” to 10 = “Almost all positive”; the accuracy of the feedback, on a scale from 0% to 100% in increments of 5%; and how qualified the provider was to give the feedback, on an 11-point scale from 0 = “Unqualified” to 10 = “Completely qualified.” It continued by asking all of the pre-discussion questionnaire items, allowing us to assess any rating changes that occurred in the pre-post group as a consequence of the intervening feedback discussion. Next, for those in the pre-post group, the questionnaire presented a series of 7-point Likert-scale items concerning the conduct and consequences of the feedback. These included items evaluating future focus and intention to change. Additionally, the post-discussion questionnaires of both groups contained exploratory questions about the behaviors of the individual role-players; these were not analyzed. On the final page, participants provided demographic information about themselves.

Participants were randomly assigned to dyads and to roles within each dyad. They were sent to private study rooms to complete the procedure. Instructions indicated (a) 15 minutes to review the personnel file, (b) 5 minutes to complete the pre-discussion questionnaire (pre-post group only), (c) 20 minutes to hold the feedback discussion, and (d) 15 minutes to complete the post-discussion questionnaire. Participants were instructed to stay in role during the entire exercise, including completion of the questionnaires. They were told to complete all steps individually without consulting their partner except, of course, for the feedback discussion. The feedback provider was directed by the task instructions to focus on the recipient’s “weaknesses as a manager–those aspects of performance Taylor must change to achieve future success if promoted.” The reason for this additional instruction was to balance the discussion of successes and failures. Prior pilot testing showed that without this instruction there was a tendency for role-players to avoid discussing shortcomings at all, a finding consistent with research showing that people are reluctant to deliver negative feedback and sometimes distort it to make it more positive [ 35 , 55 – 57 ]. When they finished, the participants handed in all the materials and took part in a group debrief of the performance review simulation.

We used analyses of variance to study differences in how the participants interpreted the past performance of the feedback recipient. The dependent variables were participant judgments of (a) internal vs. external attributions for the feedback recipient’s performance, (b) the quality of various aspects of job performance, and (c) the importance of those aspects. One set of ANOVAs used post-feedback questionnaire data from both the pre-post and post-only groups to check whether completing a pre-discussion questionnaire affected post-discussion results. The independent variables were role (provider or recipient of feedback), outcomes (successes or failures of the feedback recipient), and group (pre-post or post-only). A second set of ANOVAs used data from the pre-discussion and post-discussion questionnaires of the pre-post group to test our hypothesis that feedback discussions tend to drive providers’ and recipients’ interpretations of performance further apart rather than closer together. The independent variables in these analyses were role , outcomes , and timing (before or after feedback conversation). In all the ANOVAs, the dyad was treated as a unit (i.e., as though a single participant) because the responses of the two members of a dyad can hardly be considered independent of one another. Accordingly, role, outcomes, group, and timing were all within-dyad variables.

A third set of analyses provided tests of our hypotheses that provider-recipient disagreement about attributions interferes with feedback effectiveness, and that a focus on future behavior, rather than past behavior, improves feedback effectiveness. We conducted regression analyses using data from the pre-post group, whose questionnaires included the set of Likert-scale items concerning the conduct and consequences of the feedback discussion. The dependent variables for these regressions were two measures of feedback effectiveness derived from recipient responses: the recipients’ acceptance of the feedback as legitimate and the recipients’ expressed intention to change. The predictors represented five characteristics measured from the post-feedback questionnaire: provider-recipient disagreement about attributions, about performance quality, and about performance importance; how favorable the recipient found the feedback to be; and the extent to which the recipient judged the conversation to be future focused.

Role differences in the interpretation of past performance before and after feedback discussion

Given the results of Study 1 and established phenomena in social psychology, we expected feedback recipients to make internal attributions for their successes and external for their failures more than feedback providers do, to hold more favorable views of their job performance quality than providers do, and to see their successes as more important and/or their failures as less important than providers do. Analyses of the post-discussion ratings in the pre-post and post-only groups ( S1 Analyses ) confirm those expectations for attributions and for performance quality, but not for performance importance. There were no differences between the pre-post and post-only groups on any of those measures, with all partial η 2 < .02. Beyond that, we hypothesized that feedback conversations do not reduce provider-recipient differences in interpretation, and may well make them larger. Accordingly, we report here the analyses that include the timing variable, using data from the pre-post group ( Table 2 ).

F (1, 116) for internal attributions, F (1, 114) for performance quality and importance. Underlined values are effects with p < .05 and partial η 2 > .05.

Internal vs . external attributions . Participants in both roles provided attribution ratings before and after the discussion, separately “about the causes of Taylor Devani’s successes” and “about the causes of Taylor Devani’s failures.” There were three significant effects, all of which were interactions. Those were Role x Outcomes, Outcomes x Timing, and Role x Outcomes x Timing. As shown in Fig 2 , the three-way interaction reflects the following pattern: The parties began with only minor (and not statistically significant) differences in attributional perspective. Following the feedback discussion however, those differences were much greater. There were no significant effects involving timing for feedback providers: Their attributions changed only slightly from pre- to post-discussion. Feedback recipients, in contrast, showed a highly significant Outcomes x Timing interaction, F (1, 116) = 19.6, p < .001, η 2 = .14. Following the feedback conversation, recipients attributed their successes more to internal factors than they did before the conversation and they attributed their failures more to external factors than before ( t (116) = 4.5, p < .001 and t (116) = 3.3, p = .001, respectively). At the end, the two parties’ attributions were well apart on both successes and failures ( t (116) = 2.3, p = .024 and t (116) = 3.0, p = .003). In sum, the performance review discussion led to greater disagreement between the feedback providers and recipients due to the recipients of feedback making more self-enhancing and self-protecting performance attributions.

Results are shown by role (provider vs. recipient of feedback), outcomes (successes vs. failures), and timing (before vs. after feedback). Error bars show standard errors.

Performance quality . There were main effects of outcomes and role, but no interactions. As intended, participants rated performance on sales much more highly than they rated the other job aspects (6.72 vs. 3.32 out of 7). Overall, recipients evaluated their performances slightly more positively than the providers did (5.13 vs. 4.91).

Performance importance . There was a main effect of outcome, modified by significant Role x Outcomes and Role x Outcomes x Timing interactions. To understand these effects, we followed up with analyses of role and timing for successes and for failures, separately. Feedback recipients rated their successes as more important than feedback providers did (6.41 and 6.12, respectively; F (1, 115) = 6.20, p = .014, η 2 = .05), with no significant effects of time. In contrast, importance ratings for failures showed a Role x Timing interaction ( F (1, 114) = 7.77, p = .006, η 2 = .06): Providers rated failures as more important before discussion, becoming more lenient following discussion (5.75 vs. 5.42; t (114) = 2.22, p = .028), consistent with the findings of Gioia and Sims [ 32 ]. Recipient ratings showed no significant change as a consequence of discussion.

These analyses suggest that in performance conversations, feedback providers do not lead recipients to see things their way: Recipient interpretations of past performance do not become more like provider interpretations. In fact, following discussion, recipients’ causal attributions are further from those of the providers. Moreover, across dyads, there was no correlation between the recipient’s ratings and the provider’s ratings following discussion: Although a ceiling effect limits the potential for correlations on the quality of sales performance (success), the other measures, especially attributions, show considerable variation in responses across dyads but still no provider-recipient correlations ( S2 and S3 Tables). For performance quality, performance importance, and attributions, for successes and for failures, all | r | < .12 ( p > .22, N = 115 to 117).

Effects of attribution disagreement and future focus on recipients’ acceptance of feedback and intention to change

We hypothesized that provider-recipient disagreement about attributions negatively impacts feedback in two ways, by reducing the extent to which recipients accept the feedback as legitimate, and by reducing the recipient’s intentions to change in response to the feedback. We further hypothesized that a focus on future behavior, rather than past behavior, would engender greater acceptance of feedback and greater intention to change. The present study provides evidence for both of those hypotheses.

We measured feedback acceptance by averaging ratings on feedback accuracy and provider qualifications, both scaled 0 to 100 ( r = .448). We measured intention to change as the average of recipients’ responses to three of the Likert questions in the post-feedback-discussion questionnaire (α = .94):

Based on the feedback, you are now motivated to change your behavior. You see the value of acting on Chris’s suggestions. You will likely change your behavior, based on the feedback received.

We analyzed these two measures of feedback effectiveness using regressions with five variables that might predict the outcome of the discussion: post-feedback disagreement about attributions, performance quality, and performance importance (all scored such that positive numbers indicate that the recipient made judgments more favorable to the recipient than did the provider); how favorable the recipient found the feedback to be (rated from 0 = almost all negative to 10 = almost all positive); and the extent to which the recipient thought the conversation was future focused. This last measure is the average of the recipient’s ratings on the following three Likert questions on the post-feedback questionnaire (α = .75):

You and Chris spent a large part of this session generating new ideas for your next steps. The feedback conversation centered on what will make you most successful going forward. The feedback discussion focused mostly on your future behavior.

We hypothesized that the recipients’ acceptance of feedback and intention to change would be affected by the recipients’ impressions of how future focused the discussion was. That said, we note that the provider’s and the recipient’s ratings of future focus were well correlated across dyads ( r (115) = .423, p < .001), suggesting that recipients’ ratings of future focus reflected characteristics of the discussion that were perceived by both parties.

As shown in Table 3 , recipients’ ratings of future focus proved to be the best predictor of their ratings of both feedback acceptance and intention to change. Recipients’ favorability ratings also significantly predicted their intention to change and, especially, their acceptance of the feedback. Attribution disagreement between providers and recipients predicted lower acceptance of feedback, but not intention to change. Differences of opinion regarding the quality and importance of various aspects of job performance had no significant effects and, as shown by Model 2 in Table 3 , removing them had almost no effect.

Model 1 includes all five predictor variables. Model 2 excludes the two that showed no significant effects in Model 1. Numbers in brackets are adjusted R 2 s.

As in Study 1, we again observe that the providers and recipients of feedback formed very different impressions about past performance. A new and important finding in this study is that feedback conversations did not merely fail to diminish provider-recipient disagreements about what led to strong and weak performance; they actually turned minor disagreements into major ones. Recipients made more self-enhancing and self-protective attributions following the performance discussion, believing more strongly than before that their successes were caused by internal factors (their ability, personality, effort, and attention) and their failures were caused by external factors (job responsibilities, employer expectations, resources provided, and bad luck). There were also modest disagreements regarding the quality and importance of different aspects of the recipient’s job performance, but these did not worsen following discussion. The most important source of disagreement between providers and recipients then, especially following the feedback conversation, was not about what happened, but about why it happened.

What led recipients of performance feedback to accept it as legitimate and helpful? The best predictor of feedback effectiveness was the extent to which the discussion was perceived as future focused. Unsurprisingly, feedback was also easier to accept when it was more favorable. As predicted, recipients were more likely to accept feedback when they and the feedback providers agreed more about what caused the past events. Greater attribution agreement, however, did not increase recipients’ intention to change. These findings suggest that reaching agreement on the causes of past performance is neither likely to happen (because feedback discussions widen causal attribution disagreement) nor is it necessary for fostering change. What does matter is the extent to which the feedback conversation focuses on generating new ideas for future success. We further explore the relations among all these variables following the reporting of Study 3.

Performance feedback serves goals other than improving performance. For example, performance reviews often serve as an opportunity for the feedback provider to justify promotion and compensation decisions. For the recipient, the conversation may provide an opportunity for image management and the chance to influence employment decisions. People may fail to distinguish between evaluation and improvement goals when providing and receiving feedback. In Study 2, the instructions were intended to be explicit in directing participants to the developmental goal of performance improvement, rather than accountability or rewards. Nevertheless, the providers’ wish to justify their evaluations and the recipients’ wish to influence them might have contributed to the differences we observed in attributions and in judgments about the feedback’s legitimacy. To address this concern, we added a page of detailed company guidelines that emphasized the primacy of the performance-improvement goal over the goals of expressing, justifying, or influencing evaluations. There were two versions of these guidelines, which did not differ in their effects.

Participants were 162 executives and MBA students enrolled in advanced Human Resources classes in Australia. An international mix of businesspeople, 74% said they grew up in Australia or New Zealand, 10% in Europe, 22% in Asia, and 7% other. (Totals sum to more than 100% because some participants indicated more than one.) Participants averaged 39 years of age, ranging from 27 to 60. Females comprised 37% of the participants.

Participants read the same scenario and instructions as in Study 2, with an added page of guidelines for giving developmental feedback ( S8 Text ). They then completed the same post-discussion questionnaires used for the pre-post group of Study 2, minus the ratings of performance quality and importance for various aspects of the job, which showed no effects in Study 2. (The full text of the questionnaires is provided in S9 and S10 Texts). Taken together, these modifications kept the procedure to about the same length as in Study 2. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Melbourne. Written consent was obtained.

Role differences in the interpretation of past performance

As in Study 2, we calculated the sum of the percentages of attributions assigned to internal causes (ability and personality + effort and attention), applying an arcsine transformation. As before, we analyzed the internal attributions measure with a mixed-model ANOVA treating each dyad as a unit. There were two within-dyads variables: role (provider or recipient), and outcomes (successes or failures) and one between-dyads variable (guideline version ). There were no effects involving guideline version (all F < 1). The main effects of role ( F (1, 79) = 50.12, p < .001, η 2 = .39) and outcomes ( F (1, 79) = 113.8, p < .001, η 2 = .59) and the interaction between them ( F (1, 79) = 86.34, p < .001, η 2 = .52) are displayed in Fig 3 , along with the parallel post-feedback results from the previous two studies. As in Study 2, the two parties’ post-discussion attributions were well apart on both successes and, especially, failures ( t (80) = 3.3 and 9.4 respectively, both p ≤ .001). Again, the correlations between the provider’s and the recipient’s post-conversation performance attributions across dyads were not significant for either successes ( r (79) = -.04, p > .69) or failures ( r (79) = -.13, p > .23) suggesting that conversation does not lead the dyad to a common understanding of what led to good or poor performance.

Results are shown by role (provider vs. recipient of feedback) and valence/outcomes (positive feedback for successes vs. negative feedback for failures), following feedback conversation. Error bars show standard errors.

We conducted regression analyses of the recipient’s feedback acceptance and intention to change as in Study 2. The regression models included three predictors: future focus, attribution disagreement, and feedback favorability. Results, shown in Table 4 , replicated our Study 2 finding that future focus is the best predictor of both feedback acceptance and intention to change. As before, attribution disagreement predicted lower acceptance, but in this study it also predicted less intention to change. We again found that feedback favorability ratings were associated with greater acceptance, but this time, not with intention to change. Recipients and providers were again significantly correlated in their judgments of how future focused the conversation was ( r (79) = .299, p = .007).

Numbers in brackets are adjusted R 2 s.

Future focus, as perceived by the recipients of feedback, was once again the strongest predictor of their acceptance of the feedback and the strongest predictor of their intention to change. Conversely, attribution disagreement between the provider and recipient of feedback was associated with lower feedback acceptance and weaker intention to change. As in Studies 1 and 2, recipients made more internal attributions for successes than providers did and, especially, more external attributions for failures. The added guidelines in this study emphasizing performance-improvement goals over evaluative ones did not alleviate provider-recipient attribution differences. Indeed, those differences were considerably larger in this study than in the previous one and were more similar to those seen in Study 1 (see Fig 3 ).

Future focus, attributions, favorability, and the effectiveness of feedback

The strongest predictor of feedback effectiveness is the recipient’s perception that the feedback conversation focused on plans for the future rather than analysis of the past. We seek here to elucidate the relationship between future focus and feedback effectiveness by looking at the interrelations among the three predictors of effectiveness we studied: future focus, attribution disagreement, and feedback favorability.

The analyses that follow include data from all participants who were asked for ratings of future focus, namely those in Study 3 and in the pre-post group of Study 2. We included study as a variable in our analyses; no effects involving the study variable were significant. Nonetheless, because the two studies drew from different samples and used slightly different methods, inferential statistics could be impacted by intraclass correlation within each study. Therefore, we also tested for study-specific differences in parameter estimates using hierarchical linear modeling [ 58 , 59 ]. No significant differences between studies emerged, confirming the appropriateness of combining the data. (The HLM results are provided in S2 Analyses .)

The association between future focus and feedback effectiveness could be mediated by the effects of attribution disagreement and/or feedback favorability. Specifically, it could be that perceiving the conversation as more future focused is associated with closer agreement on attributions or with perceiving the feedback as more favorable, and one or both of those latter two effects leads to improved feedback effectiveness. Tests of mediation, following the methods of Kenny and colleagues [ 60 ], suggest otherwise (see Fig 4 ). These analyses partition the total associations of future focus with feedback acceptance and with intention to change into direct effects and indirect effects. Indirect effects via reduced attribution disagreement were 6.2% of the relation of future focus to feedback acceptance and 2.2% to intention to change. Indirect effects via improved perceptions of feedback favorability were 20.8% of the relation of future focus to feedback acceptance and 4.5% to intention to change. Thus, there is little to suggest that closer agreement on attributions or improved perceptions of feedback favorability account for the benefits of future focus on feedback effectiveness.

The two feedback effectiveness measures are feedback acceptance and intention to change. Following Kenny (2018), standardized regression coefficients are shown for the relations between future focus and two hypothesized mediators, attribution disagreement and feedback favorability ( a ), the mediators and the feedback effectiveness measures controlling for future focus ( b ), future focus and the effectiveness measures ( c ), and future focus and the effectiveness measures controlling for the mediator ( c′ ). The total effect ( c ) equals the direct effect ( c′ ) plus the indirect effect ( a · b ). Data are from Studies 2 and 3. a p = .072; * p = .028; ** p < .001.

Interactions

Future focus might have synergistic or moderating effects. In particular, we hypothesized that perceiving the conversation as more future focused may moderate the negative impact of attribution disagreement on feedback effectiveness. Alternatively, future focus may be especially beneficial when agreement about attributions is good, or when attribution differences are neither so big that they cannot be put aside, nor so small that the parties see eye to eye even when they focus on the past. Similarly, future focus may be especially beneficial when feedback is most unfavorable to the recipient, or when it’s most favorable, or when it is neither so negative that the recipients can’t move past it, nor so positive that the recipients accept it even when the conversation focuses on the past.

We conducted regression analyses with feedback acceptance and intention to change as dependent variables and future focus, feedback favorability, attribution disagreement, and their first-order interactions as predictors. Because some plausible interactions are nonlinear, we defined low, intermediate, and high values for each of the three predictor variables, dividing the 198 participants as evenly as possible for each. We then partitioned each predictor into linear and quadratic components with one degree of freedom each. With linear and quadratic components of three predictors plus a binary variable for Study 2 vs. Study 3, there were seven potential linear effects and 18 possible two-way interactions. We used a stepwise procedure to select which interactions to include in our regressions, using an inclusion parameter of p < .15. Results are shown in Table 5 .

Models include all main effects and those first-order interactions that met an entry criterion of p < .15, plus data source (Study 2 vs. Study 3). Statistically significant values are underlined.

Future focus interacted with feedback favorability—marginally for feedback acceptance and significantly for intention to change. As shown in Fig 5 , recipients who gave low or intermediate ratings for future focus accepted the feedback less when it was most negative ( t (128) = 5.21, p < .001) and similarly, reported less inclination to change ( t (128) = 3.23, p = .002). In contrast, the recipients who rated the feedback discussion as most future focused accepted their feedback and indicated high intention to change at all levels of feedback favorability. These patterns suggest that perceiving future focus moderates the deleterious effect of negative feedback on feedback effectiveness.

Results for each measure of feedback effectiveness are shown by three levels of perceived future focus and three levels of perceived feedback favorability. Error bars show standard errors. Data are from Studies 2 and 3.

On the other hand, we find no evidence that future focus moderates the negative effect of attribution disagreement on feedback effectiveness. Future focus did interact marginally with attribution disagreement for intention to change. However, the benefits of perceiving high vs. low future focus may, in fact, be stronger when there is closer agreement about attributions: The increase in intention to change between low and high future focus groups was 2.30 with high disagreement, 2.37 with intermediate disagreement, and 3.24 in dyads with low disagreement, on a scale from 1 to 7.

Regression-tree analyses

Regression-tree analyses can provide additional insights into the non-linear relations among variables [ 61 ], with a better visualization of the best and worst conditions to facilitate feedback acceptance and intention to change. These analyses use the predictors (here, future focus, attribution disagreement, and feedback favorability) to divide participants into subgroups empirically, maximizing the extent to which values on the dependent measure are homogeneous within subgroups and different between them. We generated regression trees for each of our two effectiveness measures, feedback acceptance and intention to change. Fig 6 shows the results, including all subgroups (nodes) with N = 10 or more.

The trees depict the effects of future focus, attribution disagreement, and feedback favorability on our two measures of feedback effectiveness. The width of branches is proportional to the number of participants in that branch. Node 0 is the full sample of 198. Values on the X axis are standardized values for each dependent measure. Data are from Studies 2 and 3.

Both trees show that future focus is the most important variable, dividing into lower and higher branches at Nodes 1 and 2, and further distinguishing highest-future groups at Nodes A8 and B6. These representations also reinforce the conclusion that perceived future focus does not operate mainly via an association with more positive feedback or with better agreement on attributions. However, attribution disagreement does play a role, with more agreement leading to better acceptance of feedback and greater intention to change, as long as future focus is at least moderately high (Nodes A3 vs. A4 and B7 vs. B8). (The lack of effect at Node B6 is likely a ceiling effect.) Unfavorable feedback makes matters worse under adverse conditions: when future focus is low (Nodes B3 vs. B4) or when future focus is moderate but attribution disagreement is large (nodes A5 vs. A6).

General discussion

Our research was motivated by a need to understand why performance feedback conversations do not benefit performance to the extent intended and what might be done to improve that situation. We investigated how providers and recipients of workplace feedback differ in their judgements about the causes of performance and the credibility of feedback, and how feedback discussions impact provider-recipient (dis)agreement and feedback effectiveness. We were particularly interested in how interpretations of past performance, feedback acceptance, and intention to change are affected by the recipient’s perception of temporal focus, that is, the extent to which the feedback discussion focuses on past versus future behavior.

Management theorists typically advocate evaluating performance relative to established goals and standards, diagnosing the causes of substandard performance, and providing feedback so that people can learn from the past [ 19 ]. They also posit that feedback recipients must recognize there is a problem, accept the feedback as accurate, and find the feedback providers fair and credible in order for performance feedback to motivate improvement [ 7 , 14 , 35 ]. Unfortunately, we know that performance feedback often does not motivate improvement [ 4 ]. Our research contributes in several ways to understanding why that is and how feedback conversations might be made more effective.

Decades of attribution theory and research have elucidated the biases thought to produce discrepant explanations for performance between the providers and recipients of feedback. We show that for negative feedback, these discrepancies are prevalent in the workplace. We also show that larger attribution discrepancies are associated with greater rejection of feedback and, in our performance review simulations, with weaker intention to change. These findings support recent research and theory linking performance feedback, work-related decision making, and attribution theory: Instead of changing behavior in response to mixed or negative feedback, people make self-enhancing and self-protecting attributions and judgements they can use to justify not changing [ 8 , 14 , 62 ].

Our research suggests that the common practice of discussing the employees’ past performance, with an emphasis on how and why outcomes occurred and what that implies about the employees’ strengths and weaknesses, can be counterproductive. Although the parties to a feedback discussion may agree reasonably well about which goals and standards were met or unmet, they are unlikely to converge on an understanding of the causes of unmet goals and standards, even with engaged give and take. Instead, the feedback conversation creates or exacerbates disagreement about the causes of performance outcomes, leading feedback recipients to take more credit for their successes and less responsibility for their failures. This suggests that feedback conversations that attempt to diagnose past performance act as another form of self-threat that increases the self-serving bias [ 33 ]. Surely this runs counter to what the feedback provider intended.

At the same time, we find that self-serving attributions need not stand in the way of feedback acceptance and motivation to improve. A key discovery in our research is that the more recipients feel the feedback focuses on next steps and future actions, the more they accept the feedback and the more they intend to act on it. In fact, when feedback is perceived to be highly future focused, feedback recipients respond as well to predominantly negative feedback as to predominantly positive feedback. Future focus does not nullify self-serving attributions and their detrimental effects [see also 63 ], but it does enable productive feedback discussions despite them.

We used two complementary research methods. Study 1 used a more naturalistic and thus more ecologically valid method, collecting retrospective self-reports from hundreds of managers about actual feedback interactions in a wide variety of work situations [see 64 ]. Studies 2 and 3 used a role-play method that allowed us to give all participants identical workplace performance information, a good portion of which was undisputed and quantitative. With that design, response differences between the providers and recipients of feedback are due entirely to role, unconfounded by differences in knowledge and experience.

What role plays cannot establish is the magnitude of effects in organizational settings. Attribution misalignment and resistance to feedback might easily be much stronger in real workplace performance reviews where it would be rare for the parties to arrive with identical, largely unambiguous information. Moreover, managers’ investment in the monetary and career outcomes of performance reviews might lead feedback recipients to feel more threatened than in a role play and thus to disagree even more with unfavorable feedback. On the other hand, the desire to maintain employment and/or to maintain good relationships with supervisors might motivate managers to re-assess their past achievements, to change their private attributions, and to be more accepting of unfavorable feedback. Data from our role-play studies may not speak to the magnitude of resistance to feedback in work settings (although our survey results suggest it’s substantial), but they do show that feedback acceptance is increased when the participants perceive their feedback to be focused on the future.

Implications for future research and theory

There are few research topics more important to the study of organizations than performance management. Feedback conversations are a cornerstone of most individual and team performance management, yet there is still much we do not know about what should be said, how, and why. Based on research into the motivational advantages of prospective thinking, we hypothesized that feedback discussions perceived as future focused are the most effective kind for generating acceptance of feedback and fostering positive behavior change. Our findings support that hypothesis. The present research contributes to the literature on prospection by highlighting the role of interpersonal interactions in facilitating prefactual thinking and any associated advantages for goal pursuit [ 39 , 43 – 45 , 63 , 65 ]. In this section we suggest three lines of future research: (a) field studies and interventions; (b) research into the potential role of self-beliefs; and (c) exploration of the conversational dynamics associated with feedback perceived as past vs. future focused.

Field research and intervention designs

Testing feedback interventions in the workplace and other field settings is an important future step toward corroborating, elaborating, or correcting our findings. It will be necessary to develop effective means to foster a more future-focused style of feedback. Then, randomized controlled trials that contrast future-focused with diagnostic feedback can demonstrate the benefits that may accrue from focusing feedback more on future behavior and less on past behavior. Participant evaluations of the feedback discussions can be supplemented by those of neutral observers. Such evaluations are directly relevant to organizational goals, including employee motivation, positive supervisor-supervisee relations, and effective problem solving. Assessing subsequent behavior change and job performance is both important and complicated for evaluating feedback effectiveness: Seeing intentions through to fruition depends on many factors, including individual differences in self-regulation [ 66 , 67 ] and factors beyond people’s control, such as competing commitments, limited resources, and changing priorities [ 68 – 71 ]. Nevertheless, the ultimate proof of future-focused feedback will lie in performance improvement itself.

Self-beliefs and future focus

If future focus enhances feedback effectiveness, it may do so via self-beliefs. Growth mindset and self-efficacy, for example, are self-beliefs that influence how people think about and act on the future. Discussions that focus on what people can do in the future to improve performance may encourage people to view their own behavior as malleable and to view better results as achievable. If future focus helps people access this growth mindset, it should orient them toward mastering challenges and improving the self for the future: Whereas people exercise defensive self-esteem repair when in a fixed mindset, they prefer self-improvement when accessing a growth mindset [ 72 , 73 ]. Similarly, feedback conversations that focus on ways the feedback recipient can attain goals in the future may enhance people’s confidence in their ability to execute the appropriate strategies and necessary behaviors to succeed. Such self-efficacy expectancies have been shown to influence the goals people select, the effort and resources they devote, their persistence in the face of obstacles, and the motivation to get started [ 74 , 75 ]. Thus, research is needed to assess whether future focus alters people’s self-beliefs (or vice versa; see below) and if these, in turn, impact people’s acceptance of feedback and intention to change.

We found sizeable variation in the extent to which dyads reported focusing on the future. Pre-existing individual differences in self-beliefs may contribute to that variation. Recent research, for example, finds that professors with more growth mindsets have students who perform better and report being more motivated to do their best work [ 76 ]. In the case of a feedback conversation, we suspect that either party can initiate thinking prospectively, but both must participate in it to sustain the benefits.

Conversational dynamics and future focus

Unlike most studies of people’s reactions to mixed or negative feedback, our studies use face-to-face, real-time interaction, that is to say, two people in conversation. Might conversational dynamics associated with future-focused feedback contribute to its being better accepted and more motivating than feedback focused on the past? Do managers who focus more on the future listen to other people’s ideas and perspectives in ways that are perceived as more empathic and nonjudgmental? Do these more prospective discussions elicit greater cooperative problem solving? Research on conversation in the workplace is in its early stages [ 77 ], but some studies support the idea that high quality listening and partner responsiveness might reduce defensiveness, increase self-awareness, or produce greater willingness to consider new perspectives and ideas [ 78 , 79 ].

Practical implications

Our studies provide the first empirical evidence that managers can make feedback more effective by focusing it on the future. Future-focused feedback, as we define it, is characterized by prospective thinking and by collaboration in generating ideas, planning, and problem-solving. We assessed the degree of future focus by asking participants to rate the extent to which the feedback discussion focused on future behavior, the two parties spent time generating new ideas for next steps, and the conversation centered on how to make the recipient successful. This differs greatly from feedback research that distinguishes past vs. future orientation “using minimal rewording of each critique comment” (e.g., you didn’t always demonstrate awareness of… vs. you should aim to demonstrate more awareness of…) [ 80 p. 1866].

Because future-focused feedback is feedback, it also differs from both advice giving and “feedforward” (although it might be advantageous to incorporate these): It differs from Kluger and Nir’s feedforward interview, which queries how the conditions that enabled a person’s positive work experiences might be replicated in the future [ 81 ], and from Goldsmith’s feedforward exercise, which involves requesting and receiving suggestions for the future, without discussion or feedback [ 82 ].

The scenario at the very start of this article asks, “What can Chris say to get through to Taylor?” A future-focused answer might include the following: Chris first clarifies that the purpose of the feedback is to improve Taylor’s future performance, with the goal of furthering Taylor’s career. Chris applauds Taylor’s successes and is forthright and specific about Taylor’s shortcomings, while avoiding discussion of causes and explanations. Chris signals belief that Taylor has the motivation and competence to improve [ 83 ]. Chris then initiates a discussion in which they work together to develop ideas for how Taylor can achieve better outcomes in the future. (For a more detailed illustration of a future-focused conversation, see S11 Text .)

Conclusions

Our research supports the intriguing possibility that the future of feedback could be more effective and less aversive than its past. Performance management need not be tied to unearthing the determinants of past performance and holding people to account for past failures. Rather, performance may be managed most successfully by collaborating with the feedback recipient to generate next steps, to develop opportunities for interesting and worthwhile endeavors, and to enlarge the vision of what the recipient could accomplish. Most organizations and most managers want their workers to perform well. Most workers wish to succeed at their jobs. Everyone benefits when feedback discussions develop new ideas and solutions and when the recipients of feedback are motivated to make changes based on those. A future-focused approach to feedback holds great promise for motivating future performance improvement.

Supporting information

S1 analyses, s2 analyses, acknowledgments.

For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, we are grateful to Pino Audia, Angelo Denisi, Nick Epley, Ayelet Fishbach, Brian Gibbs, Reid Hastie, Chris Hsee, Remus Ilies, David Nussbaum, Jay Russo, Paul Schoemaker, William Swann, and Kathleen Vohs.

Funding Statement

This research received funding from the Melbourne Business School while the first three authors were either visiting (JG, JK) or permanent (IOW) faculty there. While working on this research, the first two authors (JG, JK) also worked as owners and employees of management consulting firm Humanly Possible. Humanly Possible provided support in the form of salaries and profit-sharing compensation for authors JG and JK, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the “author contributions” section.

Data Availability

• PLoS One. 2020; 15(6): e0234444.

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The future of feedback:  Motivating performance improvement

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: 1. I enjoyed reading this manuscript, but it appears to be unnecessary long in parts and readability would benefit of a more concise style. I would recommend condensing some parts, for example in the methods section for study 2 was overly long and lacked clarity in parts. The description of the second questionnaire was a little confusing in terms of the consistency in how items were measured and the hypothesis was not clear.

2. In the ethics statement for Study 1 (line 184), please explain the rationale behind the waiver of consent.

3. Procedure (line 187) please give details of the survey platform used.

4. Results -Please include the number of participants in each group.

5. Please comment on what normality checks were performed to assess the distribution of the data.

6. Line 470, correlations are discussed but I can’t see a table to support these.

7. The discussion did not address the results in relation to previous literature and lacked a theoretical explanation of the findings (See for example ‘Korn CW, Rosenblau G, Rodriguez Buritica JM, Heekeren HR (2016) Performance Feedback Processing Is Positively Biased As Predicted by Attribution Theory. PLoS ONE 11(2)’ for a discussion of attributional style and self-serving bias. I recommend some rewrite of the discussion with more reference to theory.

8. Some acknowledgement of the effect of individual differences in self-regulation would be useful to include as this may influence how feedback is received in terms of attributions. See for example, ‘Donovan, JJ, Lorenzet, SJ, Dwight, SA, Schneider, D. The impact of goal progress and individual differences on self‐regulation in training. J Appl Soc Psychol. 2018; 48: 661– 674’.

9. The suggestions for improvement at the end of the study would be better to be condensed to give a brief suggestion of methods.

Reviewer #2: The paper reports an interesting and comprehensive work about a relevant issue in organizational psychology. Both the theoretical frame and the applied methodology are original and thorough, though the use of role-play raises some doubts about the robustness of the results (some concerns are raised by the authors themselves (lines 752-760) ). This is, in my opinion, the main limitation of studies 2 and 3. I would suggest that the authors insert a wider reasoning about the choice of using this method to collect their data and the pros and cons.

In the "General Discussion" paragraph the authors state that "We investigated the sources of agreement and disagreement between feedback provider and recipient" (lines 712-713). I strongly suggest that this sentence is being modified, since it doesn't describe the aim nor the results in Study 1 correctly.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Federica Biassoni

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Author response to Decision Letter 0

12 May 2020

Please see uploaded document Response to Reviewers. Text copied here.

Response to Reviewers

We wish to thank the reviewers for their very helpful and constructive comments. We especially appreciate the clarity and specificity with which they framed their suggestions. Below we respond to each reviewer recommendation.

Reviewer #1:

1. I enjoyed reading this manuscript, but it appears to be unnecessary long in parts and readability would benefit of a more concise style. I would recommend condensing some parts, for example in the methods section for study 2 was overly long and lacked clarity in parts. The description of the second questionnaire was a little confusing in terms of the consistency in how items were measured and the hypothesis was not clear.

We revised the methods section for Study 2 (former lines 274-279; 285-414, revision lines 276-281; 299-402). The new version is a full page shorter and, in line with the reviewer’s suggestion, we believe this more concise version is now more readable. It includes a revised description of the post-discussion questionnaires (former 346-367; revision 350-361), clarifying the sequence and types of questions provided to each group. It also includes revisions, mainly in the Design section (former 387-414; revision lines 377-402) to clarify how the various measures related to our hypotheses.

Study 1 was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Chicago, which waived the requirement for written consent as was its customary policy for studies judged to be minimal risk, involving only individual, anonymized survey responses. Their decision cited US Code 45 CFR 46.101(b). Citing the code in our manuscript seemed overly legalistic, but we have added the rest of the rationale to the ethics statement (former lines 184-185; revision 184-186).

We now identify the platform as Cogix ViewsFlash (revision line 188).

We have added the requested information for Study 1 (revision lines 214-215). Following up on the suggestion, we also made it easier to locate the corresponding information for Study 2 (revision lines 316-317).

The general consensus is that the analyses we use, i.e. ANOVA and linear regression, are generally quite robust with regard to moderate violations of normality with Ns on the order of ours (e.g., Blanca, Alarcón, Arnau, Bono, & Bendayan, Psichothema, 2017; Schmidt & Finana, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2018; Ali & Sharma, Journal of Econometrics, 1996; Schmider, Ziegler Danay, Beyer, & Bühner, Methodology, 2010). Nevertheless, we used an arcsine transformation on the variables a priori most likely to suffer from systematic deviations, namely the attribution proportions. Most authors recommend checking for major deviations from normality by plotting model-predicted values against residuals and against the normal distribution (using P-P or Q-Q plots). We did that for our analyses (graphs attached), and found no troublesome deviations, with the possible exception of one variable of minor importance to our main results or theory, namely performance quality ratings for successes in Study 2. We note in the paper that that variable may suffer from ceiling effects (former 468-469, revision 456-457). We did not add a discussion of normality to the paper because of the increased length and complexity that would involve and because it’s seldom an issue of concern with data and analyses like ours. However, we could include the graphs we’ve attached here as supplemental material if you tell us you would like us to do so.

Thank you for alerting us to this inadvertent omission. We now include complete correlation tables for all the variables analyzed in each Study in the supplemental materials: S2 Table for Study 1 (revision lines 224-225) and S11 Tables for Studies 2 and 3 separately and combined (revision lines 458-459), with provider-recipient correlations identified by color shading. (S2 was formerly the dataset for Study 1, but now data from all three studies are contained in S17.)

To better address our results in relation to previous attribution literature and theory, we have revised former lines 723-740 in the General Discussion. Now we more clearly discuss our findings in relation to self-serving bias, self-threat, and both historical and more recent formulations of attribution theory, including the helpful reference the reviewer provided (revision lines 708-735). We have also added a brief discussion of how our results relate to previous literature on future thinking (revision lines 760-762). We attempted to minimize redundancy with the Introduction section. The new material includes several new references.

We added mention in the General Discussion of individual differences in self-regulation, citing two references, including the one helpfully provided by Reviewer #1 (revision line 776). Additionally, we reworded former lines 798-799 (revision lines 793-794) to make it clearer that we are acknowledging individual differences there as well.

We condensed former lines 828-846 from 19 lines to 8 lines (revision lines 823-830), referring the interested reader to new Supporting Information S16 Text for the expanded version. We trust this solution meets the recommendation for a brief suggestion of methods, while also satisfying the interests of those seeking more detail.

Reviewer #2:

1. The paper reports an interesting and comprehensive work about a relevant issue in organizational psychology. Both the theoretical frame and the applied methodology are original and thorough, though the use of role-play raises some doubts about the robustness of the results (some concerns are raised by the authors themselves (lines 752-760)). This is, in my opinion, the main limitation of studies 2 and 3. I would suggest that the authors insert a wider reasoning about the choice of using this method to collect their data and the pros and cons.

We now include a wider reasoning about our choice to use a role-play method and the pros and cons. The new version comprises revision lines 282-298. (We also revised the subsequent paragraph for increased clarity, given the insertion of the new paragraph about the role-play method.)

2. In the "General Discussion" paragraph the authors state that "We investigated the sources of agreement and disagreement between feedback provider and recipient" (lines 712-713). I strongly suggest that this sentence is being modified, since it doesn't describe the aim nor the results in Study 1 correctly.

Thank you for your careful reading. We have re-written that sentence to more accurately capture the results of Study 1 as well as the other two studies (revised lines 697-700).

[Figures attached--please see uploaded document Response to Reviewers.]

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Decision Letter 1

27 May 2020

The future of feedback: Survey and role-play investigations into causal attributions, feedback acceptance, motivation to improve, and the potential benefits of future focus for increasing feedback effectiveness in the workplace

PONE-D-20-05644R1

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article ( what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Acceptance letter

The future of feedback:  Motivating performance improvement through future-focused feedback 

Dear Dr. Klayman:

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Performance measurement and management: theory and practice

International Journal of Operations & Production Management

ISSN : 0144-3577

Article publication date: 15 November 2018

Issue publication date: 15 November 2018

Bourne, M. , Melnyk, S. and Bititci, U.S. (2018), "Performance measurement and management: theory and practice", International Journal of Operations & Production Management , Vol. 38 No. 11, pp. 2010-2021. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOPM-11-2018-784

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

Introduction

Performance measurement has been a key theme of this journal for many years ( Neely et al. , 1995 ; Neely, 2005 ). This should not come as a surprise since performance measurement and management plays a critical role in the operation of any organisation, be it a factory, business, hospital or school. As noted by Magretta and Stone (2002) , performance measures are critical because they enhance communication – they enable the organisation to address the following critical question – “Given our mission, how is our performance going to be defined?” Yet, it should also come as a surprise that in spite of this longevity of focus, this topic is still surprised by a great deal of confusion and conflict. For example, until more recently we have not agreed on what we mean by performance measurement ( Franco-Santos et al. , 2007 ; Bourne and Bourne, 2011 ; Melnyk et al. , 2004, 2014 ) and performance management ( Bourne and Bourne, 2011 ; Melnyk et al. , 2004, 2014 ). This confusion is present in both academic research and in the practitioner press. Confounding this confusion is the tight interrelationship that exists between theory and practice.

It has been long argued that many of the developments in performance measurement have come from practice ( Johnson, 1972, 1975, 1978, 1981 ; Wilcox and Bourne, 2003 ) and this practice has informed the academic performance measurement literature. A very clear example of this phenomenon is the Balanced Scorecard, originally developed at Analogue Devices ( Schneiderman, 2001 ) and subsequently made widely accessible by Kaplan and Norton (1992) . But although this type of research is to be applauded, it is not enough. Ultimately, it suffers from being a theoretical, using Sutton and Staw (1995) categorisation scheme. Such research, while important for improving performance and the ability of the firm to record and monitor activities, does not build causality or help to explain or, as is becoming more important in today’s dynamic environment ( Nudurupait et al. , 2016 ), predict and deal with the increasing complexity now being faced by researchers and managers alike.

We need to build theory, whether from practice or other areas of business research, and validate our theory through empirical research to develop a deeper understanding and platform for the future development of the field. Furthermore, we need to build theory that operates at the various levels of the organisation – inter-organisational (relevant for a world where supply chain management is becoming so important); organisational at macro or top management levels (the focus of much of the current body of research in this area) and the lower levels of the organisation (i.e. at the function, group and, ultimately, the individual levels – the micro levels). We need to build theories that are anchored not only in the economic world but that also recognise the increasing importance of behavioural issues. So, for this special issue, we were particularly interested in papers that explore the interface between theory and practice and that add richness, as described in the preceding discussion, to the resulting theoretical developments.

But performance measurement and management are broad subjects and performance measurement and management systems (PMMS) have a wide scope. They include the top down processes of aligning the business with strategic direction as promulgated by process approaches to the development and implementation of PMMS (e.g. Kaplan and Norton, 1993 ; Neely et al. , 1996 ; Bititci et al. , 1997 ; Neely et al. , 2000 ) and to the bottom up use of performance measurement in lean ( Bhasin and Burcher, 2006 ; Krafcik, 1988 ). They include the dynamics of people and teams, interactions between department, relationships between parent and subsidiary organisations as well as performance measurement and management in the supply chain.

Performance measurement and management is not only the preserve of the private sector. Articles in this journal have reported on the impact of PMMS in both public and third sector organisations ( Greatbanks and Tapp, 2007 ; Moxham and Boaden, 2007 ). This special issue too reflects this pervasiveness of PMS, despite the fact that the papers published here happen to have focused on the private sector. We have a number of different perspectives on performance measurement and management. This includes three papers on buyer–supplier relationships, one on collaborative performance measurement systems, one the impact of supplier performance management systems (PMSs) and one on contracting. We have five papers looking at the complexities and interactions between different elements of the performance measurement system inside organisations with two of these focusing on lean. The final paper develops a framework for swift and even flow.

So in the rest of this editorial we will discuss the following. Let us begin with an overview of the early literature and the development of the four phases of PMMS before turning our attention to the need for theory to focus on the use of PMMS in directing and managing organisations. Then we will move on to the range of theory used in empirical research and in the papers presented here before going on to describe the contributions made in this special issue. We will then discuss the contribution of the Ferriera and Otley (2009) framework before suggesting future direction for theory development.

The use of theory in performance measurement and management

Early literature on PMMS focused on the four phases of PMMS, design, implementation, use and refresh ( Neely et al. , 2000 ; Bourne et al. , 2000 ). There is a strong argument that the debate has now moved on from the design and implementation of PMMS to its use, Franco-Santos and Bourne, 2005 ), impact ( Franco-Santos et al. , 2012 ) and emergence ( Pavlov and Bourne, 2011 ).

The work on approaches ( Dixon et al. , 1990 ) and processes for the design and implementation of PMMS ( Neely et al. , 1997 ; Bititci et al. , 1997 ; Olve et al. , 1999 ) initially adopted the three tests on feasibility, usability and utility ( Platts, 1993 ) before considering the success and failure of the design to implementation phase ( Bourne et al. , 2002 ; Bourne, 2005 ) and the quality of implementation. One of the overarching pieces here was the Bititci et al. (2006) paper which identified the need for different cultures and management styles when moving from the design and implementation phases to measurement in use phases. We would argue that it is possible to theorise about the design and implementation phases but in reality, these are as much about the implementation of change ( Bourne et al. , 2004 ) as anything else. There have also been interesting insights into the formal approaches to refreshing measurement systems ( Kennerley and Neely, 2003 ) and more recently addressing the issue of how to keep measurement systems up to date ( Melnyk et al. , 2014 ), but we strongly suggest that there is now a compelling need to develop theory around the continuing use and emergent development of PMMS.

agency theory ( Eisenhardt, 1989 ; Feltham and Xie, 1994 ; Jensen and Meckling, 1976 ; Jensen and Murphy, 1990 );

contingency theory ( Donaldson, 2001 ; Hayes, 1977 ; Otley, 1980 );

resource-based view of the firm ( Barney, 1991 ; Day, 1994 );

cognitive and information processing theories ( Miller, 1956 ; Simon, 1976 ; Talyer, 2010 ; Kunda, 1990 );

goal setting theory ( Locke and Latham, 1990 ); and

equity, distributive and procedural justice theories ( Adams, 1965 ; Greenberg, 1990 ).

In this special issue, we have papers too that use theories matching three of the six groups of theories identified in Franco-Santos et al. (2012) . Papers published here are using resource-based view (2), cognitive theories and decision making (2) and contingency theory. But we also have papers focusing on theories more relevant to PMMS in operations (performance-based contracting (PBC) and swift even flow) as well as theories related to complementarity in PMMSs, and extending the concept of levers of control ( Simons 1991 ). The papers in this special issue are summarised in Table I . We will briefly describe these papers next.

The first paper by Vieri Maestrini, Veronica Martinez, Andy Neely, Davide Luzzini, Federico Caniato and Paolo Maccarrone looks at how buyers and suppliers can collaborate in their use of their performance measurement system. In this paper, they present a tool they have called the “Relationship Regulator” which they develop, test and refine. The development was based on the literature and empirical research, whilst the testing was undertaken through workshops and feedback obtained from semi-structured interviews. This is theory building and testing of a collaborative approach to performance measurement.

The second paper by Vieri Maestrini, Davide Luzzini, Federico Caniato, Paolo Maccarrone and Stefano Ronchi is an impact paper in that it researches the impact of supplier performance measurement systems on supplier performance through hypothesis testing using survey data. However, the interest in this paper is the use of resource orchestration theory (ROT) as the theoretical framework for their analysis. They found ROT to be a suitable theoretical framework to explain the role of a mature supplier performance measurement system in orchestrating the suppliers.

The third paper by Andreas Glas, Florian Henne and Michael Essig is a literature review on the intersection of PBC and performance measurement and management. The review highlights the performance measurement and management gap in PBC identifying for research opportunities: strategic alignment (which the authors consider astonishing as PBC is supposed to be outcome orientated), action and refreshing, performance monitoring and reporting, and other aspects including the selection of appropriate KPIs.

The fourth paper by Mohamed Afy-Shararah and Nicholas Rich creates a model that captures the design elements of high performance operating management systems for swift even flow. The work builds on ten longitudinal case studies selected from the UK’s high value manufacturing sector highlighting the links between policy deployment, operational control and improvement to open collaborative partnerships.

The fifth paper by Henrik Nielsen, Thomas Kristensen and Lawrence Grassol is the first of two papers focusing on lean. The paper uses survey research to investigate the impact of social control mechanisms, behavioural control mechanisms and their complementarity on firm performance using data collected from over 4,000 subjects in nearly 700 facilities. The respondents to the survey behind this work were identified from through the “Shingo Prise”.

The sixth paper by Martijn van der Steen and Sandra Tillema takes a different approach and looks at lean implementation. Using case studies in three subsidiary companies, they suggest that lean can be severely constrained by the parent organisations accounting based control systems. The paper demonstrates how external context creates local conditions that may be detrimental to lean in manufacturing.

The seventh paper by Bijana Pesalji, Andrey Pavlov and Pietro Micheli uses the levers of control framework from Simons (1991) to investigate practices in a Dutch-based SME. The paper advances our understanding of the use of technical and social aspects of performance management and suggests that performance management requires the active and continuous use of all four control mechanisms that comprise the levers of control approach.

The eighth paper by Marcus Hasegan, Sai Nudurupati and Stephen Childe reports on the use of action research for developing dynamic performance measurement systems with real-time controls on the production lines to study the impact. The paper explains how the use of tacit knowledge and modelling were used in developing effective cause and effect analysis.

The last paper by Anthony Alexander, Maneesh Kumar and Helen Walker considers the application of decision theory under volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). Drawing on the Cynefin framework ( Snowden, 2000, 2002 ; Snowden and Boone, 2007 ), this paper develops the performance alignment matrix ( Melnyk et al. , 2014 ) drawing on interview research in seven case studies. The approach is designed to deal with complexity and emergence enabling managers in the positions of authority to take decisions. This paper highlights the need for organisations to adjust their performance measurement and management system over time to adapt to the external environment as a way of reformulating strategy, promoting intended behaviour and organisational learning.

So, from a theory and practice perspective, we must conclude that the special issue has attracted a wide variety of papers, research methods and applications from different contexts. The papers contribute to our understanding of performance measurement and management in buyer–supplier relationships, performance contracting and operational flow. The papers create insight into the issue of complimentary or conflicting aspects of control systems, especially in a lean setting and we have insights into balancing controls in SMEs as well as how to deal with VUCA environments. In the next section, we will focus of discussion on theory in PMMS.

If we review the theoretical approach taken both the papers in this special issue and by those empirical pieces identified in the Franco-Santos et al. (2012) literature review, it must be noted that they are not theories of performance measurement and management, but more general management theories applied to this subject area. What we are currently lacking is an underpinning theory to help us advance the field.

What is the vision and mission of the organisation and how is this brought to the attention of managers and employees? What mechanisms, processes and networks are used to convey the organisation’s overarching purposes and objectives to its members?

What are the key factors that are believed to be central to the organisation’s overall future success and how are they brought to the attention of managers and employees?

What is the organisation structure and what impact does it have on the design and use of PMSs? How does it influence and how is it influenced by the strategic management process?

What strategies and plans has the organisation adopted and what are the processes and activities that it has decided will be required for it to ensure its success? How are strategies and plans adapted, generated and communicated to managers and employees?

What are the organisation’s key performance measures deriving from its objectives, key success factors and strategies and plans? How are these are specified and communicated and what role do they play in performance evaluation? Are there significant omissions?

What the level of performance does the organisation need to achieve for each of its key performance measures (identified in the above question), how does it go about setting appropriate performance targets for them and how challenging are those performance targets?

What processes, if any, does the organisation follow for evaluating individual, group and organisational performance? Are performance evaluations primarily objective, subjective or mixed and how important are formal and informal information and controls in these processes?

What rewards – financial and/or non-financial – will managers and other employees gain by achieving performance targets or other assessed aspects of performance (or, conversely, what penalties will they suffer by failing to achieve them)?

What specific information flows – feedback and feedforward – systems and networks has the organisation in place to support the operation of its PMSs?

What type of use is made of information and of the various control mechanisms in place? Can these uses be characterised in terms of various typologies in the literature? How do controls and their uses differ at different hierarchical levels?

How have the PMSs altered in the light of the change dynamics of the organisation and its environment? Have the changes in PMSs design or use been made in a proactive or reactive manner?

How strong and coherent are the links between the components of PMSs and the ways in which they are used.

We should reflect that the framework, whilst informed by the management control literature, was developed inductively and informed by the experience of case study research ( Ferriera and Otley, 2009 , p. 276), which is why it has such a strong link to practice and why it is so useful as a holistic tool for examining the structure, operation and use of PMSs in organisations.

In many ways, this framework follows some of the early research works ( Neely et al. , 1996 ) and publications ( Kaplan and Norton, 1993, 2001 ) on PMMS, whereby the vision and mission of the organisation is translated into a strategy that is operationalised through the performance measurement and management systems. However, the Ferriera and Otley (2009) framework progresses far beyond this as it includes the development of targets, the processes of evaluation, information flow and link to rewards. Further, question 11 alludes to the dynamic nature of PMMSs and recognises that they evolve over time; so their development is not solely determined through interventions such as redesign initiatives.

Although this is an extremely useful theoretical framework, it is not a theory of performance measurement or performance management. To develop such a theory, we need to understand the mechanisms at play in the organisation when performance measures are being used to manage activities, changes of activity and future direction of the organisation. There have been calls for such a meta theory ( Franco-Santos et al. , 2012 ; Bittitci et al. , 2018 ) and we will suggest in the next section one possible direction to take in developing such an approach.

Towards one theory of performance measurement and management

The Ferriera and Otley (2009) framework described above assumes that PMMSs are systems. In reality, they may be “systems of systems” ( Bourne et al. , 2018 ) but this framework does align with a recent call to take a more systemic approach to developing theory in performance measurement and management ( Bittitci et al. , 2018 ). These systems operate through practices and routines in organisations and it is to this subject we turn next.

If we reflect on the current theories used to inform PMMS research, it can be argued that they ignore the mechanisms by which the PMMS operates. From Franco-Santos et al. ’s (2012) six theories, four of them (agency, cognitive, goal setting and equity theories) focus on the influence of system parameters on what is usually considered to be the individual decision maker. The other two focus on the impact of the wider environment, be this the external (contingency theory) or internal (resource-based view) context. What we are not arguing here that these are not useful lenses to take in analysing the PMMSs in organisations, we are simply suggesting that adopting an alternative approach that takes a systems perspective by focusing of the operating mechanisms of PMMS could give use new insights.

One such approach is the adoption of routines ( Pavlov and Bourne, 2011 ). In their paper, the authors argue that performance measurement triggers, guides and intensifies the search for solutions to improve the performance of the organisation (see Figure 1 ). As this happens in performance review meetings (regular events where groups of managers meet to review, evaluate and act on performance information ( Martinez et al. , 2010 ); Pavlov and Bourne, 2011 ) when routines are developed which evolve into mechanisms used in the management of the organisation. This approach takes us away from the concept of the individual decision maker to the domain of multiple decision makers (albeit in a situation where some have considerably more power and influence than others). Understanding the mechanisms at play here would give us different insights.

In reality, organisations have multiple situations where performance is reviewed. These may be formal board meetings, operational planning meetings, sales management meetings, project management meetings, etc. Decisions may be made by individual decision makers acting on their own (although we would suggest that this happens far more infrequently than one would surmise from the focus of research in the management literature) but implementing action invariably requires involving others. This suggests (in all but the smallest organisations) a series of links between individuals at different levels of the organisation. Individual managers involved in running one routine (performance review meeting) will usually be participants in a higher level performance review meeting, whilst the people attending this manager’s meeting may well be running their own routine (performance review meeting) at a lower level in the organisation. In this situation, routines being influenced and guided by other routines (see Figure 2 ) together with the individual managers’ membership of performance review meetings being the conduit of the PMMS between different levels in the organisation (see Figure 3 ).

Because these mechanisms are routines, they develop over time as the mental models of what is happening influences the pattern of behaviours and the pattern of behaviours influence the mental models. This is not only sense making in practice, but probably also how emergent strategy develops and is implemented outside the formal mechanisms for strategy development in most organisation.

The domain of performance measurement and management continues to develop and, if performance measurement and management evolve to enable us to control new and emerging forms of organisations in new and emerging contexts, then it will always continue to do so. In this special issue, we have seen the development of interesting new frameworks and understanding based on using theory to reflect on practice and practice to inform our development of theory.

However, we still believe that future research in this field would benefit from adopting a more systems-based approach to understanding the mechanisms at play in PMMS. We have suggested that understanding these mechanisms in practice would be beneficial to the field and would give us a platform for future research. But, if and when we develop this better understanding, we suspect that we will still be using other more encompassing management theories, such as those used and identified here, to understand the pressures and influences on the mechanism.

Effects of PM on organisational routines

Effects of the structure of PMMS on organisational routines

The overlap of points of membership in the hierarchy of organisation routines

Summary of papers in this special issue

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Kaplan , R.S. and Norton , D.P. ( 2001 ), The Strategy Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment , Harvard Business School Press , Boston, MA .

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Further reading

Barnes , B.R. , Naudé , P. and Michell , P. ( 2006 ), “ Perceptual gaps and similarities in buyer – seller dyadic relationships ”, Industrial Marketing Management , Vol. 36 No. 5 , pp. 662 - 675 .

Bititci , U. , Garengo , P. , Dörfler , V. and Nudurupati , S. ( 2012 ), “ Performance measurement: challenges for tomorrow ”, International Journal of Management Reviews , Vol. 14 No. 3 , pp. 305 - 327 .

Bourne , M. , Kennerley , M. and Franco-Santos , M. ( 2005 ), “ Managing through measures: a study of impact on performance ”, Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management , Vol. 16 No. 4 , pp. 373 - 395 .

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"Measuring the Effectiveness of Performance Management Systems: A Comprehensive Review and Framework"

2019, IJFANS International Journal of Food and Nutritional Sciences

This research endeavors to comprehensively evaluate and enhance the effectiveness of performance management systems (PMS) within organizational contexts. Through an extensive review of existing PMS across diverse industries, this study analyzes employee perceptions, organizational outcomes, and the role of leadership in shaping PMS efficacy. Key performance metrics are identified, encompassing both quantitative and qualitative indicators, to gauge system success. Additionally, the study explores the integration of innovative technologies in PMS and assesses their impact. The findings culminate in the development of a comprehensive framework, providing organizations with practical guidelines for measuring, improving, and optimizing their performance management systems.

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David E Amanawa

Abstract: This paper discusses the theoretical underpinnings, analysis, design, and implementation of performance tools and systems. Performance management tools are software applications that track individual, team, or organizational productivity. In contrast, a performance management system is a standardized process that provides feedback to management on how an organization’s employees perform. Theories of performance management serve as the foundation for performance management. They are crucial to organizational behavior and human resource management because they assist employers in leading and motivating their workforces. A critical evaluation of what performance tools and system entails revealed that it is a way of helping employees and managers achieve their goals and improve their work quality. According to the results, it is advised to consider the following ideas: Managers should encourage staff members to speak up and provide regular feedback to their managers. They should use goal-setting tools to help them define targets and key results and match their own goals with those of the organization. You may create a culture of trust and ongoing improvement by using this strategy. Finally, managers should recognize and praise employees socially for any contribution that they have made to the organization.

Amitabh Upadhya

This paper through literature review attempts to explore different types of Performance Management Systems prevalent in organizations across the UAE and to find out its influence on employees for better performance. The paper proposes an extensive organized assessment of PMS design on the basis of established theories; presenting both concepts and frameworks that feature on the ground. It also suggests for more studies on a complete PMS framework and screening of PMS related to development of both, competence and innovation resulting in long-term employee retention. By analyzing various PMS designs it is concluded that PMS has to be designed effectively in such a way that is contingent on both internal and external variables. Both the financial performance measures and non-financial performance measures are assessed together, the link between PMS and Strategic Organizational objectives should be ratified through various methods of PM mechanisms.

Seetha Pachchhapur

This paper focuses on the perceptions and experiences of employees in two different large organisations related to Performance Management Systems (PMS) in their respective organisations. Drawing on individual employee interview data, the research paper presents a comparative assessment of PMS and reports the interpretation of employee data under various themes pertaining to design and implementation considerations. The results suggest that PMS perceptions vary due to design anomalies and an incongruity in the implementation of PMS practices which has a bearing on the effectiveness and strength of the system. In considering PMS theory and practices, organisation intentions and actions, the paper seeks to engage in debates emerging on the organisation’s dependence on PMS process for achieving goals and also developing employees.

Journal of Applied Psychology

Junhyok Yim

eli suherli

Performance management systems are designed to improve employee performance. However, the introduction of the Balance Scorecard redesigned the objectives of the performance management system. This study examines the moderating effect of using Balance Scorecard on the impact of performance management systems on employee performance. This research was conducted at manufacturing companies listed on the stock exchange in Indonesia. The research tool is a survey that includes 192 top managers from 63 registered manufacturing companies. The findings show that the use of Balance Scorecard moderates the impact of performance management systems on employee performance. This implies that the use of Balance Scorecard strategically complements and enhances the relationship between employee performance and performance management systems. This study shows that the Balance Scorecard must be used as a multi-dimensional method for measuring performance and as a strategic management system to improve...

C. Jordaan , Cecile Schultz

Knowledge of employees’ perceptions of the performance management system will assist management to implement such a system more effectively. The purpose of the study was to determine the perceptions of employees regarding the effectiveness of the performance management system at a government department in South Africa. A quantitative research approach was employed and a questionnaire was distributed to 1 200 employees at the department under study. The response rate was 44%. A factor analysis resulted in three main factors, namely personal development, personal performance, and manager support. Descriptive statistics and the ANOVA were performed to determine the perceptions of employees on these three factors. Negativity towards personal development and manager support, and positivity towards personal performance were detected.

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management

Andre de Waal

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dolores hervie

Performance management system (PMS) is the heart of any “people management” process in an organization. Organizations exist to perform. If employees do not perform, organizations would not survive. If employees perform at their peak level, organizations would be competitive and productivity would increase. Performance management supports an organisation in the achievement of strategic goals and objectives. It assists managers in setting clear performance expectation goals for all employees that are aligned with the strategic goals. It provides a structure for employees to develop the skills they need to achieve the organisation’s strategic goals. The key features of PMS involve setting objectives, measurable performance criteria expected of the individual employee must be made known to him/her from the beginning of the year. There is regular day-to-day meeting as well as periodic formal feedback meetings with subordinates. An unbiased annual assessment of performance based on speci...

Increasingly, organizations are finding themselves in operational environments that are more dynamic and resource scarce; as a result, many organizations are focusing on becoming more agile and competitive through organizational improvement initiatives. One major facilitator of these improvement initiatives is performance measurement (PM) which has experienced an increase in both academic focus and practitioner application. Although scholarly research has been conducted in the design, implementation, use, and continuous improvement of PM systems, the majority of applications in the literature report less than optimal results or, in some cases, failure of the PM system. In the past decade, research into the implementation phase of PM systems has identified many factors for both success and failure in an attempt to increase the likelihood that the full benefits from these systems will be realized. This paper characterizes the factors identified in the literature by means of systematic literature review, remarks on the maturity of this line of research, and identifies areas for future research.

Studies in Business and Economics

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The utility of performance measurement and management system can be said to have been proven, but the problem faced by both the theoreticians and practitioners is to set the right performance indicators. Developed models are tools that managers can use to measure and manage performance, but they need to be tailored to the context. Also, the trend towards using non-financial performance indicators makes it very difficult for managers to design a performance measurement and management system because it involves the integration of qualitative and non-quantitative variables and a profound understanding of the internal and external environment of the company.

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Reinventing Performance Management

• Marcus Buckingham
• Ashley Goodall

Like many other companies, Deloitte realized that its system for evaluating the work of employees—and then training them, promoting them, and paying them accordingly—was increasingly out of step with its objectives. It searched for something nimbler, real-time, and more individualized—something squarely focused on fueling performance in the future rather than assessing it in the past. The new system will have no cascading objectives, no once-a-year reviews, and no 360-degree-feedback tools. Its hallmarks are speed, agility, one-size-fits-one, and constant learning, all underpinned by a new way of collecting reliable performance data.

To arrive at this design, Deloitte drew on three pieces of evidence: a simple counting of hours, a review of research in the science of ratings, and a carefully controlled study of its own organization. It discovered that the organization was spending close to 2 million hours a year on performance management, and that “idiosyncratic rater effects” led to ratings that revealed more about team leaders than about the people they were rating. From an empirical study of its own high-performing teams, the company learned that three items correlated best with high performance for a team: “My coworkers are committed to doing quality work,” “The mission of our company inspires me,” and “I have the chance to use my strengths every day.” Of these, the third was the most powerful across the organization.

With all this evidence in hand, the company set about designing a radical new performance management system, which the authors describe in this article.

HBR Reprint R1504B

How one company is rethinking peer feedback and the annual review, and trying to design a system to fuel improvement

Idea in Brief

The problem.

Not just employees but their managers and even HR departments are by now questioning the conventional wisdom of performance management, including its common reliance on cascading objectives, backward-looking assessments, once-a-year rankings and reviews, and 360-degree-feedback tools.

Some companies have ditched the rankings and even annual reviews, but they haven’t found better solutions. Deloitte resolved to design a system that would fairly recognize varying performance, have a clear view into performance anytime, and boost performance in the future.

The Solution

Deloitte’s new approach separates compensation decisions from day-to-day performance management, produces better insight through quarterly or per-project “performance snapshots,” and relies on weekly check-ins with managers to keep performance on course.

At Deloitte we’re redesigning our performance management system. This may not surprise you. Like many other companies, we realize that our current process for evaluating the work of our people—and then training them, promoting them, and paying them accordingly—is increasingly out of step with our objectives.

• Marcus Buckingham is a researcher of high performance at work, co-creator of StrengthsFinder and StandOut, and a coauthor of Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press). His most recent book is Love + Work: How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life (Harvard Business Review Press).
• Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the coauthor of Nine Lies About Work , which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional Development. His latest book, The Problem with Change , is available now.

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• Essential Components of Performance Management This discussion post outlines the key elements of a performance management process, including establishing standards and creating a code of conduct.
• TD Canada Trust Bank’s Performance Management The performance management system implemented in the TD Canada Trust Bank corresponds to the international financial sector management standards.
• Performance Management and Appraisal Systems The performance management process is important. During it the HR team works together with other members of the company towards achieving organizational goals.
• Performance Appraisal and Human Resource Management The success of any organization is mainly determined by its human resources and hence there is a need for a motivated workforce.
• Performance Management and Socio-Ecological Framework Socio-ecological framework implies the interconnection of an individual and the society. It means that changes at any framework level might invoke change on other layers.
• Performance Management System: Personal Experience Managers collect the data systematically based on each department’s performance. In other words, the performance is measured by the results.
• Strategic Performance Management Plan for a Sales Manager The paper creates a strategic performance plan for the Dialogue Direct and recognizes the attributes that will be rated regarding the position of the sales manager.
• Negative Performance Management Managers should possess strong planning and problem-solving skills to establish clear goals and strategies to achieve goals on time without losing quality.
• Performance Management and Working Relationships Performance management is an area of execution, and benefits may not be obvious at the project planning stage.
• Quality Management and Performance Improvement in Healthcare There are a number of healthcare quality issues affecting the performance improvement of various caregiving centers.
• Performance Management System in Healthcare The Joint Commission enhances the level of the healthcare services provided to the public. The entity ensures that hospitals have a good performance management system.
• Importance of Performance Management in Organizations The paper explores the concept of benefits management at the organization plumbing supply company in Olean, New York.
• Information Systems and Project Management Performance The authors assert that requirements instability and requirements diversity are related to stakeholder perception gaps and this can be tied in with project performance.
• Performance in Safety Management Systems (SMS) The study will collect data on improvement patterns of SMS regulations and technologies as two qualitative independent variables and risk factors.
• Performance Management and KPIs in a Management Measurement System Performance management is a dynamic process that requires timely reports so that procedures are drawn to guarantee that corporate goals are achieved.
• Performance Management in Business Performance has now been integrated into the quality management system of the organization. Effective performance measurement influences efficacy of the use of information.
• Balanced Scorecard: Performance Management Tool This essay presents an assessment of a balanced scorecard used by an organization in a real estate business environment.
• Business Intelligence and Performance Management Business Intelligence encompasses software tools for querying, reporting and analysing. It may be summarised as the processes and tools that turn data into information.
• Performance Management Issues of the Organization There is a significant relationship between compensation and performance management. This is because compensation can be a way of performance management.
• Strategic Human Resource Management and Performance For successful performance, human resource managers have to ensure that they recruit employees with potential and possess qualifications that will enable them to create value.
• Organizational Management and Performance: Inter-Organizational Relationships Organization as a system entails that there must be inputs which are to be processed in order to give an output. This output is optimal goal the organization strives to accomplish
• Earned Value Performance Management for Projects In the earned value management system, the project performance is measured by taking into account the actual cost spent for the baseline plan.
• Performance Management: Aspects and the Levels Performance management is a cyclical process that is usually aimed at improving the performance of either under performing group, individuals, to further improve good performers.
• Human Resource Management and Performance of the Organization The success of the company relies on the proper management of its people because the workforce of a company is the major factor that runs the business.
• Performance Management: Term Definition Performance management is assessing the process of achieving goals and objectives to unsure that it is successful through communication and taking the right action.
• Performance Management: Employee Performance Documentation Organizations that succeed in effective documentation of employee performance can feel secure in the current economic realities.
• Performance Management and Appraisal Plan The Office of Human Resources presents a Management by Objectives (MBO) performance appraisal plan and process that will be implemented in the next month.
• Management Functions for Better Company Performance Managing an organization is not easy when one has to the role of a leader, the role of a manager, and the role of an HRM specialist.
• Portfolio Management: Stock Selection and Portfolio Performance The paper covers the performance of the portfolio, stock selection criteria, each stock performance, and the returns of the portfolio for the period.
• Metrics and Performance Measurement in Operations Management Metrics is indeed a powerful management tool in aligning company strategies and objectives and ensuring people are working towards a common direction.
• Employee Performance Management System In human resource management, it is important to ensure that employees are motivated and satisfied with their work. It can achieve by carrying out employee performance management.
• Performance Management Issues: Types and Factors Performance management aims to ensure the effectiveness and growth of the organization through the definition of strategic objectives and management activities.
• New Employee’s Success and Performance Management Once a new employee is selected, strategies of how best to maximize employee success on the new job should be put in place.
• Performance Management: Warehouse Performance Measurement The analysis of the costs taken by the organization can be viewed as the first step towards identifying the changes in the warehouse business performance.
• Options Consulting Solutions Company’s Performance Management Options Consulting Solutions is a recruiting firm headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The firm was started more than two decades ago.
• Management: Effective Teamwork Role for Organizations Performance Groups usually pass several important stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Depending on the stage, teams and groups demonstrate unique organizational features.
• Issues Concerning the Use of Social and Environmental Indicators for Performance Management
• Performance Management and Performance Measurement in the Education Sector
• The Relationship Between Performance Management and Organizational Goals
• Effective Performance Management With the Balanced
• Major Constraints and Possible Solutions for Performance Management in Korea
• Performance Management and Key Performance Indicators for Higher Education Institutions in Serbia
• Differences Between Cost-effectiveness and Performance Management
• Performance Management Strategy and Broader Issues of Organizations
• Linking Performance Management Strategy To Corporate Management Strategy
• Relationship Between Hrm and Organisational Performance Management
• Effective Leadership Practices Can Lead to High-Performance Management
• The Difference Between Performance Management and Performance Appraisal
• Performance Management Practices, Employee Attitudes, and Managed Performance
• Factors Influencing Software Team Performance Management
• Power and Performance Management of GPUs Based Cluster
• Strategic Performance Management and Creative Industry
• Global Performance Management Systems: The Role of Trust as Perceived by Country Managers
• Effective Team and Performance Management
• Developing High Performance: Performance Management in the Australian Public Service
• Performance Management and Incentive Plan Design
• Does the Company Size Affect Performance Management System?
• Why Is Strategic Performance Management Important?
• How Is Performance Management Related to Learning and Development?
• What Are the Benefits of Performance Management?
• How Are Performance Management Systems Used for Dual Purposes?
• Why Is Team Performance Management Important?
• Can Performance Management Improve the Skills of an Individual?
• What Is the Impact of Performance Management on Employees?
• How Has Sainsbury’s Used Performance Management to Increase Their Quality of Service?
• What Can Performance Management Offer to Learning and Development Practice Within an Organization?
• How Does Performance Management Help Employees to Learn?
• What’s the Purpose of Performance Management?
• Why Are Learning and Development Important for Performance Management?
• How Does Performance Management Encourage Employee Development?
• What Are the Primary Objectives of Performance Management?
• How Can Performance Management Improve Productivity?
• Why Should HR Connect Performance Management and Learning?
• What Is an Effective Performance Management System?
• How Does Performance Management Work in an Educational Institution?
• What Are the Possible Outcomes From Effective Performance Management?
• How Does Performance Management Contribute to the Output of an Organization?
• What Is the Main Feature of Performance Management?
• How Does Performance Management Add Value?
• What Is the Difference Between Performance Management and Performance Appraisals?
• Why Is Performance Management Important in Training and Development?

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StudyCorgi. (2022, July 14). 94 Performance Management Research Topics. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/performance-management-essay-topics/

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StudyCorgi . "94 Performance Management Research Topics." July 14, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/performance-management-essay-topics/.

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These essay examples and topics on Performance Management were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on June 24, 2024 .

181 Performance Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best performance management topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on performance management, 💡 interesting topics to write about performance management, 📌 simple & easy performance management essay titles, 🔎 most interesting performance management topics to write about, ❓ research questions on performance management system.

• Starbucks Quality Management and Performance Improvement The company specializes in the sale of coffee. The quality culture in this organization is deeply engrained in the DNA of some of its employees.
• Apple’s Performance Management Methodology The main advantage that Apple Inc.stands to benefit from this training methodology is the integration of the human capital development into the overall performance management system of the company.
• Performance Management in McDonald’s The publishing of the term McJobs in the dictionaries stimulated the need for McDonald’s to redefine its image through concentration on branding of employees.
• Three Methods of Performance Appraisal in HR Management When straight ranking is to be done it is expected of the evaluator in terms of those who have the best attributes to those who have the worst attributes and those who are effective in […]
• Employee Motivation as a Component of Performance Management Therefore, one of the areas that are given a lot of attention in strategic human resource management is the management of the expectations and demands of employees in organizations. Of critical relevance in employee motivation […]
• International Human Resource Management Practices and Performance The processes of matching the organization with the internal and the external demands may affect the consistency of the practices of the firm.
• Employee Performance in Management It is also during this step that the managers shall set the objectives of the organization and the purposes that the same shall seek to fulfil.
• Performance Management Systems Linked to Reward The performance management can be used to evaluate the performance of employees, a department within the organisation or the performance of the whole organisation in general.
• Management Information Systems in Organizational Performance The information system has enabled the organisation to solve problems like inappropriate use of time, increased expenditure, and customer dissatisfaction. Management information system is an important tool that can be used to shift the cost […]
• Haier Company’s Performance Management However, one of the less moving points is the idea of exposing the manager’s performance to the juniors, as they might not respect a poor performer.
• The Performance Management Concept The performance management is the prescribed course of actions that contains the expectations of the organization and the manner in which employees will be evaluated on how they have performed against the expectations of the […]
• Electronic Performance Management Techniques Modern work with the staff must be carried out in strict accordance with specific management standards to ensure that the team is aware of the tasks and can timely respond to any necessary changes.
• Performance Management System in Hospital This will be carried out through interviews with managers of various hospitals and employees, in order to have a clear picture of how the sector is influenced by the existing performance management system.
• Total Quality Management and Performance Measurement Blocher et al.define TQM as “the unyielding and continuous effort by everyone in the organization to understand, meet, and exceed the expectations of customers”.
• R&R Retailer’s Employee Performance Management At this point, the top manager of R&R recognizes the importance of the lawsuit and needs to develop a strategy for satisfying the sales associates.
• Management Styles and Organizational Performance The manager’s role is not to make decisions, but to act as a leader, organizer and facilitator in the process of decision-making.
• Communication Plan and Performance Management One of the benefits of a performance management system is that it increases employees’ motivation as they understand their performance and areas that need improvement.
• Lego Company’s Performance Management Being one of the leaders in the selected sphere, the Lego Group could use some changes to its organizational management regarding the values and corporate ethics for decision-making, as well as the current value chain […]
• Stress Management and Work Performance in the United Kingdom In this society, it is very important for the management of various firms and governmental organizations to take care of the interests of the employees.
• The Impact of Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance It is the duty of the HR department to know the position of the organization in terms of finances and if they will be able to afford the services for the benefit of the organization […]
• Performance Management for FashionFusion The implication is that the salary they get is directly tied to the money they manage to bring to the company.
• Analysis and Criticism of Performance Management The article “Why Most Performance Evaluations Are Biased, and How to Fix Them” is an analysis of the performance approach in management.
• Research Justification: Mentoring as Performance Management Tool For instance, leaders in the business world have been on the frontline to identify emerging concepts from the fields of theology, education, and medicine to transform organizational performance.
• Performance Management Models and Purchasing In the article, the authors study the correlation of performance measurement systems in terms of purchasing power. In conclusion, the Performance management models and purchasing: Relevance is still lost; the authors came up with a […]
• Key Performance Indicators in Inventory Management in Logistics In an organization Key Performance Indicators are used to measure the performance of factors that are critical to the success of the organization.
• Employee Performance Management Our mission is to improve and conserve the environment in South Florida through the businesses and citizens of Dade and Broward counties.
• Optimal Business Performance and the Risk Management Globalization has become a phenomenon that has driven many businesses to expand their operations in the global market to seek access to resources new opportunities and lower costs.
• Nosocomial Infections and Performance Management The root cause of the rise in the rates of nosocomial infections was found to be improper allocation of bed space to patients closely followed by the failure of our sterilization procedures and equipment.
• Healthcare Services and Performance Management While that was a good sample size, the challenge stemmed from the distribution of the sample. A descriptive analysis was utilized in the evaluation of effectiveness and the multi-variate analysis.
• Performance Management: Creating a Healthy System We have to keep in mind the rules of establishing and maintaining a system that will be fair and effective. The ways for improvement may not be limited to those mentioned above, and we should […]
• Leadership and Performance Management Organisational citizenship behaviour refers to those components of employees’ behaviour that are not acknowledged and recognised by the traditional reward. The most important aspect of citizenship behaviour that needs to be encouraged is altruism because […]
• Career Management and Performance in Companies The task of exploring opportunities with each employee is mandated by the principle that performance management rests on the dual themes of evaluating performance to date and accommodating aspirations for future growth.
• Performance Management System in the United States Army The main purpose of this report is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the performance management system in the United States Army and make recommendations, which may improve the system.
• Human Resources Management System and Organisational Performance The authors cite seminal works in the field to explain the background of the study and provide a comprehensive review of the material.
• Air India’s Performance Management for the Fiscal Year 2017-2018 The next section of the report will discuss how regular capital infusion by the government of India affects the performance of private players in the domestic aviation sector.
• Enterprise and Corporate Performance Management In order to reach the best outcomes, it is crucial to employ the basics of enterprise and corporate performance management. To promote such an agreement in Conair, it is necessary to make sure that each […]
• UAE: Stress Management and Organizational Performance The goal of the paper is to examine the phenomenon of workplace stress and its relation to the organizational performance of employees in the UAE context.
• Total Quality Management and Firm Performance The author moves on to describe the early attempts, at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, to research TQM.
• Performance Management With the Balanced Scorecard Due to the fact that new products may require new equipment, the organization should take care of the new loans that should be created to cover all the expenditures.
• Apple Inc. Performance Management Apple has not been able to launch a new major product in 2013 even though it has reported a large sales volume of iPhones and iPads in the last quarter. Apple increasingly financed its activities […]
• Leadership and Management: Performance Appraisal Performance appraisal is important to the firm as it provides the firm with the basis to award employees. Below is an example of performance appraisal form that is used to evaluate the performance of employees […]
• Performance Management of the Ageing Workforce Within the past decade, organisational theorists have explored how performance management can be applied to the ageing population to maximise productivity.
• Seychelles People Defense Force’s Performance Management To analyze the application of this indicator, the Seychelles people defense force will be considered as a structural unit where the quality of performed work largely depends on the effectiveness of control and the involvement […]
• Earth Ltd.’s Management Accounting and Performance In the current report, the cash budget of Earth Ltd.is prepared based on its cash inflows and cash flows. The data of Earth Ltd.is used for preparing different budgets including production budget, sales budget, direct […]
• Popular Management Techniques and Organizational Performance Thus, the major purpose of this research is to explore the utilization of fashionable management techniques in order to identify what effect they produce on organisational performance.
• Air Arabia Company: Performance Management The primary goal of performance management and its related set of activities is to guarantee that the organizational objectives are consistent with the business strategy.
• Performance Management: Key Learning Points The organization needs to ensure the safety of both the products and employees who are involved in handling the products. It is unlike in the past before the introduction of automated manufacturing systems.
• Management of Competitive Advantage and Performance While the main emphasis is put on the role of the customer and supplier, the way companies communicate with one another is largely dependent on the products and services that are involved in the supply […]
• Value Trust’s Performance and Miller’s Management It is also essential to point out the fact that another factor inviting caution is that the growing size of the fund is likely to threaten the sustainability of Miller’s approach in the future. In […]
• Effective Management and Its Effect on Performance The focus of this paper is the management and some of the aspects that affect performance and output. Two main categories of EI exist based on ability and traits, and three models apply in the […]
• Performance Index and Quality Management Innovation The objective of the study is to determine the relationship between the innovation performance and innovation quality. As mentioned in the previous section, the additional metrics of the research will focus on the micro-level of […]
• Southwood School’s Performance Management System The drawbacks of the previous one consequently led to the creation of the new system that will satisfy the staff and will ease the working process.
• Tenore Presentium Solutions Performance Management To be sure that the individual and the company are prepared for this assignment, and the ways to maintain proper performance management are defined, the peculiarities of executive, line and HR management will be discussed.
• Balme Library’s Performance Management The analysis of the Balme Library case shows that one of the principal drawbacks of the implemented management strategy is poor performance measurement.
• Abu Dhabi Health Authority: Performance Management System In addition to this, performance measurement systems also help the company in restricting their projects. Performance management systems also allow the managers in HAAD to recognize some of the essential skills that their employees need.
• Performance Management in a Diverse Workforce in Australia Mor-Barak is of the opinion that one of the core concepts of diversity management entails ensuring the provision of equal opportunities to all individuals within the workplace regardless of their differences.
• Four Seasons Company Motivation and Performance Management The research on the company’s management performance proves that Four Seasons have successfully put the theory of equity into practice. As a result, one might conclude that the implementation of the most effective motivation approaches […]
• High-Performance Pit Crews Management Secondly, role specialization will be one of the desirable qualities to find in the team because the team is not new.
• Performance Management and Appraisal Regardless of the size of an entity or the type of business an organization is involved in, it is very important for any organization to have the required tools to measure the progress and efficiency […]
• Strategy and Performance Management at DSM Melamine In this process, the focus will be on the low cost and security of sales. This firm has realized that the best way of remaining competitive is to align its strategies to the performance measures.
• Performance and Employees’ Management Tools This has been attributed to a number of advantages which presumably outweigh the disadvantages associated with adopting and implementing the use of these employee evaluation systems.
• Business Function Integration: Linking Marketing and Human Resource Management to Enhance Performance In focusing on the two business functions, employers seek to develop a positive image of the firm in the midst of the employees in order to enhance their performance at their places of work.
• Stress Management and Work Performance in the UK The goal of the study is to establish the relationship between stress management and work performance and the best approach to manage stress to meet organizational goals.
• Organisational Design and Performance Management It also evaluates the e-business models and approaches adopted by the two companies and how the models and approaches have enhanced innovation, growth, and service provision of the two companies.
• The Performance of Workplace Management Thus for the managers of the corporation to motivate their employees in the work place in all the branches where they are operating, they need to consider these programs.
• Performance Management System Plan This paper further elaborates the recommendation made in the PMS plan, the outcomes expected from the system and the means to estimate its effectiveness.
• Performance Management Systems: Human Resource In the implementation of a new performance management system various issues need to be factored such as the capability of the system to promote or facilitate the achievement of the set goals.
• Transforming Performance Management The education provided to its workforce should be aligned to its business strategy and the content should be locally-determined to meet the expectations and the standards of the company.
• HR Management and Task Performance Whatever the terms used to explain the concept, however, Chandrakumara argues that the concept refers to an organization’s capabilities to match the skills and competencies of the workforce to the needs and characteristics of an […]
• Designing a Performance Management Plan Despite the fact that the interview with the CEO of the Clapton Commercial Construction, Marylee Luther, has revealed some major issues with the way in which the company is run, especially regarding the evaluation of […]
• Management Information System and Strategic Performance According to his assumption, the higher the demographic diversity in top management team, the greater the contribution of accounting system to strategic performance.
• Performance Management and Evaluation System The goals of both performance appraisal and the compensation plans are to improve the performance of the workers, which in effect improves the goals of the organization.
• Management Performance System: Human Resources The purpose of the performance benchmarks in an organisation is to evaluate the workmanship of employees within the organisation by looking at certain aspects of the employees’ performance.
• Performance Management in a Diverse Workplace The headline of most newspapers especially the right wing press normally depicts the black minority as the agents of action despite of the fact that most of the blacks are victims of aggressions.
• Performance Management: Employee Participation Initially, the employees in the organization were also dissatisfied with the approach used in goal-setting and feedback to manage their job performance.
• Effective Performance Management The organizational values that the employee has to exhibit Means, procedures or processes the employee is expected to use in the job When focusing on performance expectations, the employee needs to know the reason for […]
• Performance Management: Key Strategies and Practical Guidelines The goals in this line help to indicate the direction to be followed and do form the central frame work of reference and aid to identify success as well as clarify issues and expectations of […]
• The Effect of Management Practices on Firm Performance These personnel are the driving force that stresses the need of everyone adopting to the firm’s objectives and policies. This is the cornerstone in the sense that it ensures the workforce aligns to specific chores […]
• Role of Knowledge Management in Improving Performance of Operations Departments However, this has changed in the course of the last decade and knowledge management has emerged as an important field that provides the rationale for managing knowledge in order to achieve the increased productivity of […]
• Performance Management: Goals and Objectives Besides there must be annual performance review that should entail all the employees and managers of an organization to establish the organizational achievements and the manner in which they have been met.
• Management-Employee Misalignment and Performance Implications The following will form the specific objectives: Critically evaluate the sources of management-employee misalignment within the industry; Critically evaluate the performance implications occasioned by management-employee misalignment within the industry; Critically evaluate the industry’s best practices […]
• Performance Management Scheme When recruiting, human resources look for a certain attribute, qualification and talent with employees; the attribute will be used to fill a certain vacuum within the organization, after deploying the employee to the needed position, […]
• Does Performance Management Work? This will ensure that the performance management is supported from the top before it trickles down to the supervisors and employees in the organization. In addition, the performance management shall be able to calibrate employee […]
• Human Resource Management Performance Appraisal Performance appraisal is the process of evaluating the performance of employees within a certain time frame. The best performance appraisal to be used in evaluating the performance of a secretary is the graphical rating scale […]
• RBS Citizens Performance Management Effective performance management practice requires the approach to be in line with the organization’s strategy. This organization uses effective performance management in the managerial process.
• Performance Management Fundamentals The authors used the term “plumbing-in” to denote the appropriate method that can help managers implement the best performance management systems.
• Performance Management System in an Organization Employees cannot be motivated to work without targets and as such this forms a key weakness of the system. To start with, the organization needs to clearly define its overall strategy and goals upon which […]
• Performance Management and Appraisal This encourages employees to improve their performance and engaged in all the activities of the organization. In addition, reviews detract employee engagement when they are not linked to the goals of an organization.
• Ba Ba Lu Bar Performance Management To address all the challenges of the rapidly developed field of the bar and restaurant business and preserve the high position in the market, the managers of Ba Ba Lu Bar & Restaurant are inclined […]
• Strategic Human Resource Management Enhances Organizational Performance in Both Good and Bad Economic Times They acknowledged that there are ways of showing the connection between competitive strategies and practices of the HRM so as to enable prediction, modification, study, and refinement of HRM practices and strategies in given situations.
• Fundamentals of a Performance Management System The report entails analysis of the purposes which motivate firms to incorporate the concept of performance management system in their operation.
• Performance Management Trends According to Grumman 2005, the day-to-day management of employees’ performance is the key to effective employee performance management. There is changing trend in the evaluation of employee performance in the use of systems.
• Performance Management System in Midal Company Thus, a company may use this program simulation to carry out comparative costing to accurately track and monitor the flows in costs since the ABC simulation offers the application that can facilitate activity-based costing for […]
• Performance Management Program A good performance management system is purposely for the elevation of employees’ performance and in effect, improves on business productivity hence the management should endeavor to find a good system that delivers the object of […]
• Individual Motivation and Performance Management An effective method of upgrading the performance in the organization should encompass employees’ involvement and motivation. Asking employees to participate in the decision-making in an organization can be instrumental in upholding of their self-esteem.
• External Assessment in Performance Management For better results, the integrity test will be administered in the form of multiple-choice questions and presented on a paper or computer.
• Quality and Performance Management: Value Chain While estimating the price for the product, the management tries to take into account those properties of the product that are of the greatest importance for the customer, for instance, the serviceable life of the […]
• Human Resources Management’s Incentive and Compensate for Performance Incentive Plans are for the most part used in commerce managing to encourage human resources and in sales in order to create a center of attention and hold on to clientele.
• Analyzing Performance Management and Health Informatics
• Appraisal Process and Performance Management
• How Performance Management Systems Benefit an Organisation’s Efficiency and Effectiveness
• How Can an Organisation Ensure Successful Implementation of Performance Management Systems
• Assessing Performance Management Output Enhancement Models
• The Value and Challenge of Performance Management
• Balanced Scorecard Strategy and Performance Management Management
• Best Practice Performance Management Schemes
• Building Performance Management Through Employee Participation
• Business Needs to Improve Performance Management Activities
• Tools and Decision Making for Ongoing Performance Management
• Competitors and Strategic Performance Management
• Conceptual Framework for Performance Management
• Corporate and Performance Management Strategies
• Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact on Company Performance Management
• Defining Performance Management and the Role It Plays
• Delegation Empowerment and Team Performance Management
• Differences Between Cost-Effectiveness and Performance Management
• The Performance Management of the Project Cycle
• Differs Between Performance Management and Performance Appraisal
• Enterprise Performance Management: Conception, Model, and Mechanism
• Factors Which Influence Team Performance Management
• Financial Analysis for Performance Management
• Human Behavior and the Performance Management Process
• Implementing Performance Management Within an Organization
• Incentives and Their Dynamics in Public Sector Performance Management Systems
• Increasing Services Quality Through Environmental Performance Management
• Lagging and Leading Indicators in Developing a Performance Management Strategy
• Legal Aspects Associated With Performance Management Programs
• Managing People and Performance Management Process
• Mission Goals and Performance Management
• Need for Employee Performance Management for Organisational Growth
• Organizational Design for Performance Management
• Perfect Remuneration and Performance Management System
• Performance Management Assessment Model for Sustainable Development
• Process Design Matrix and the Summary for Performance Management
• Relationship Between Motivation and Performance Management
• The Concepts and Concerns About Performance Management
• The Human Resource Practices of Performance Management and Recruitment
• Performance Management for the Senior Management Service
• What Does a Performance Management System Need Most?
• How Do Performance Management Objectives Help in Planning a Strategy to Achieve the Organization’s Goals?
• What Are the Main Types of Performance Management?
• Is Performance Management Part of Organizational Development?
• What is a performance evaluation system?
• Who Is Responsible for Performance Management in the Organization?
• How Does Performance Management Affect Culture?
• What Are the Purposes of a Performance Management System?
• Does the Size of the Company Affect the Performance Management System?
• What Can Performance Management Offer to Learn and Development in the Organization?
• How Are Performance Management Systems and Human Resource Management Practices Related?
• What Are the Goals and Objectives of the Performance Management System?
• Is Performance Management Important to Achieving Organizational Goals?
• What Do the Authors from a Critical Management Studies Perspective See as a Function of Performance Management?
• How Many Levels of Performance Management Are There in the Organization?
• What Tools Are There for Ongoing Performance Management?
• Should Performance Management Be an Annual Event or an Ongoing Process?
• What Is the Relationship Between Performance Management and Organizational Learning and Development?
• How Can You Manage an Ongoing Performance Management Problem?
• What Is the New Performance Management System of Network Solutions?
• Does Performance Management Affect Organizational Success?
• What Organizational Context Factors Affect Procedural Justice in a Performance Management System?
• How Do Organizations Measure the Effectiveness of Performance Management Processes?
• What Are the Organizational Benefits of Effective Performance Management?
• Is There a Relationship Between Performance Management and Organizational Goals?
• What Is the Role of Performance Management in Organizational Development?
• How to Improve Performance Management to Ensure Continuous Improvement?
• What Are Performance Management Tools and What Is Their Importance?
• Is the Implementation of a Performance Management System Effective in a South-Eastern European Country with a Transition Economy?
• What Are the Main Problems of the Performance Management System?
• How Can an Organization Improve Its Performance Management Culture?
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Management Research Paper Topics

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Aggregate Planning B2B B2E Management Barriers to Entry Best Practices Brainstorming Business Plan Capacity Planning Content Management System Decision Rules and Decision Analysis Decision Support Systems Diversification Strategy Divestment Downsizing and Rightsizing Economies of Scale and Economies of Scope Environmentalism and Sustainability Exit Strategy Exporting and Importing Franchising Free Trade Agreements and Trading Blocs Futuring Gap Analysis Generic Competitive Strategies Globalization Goals and Goal Setting Group Decision Making Knowledge-Based View of the Firm Location Strategy Long Tail Macroenvironmental Forces Make-or-Buy Decisions Manufacturing Resources Planning Market Share Mergers and Acquisitions Miles and Snow Typology Multiple-Criteria Decision Making New Product Development Open and Closed Systems Operations Strategy Opportunity Cost Order-Winning and Order-Qualifying Criteria Porter’s Five Forces Model Product Life Cycle and Industry Life Cycle Production Planning and Scheduling Results-Only Work Environment Strategic Integration Strategic Planning Failure Strategic Planning Tools Strategy Formulation Strategy Implementation Strategy in the Global Environment Strategy Levels SWOT Analysis Synergy Upselling Zero-Based Budgeting

EMERGING TOPICS IN MANAGEMENT

Activity-Based Costing Affirmative Action Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists Artificial Intelligence Assessment Centers B2B B2E Management Balanced Scorecard Bar Coding and Radio Frequency Identification Business Process Reengineering Cafeteria Plan—Flexible Benefits Cellular Manufacturing Chaos Theory Coalition Building Communities of Interest/Communities of Practice Complexity Theory Concurrent Engineering and Design Consulting Contingency Approach to Management Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning Trends Corporate Governance Corporate Social Responsibility Customer Relationship Management Decision Support Systems Diversity Electronic Commerce Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer Empowerment Enterprise Resource Planning Entrepreneurship Environmentalism and Sustainability Ethics Expatriates Expert Systems Five S Framework Flexible Spending Accounts Futuring Handheld Computers Health Savings Accounts Human Resource Information Systems Innovation Instant Messaging Intellectual Property Rights Intrapreneurship Knowledge-Based View of the Firm Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Metadata or Meta-Analysis Mobile Commerce Multiple-Criteria Decision Making Non-Compete Agreements Outsourcing and Offshoring Paradigm Shift Popular Press Management Books Quality of Work Life Results-Only Work Environment Robotics Social Networking Spirituality in Leadership Succession Planning Telecommunications Vendor Rating Virtual Corporations Women and Minorities in Management

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists Balance Sheets Brainstorming Break-Even Point Budgeting Business Plan Business Structure Cafeteria Plan—Flexible Benefits Case Method of Analysis Cash Flow Analysis and Statements Competitive Advantage Consumer Behavior Cost Accounting Customer Relationship Management Diversification Strategy Domestic Management Societies and Associations Due Diligence Economics Economies of Scale and Economies of Scope Effectiveness and Efficiency Financial Issues for Managers Financial Ratios First-Mover Advantage Futuring Gap Analysis Generic Competitive Strategies Income Statements Initial Public Offering Innovation Intellectual Property Rights International Business International Management Societies and Associations Intrapreneurship Inventory Management Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances Knowledge Management Knowledge Workers Leveraged Buyouts Licensing and Licensing Agreements Location Strategy Macroenvironmental Forces Make-or-Buy Decisions Market Share Marketing Concept and Philosophy Marketing Research Miles and Snow Typology Mission and Vision Statements New Product Development Non-Compete Agreements Organizational Development Outsourcing and Offshoring Patents and Trademarks Planning Poison Pill Strategies Popular Press Management Books Porter’s Five Forces Model Pricing Policy and Strategy Problem Solving Process Management Product Design Product Life Cycle and Industry Life Cycle Profit Sharing Research Methods and Processes Scenario Planning Securities and Exchange Commission Shareholders Stakeholders Strategic Planning Tools Strategy Levels Succession Planning SWOT Analysis Synergy Technology Transfer Value Creation Venture Capital Virtual Organizations

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTING

Activity-Based Costing Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists Balance Sheets Balanced Scorecard Break-Even Point Budgeting Capacity Planning Cash Flow Analysis and Statements Corporate Social Responsibility Cost Accounting Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis Debt vs. Equity Financing Domestic Management Societies and Associations Due Diligence Economics Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer Employee Benefits Employee Compensation Executive Compensation Exit Strategy Financial Issues for Managers Financial Ratios Flexible Spending Accounts Health Savings Accounts Income Statements Initial Public Offering Insider Trading Internal Auditing International Management Societies and Associations International Monetary Fund Inventory Types Leveraged Buyouts Licensing and Licensing Agreements Long Tail Make-or-Buy Decisions Management Control Nonprofit Organizations Opportunity Cost Patents and Trademarks Profit Sharing Purchasing and Procurement Risk Management Securities and Exchange Commission Stakeholders Succession Planning Venture Capital Zero-Based Budgeting

GENERAL MANAGEMENT TOPICS

Aggregate Planning The Art and Science of Management Autonomy B2B B2E Management Balanced Scorecard Barriers to Entry Best Practices Black Friday Brainstorming Budgeting Business Plan Business Structure Communication Competitive Advantage Competitive Intelligence Contingency Approach to Management Continuous Improvement Corporate Governance Corporate Social Responsibility Delegation Disaster Recovery Diversity Divestment Downsizing and Rightsizing Economics Effectiveness and Efficiency Electronic Commerce Empowerment Financial Issues for Managers Financial Ratios Forecasting Generic Competitive Strategies Globalization Goals and Goal Setting Human Resource Management Innovation International Management Knowledge-Based View of the Firm Knowledge Management Leadership Styles and Bases of Power Leadership Theories and Studies Line-and-Staff Organizations Logistics and Transportation Management Control Management Functions Management Information Systems Management Science Management Styles Management Thought Managing Change Mission and Vision Statements Motivation and Motivation Theory Operations Management Organization Theory Organizational Analysis and Planning Organizational Behavior Organizational Chart Organizational Culture Organizational Learning Organizational Structure Organizational Development Organizing Paradigm Shift Participative Management Patents and Trademarks Paternalism Pioneers of Management Planning Process Management Quality and Total Quality Management Request for Proposal/Quotation Social Networking Strategic Integration Strategy Formulation Strategy Implementation Strategy in the Global Environment Strategy Levels Subject Matter Expert Succession Planning Training Delivery Methods Trends in Organizational Change

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Affirmative Action Artificial Intelligence Assessment Centers Autonomy Nonverbal Communication Brainstorming Cafeteria Plan—Flexible Benefits Coalition Building Communication Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning Trends Discrimination Diversity Downsizing and Rightsizing Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer Employee Assistance Programs Employee Benefits Employee Compensation Employee Evaluation and Performance Appraisals Employee Handbook and Orientation Employee Recruitment Employee Screening and Selection Employment Law and Compliance Empowerment Executive Compensation Flexible Spending Accounts Group Dynamics Health Savings Accounts Human Resource Information Systems Human Resource Management Japanese Management Job Analysis Knowledge-Based View of the Firm Knowledge Workers Mentoring Morale Motivation and Motivation Theory Nepotism Non-Compete Agreements Organizational Behavior Organizational Chart Organizational Culture Performance Measurement Personality and Personality Tests Privacy, Privacy Laws, and Workplace Privacy Quality of Work Life Reinforcement Theory Results-Only Work Environment Safety in the Workplace Scalable or JIT Workforce Sensitivity Training Social Networking Stress Succession Planning Sweatshops Task Analysis Teams and Teamwork Theory X and Theory Y Theory Z Time Management Training Delivery Methods Virtual Organizations Women and Minorities in Management

INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Artificial Intelligence Bandwidth Bar Coding and Radio Frequency Identification Communication Competitive Intelligence Complexity Theory Computer Networks Computer Security Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Computer-Integrated Manufacturing Content Management System Data Processing and Data Management Decision Rules and Decision Analysis Decision Support Systems Delegation Electronic Commerce Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer Environmentalism and Sustainability Experience and Learning Curves Expert Systems Forecasting Fuzzy Logic Handheld Computers Information Assurance Innovation The Internet Knowledge Centers Knowledge Management Knowledge Workers Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Management Information Systems Manufacturing Control via the Internet Metadata or Meta-Analysis Mobile Commerce Nanotechnology Product Design Project Management Robotics Service-Oriented Architecture Technology Management Technology Transfer Telecommunications Virtual Corporations Virtual Organizations Web 2.0 WiMax

INTERNATIONAL AND GLOBAL MANAGEMENT

B2B Competitive Advantage Diversity European Union Expatriates Exporting and Importing First-Mover Advantage Franchising Free TradeAgreements and Trading Blocs Futuring Globalization International Business International Management International Management Societies and Associations International Monetary Fund International Organization for Standards Japanese Management Licensing and Licensing Agreements Location Strategy Macroenvironmental Forces Outsourcing and Offshoring Patents and Trademarks Popular Press Management Books Profit Sharing Strategy in the Global Environment Sweatshops Transnational Organization Value-Added Tax Vendor Rating Virtual Organizations World-Class Manufacturer

LEADERSHIP RESEARCH TOPICS

The Art and Science of Management Assessment Centers Best Practices Communication Contingency Approach to Management Corporate Governance Corporate Social Responsibility Delegation Domestic Management Societies and Associations Entrepreneurship Executive Compensation Expert Systems Goals and Goal Setting Human Resource Management International Management Societies and Associations Japanese Management Job Analysis Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances Knowledge Management Knowledge Workers Leadership Styles and Bases of Power Leadership Theories and Studies Line-and-Staff Organizations Management and Executive Development Management Functions Management Levels Management Styles Management Thought Managing Change Mechanistic Organizations Mentoring Mission and Vision Statements Morale Motivation and Motivation Theory Open and Closed Systems Operant Conditioning Organizational Culture Paradigm Shift Participative Management Personality and Personality Tests Pioneers of Management Problem Solving Reinforcement Theory Sensitivity Training Span of Control Spirituality in Leadership Strategy Formulation Succession Planning Teams and Teamwork Theory X and Theory Y Theory Z Women and Minorities in Management

LEGAL ISSUES

Affirmative Action Cafeteria Plan—Flexible Benefits Computer Networks Computer Security Corporate Governance Corporate Social Responsibility Discrimination Diversity Downsizing and Rightsizing Due Diligence Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer Employee Assistance Programs Employee Benefits Employee Compensation Employee Evaluation and Performance Appraisals Employee Recruitment Employee Screening and Selection Employment Law and Compliance Ethics Executive Compensation Human Resource Management Insider Trading Intellectual Property Rights Job Analysis Leveraged Buyouts Management Audit Management Control Mergers and Acquisitions Nepotism Non-Compete Agreements Patents and Trademarks Personality and Personality Tests Privacy, Privacy Laws, and Workplace Privacy Quality of Work Life Risk Management Safety in the Workplace Stress Succession Planning Sunshine Laws Sweatshops Technology Transfer Whistle Blower Women and Minorities in Management

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Balanced Scorecard Bandwidth Bar Coding and Radio Frequency Identification Barriers to Entry Complexity Theory Computer Networks Computer Security Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Computer-Integrated Manufacturing Content Management System Data Processing and Data Management Decision Rules and Decision Analysis Decision Support Systems Distribution and Distribution Requirements Planning Electronic Commerce Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer Service-Oriented Architecture Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma Systems Design, Development, and Implementation Technology Management Technology Transfer

MANAGEMENT SCIENCE AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH

Bar Coding and Radio Frequency Identification Business Process Reengineering Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Concurrent Engineering and Design Decision Rules and Decision Analysis Decision Support Systems Distribution and Distribution Requirements Planning Expert Systems Location Strategy Logistics and Transportation Maintenance Make-or-Buy Decisions Manufacturing Resources Planning Models and Modeling Multiple-Criteria Decision Making New Product Development Operating System Operations Management Operations Scheduling Operations Strategy Product Design Production Planning and Scheduling Productivity Concepts and Measures Product-Process Matrix Project Management Purchasing and Procurement Quality and Total Quality Management Research Methods and Processes Reverse Supply Chain Logistics Scenario Planning Service Operations Service Process Matrix Simulation Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma Statistics Subject Matter Expert Systems Analysis Systems Design, Development, and Implementation Technology Transfer Warehousing and Warehouse Management World-Class Manufacturer

PERFORMANCE MEASURES AND ASSESSMENT

Activity-Based Costing Balance Sheets Balanced Scorecard Benchmarking Best Practices Break-Even Point Budgeting Cash Flow Analysis and Statements Continuous Improvement Cost Accounting Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis Cycle Time Debt vs. Equity Financing Due Diligence Effectiveness and Efficiency Executive Compensation Financial Issues for Managers Financial Ratios Forecasting Gap Analysis Goals and Goal Setting Management Audit Management Control Management Information Systems Market Share Multiple-Criteria Decision Making Nepotism Order-Winning and Order-Qualifying Criteria Performance Measurement Pricing Policy and Strategy Profit Sharing Simulation Stakeholders Value Analysis Value Chain Management Value Creation Vendor Rating Zero-Based Budgeting Zero Sum Game

PERSONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT FOR MANAGERS

The Art and Science of Management Brainstorming Coalition Building Communication Consulting Contingency Approach to Management Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning Trends Continuous Improvement Customer Relationship Management Delegation Diversity Employee Assistance Programs Empowerment Entrepreneurship Facilitator Feedback Goals and Goal Setting Group Dynamics Intrapreneurship Knowledge Workers Leadership Styles and Bases of Power Managing Change Mentoring Morale Motivation and Motivation Theory Multimedia Organizing Participative Management Personality and Personality Tests Planning Popular Press Management Books Problem Solving Profit Sharing Safety in the Workplace Sensitivity Training Spirituality in Leadership Strategic Planning Tools Stress Succession Planning SWOT Analysis Teams and Teamwork Time Management Trends in Organizational Change Value Creation

PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Activity-Based Costing Aggregate Planning Bar Coding and Radio Frequency Identification Benchmarking Break-Even Point Business Process Reengineering Cellular Manufacturing Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Computer-Integrated Manufacturing Concurrent Engineering and Design Continuous Improvement Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis Decision Rules and Decision Analysis Decision Support Systems Distribution and Distribution Requirements Planning Domestic Management Societies and Associations Five S Framework Flexible Manufacturing Forecasting Industrial Relations International Management Societies and Associations Inventory Management Inventory Types Japanese Management Layout Lean Manufacturing and Just-in-Time Production Location Strategy Logistics and Transportation Long Tail Maintenance Make-or-Buy Decisions Management Awards Manufacturing Control via the Internet Manufacturing Resources Planning Market Share New Product Development Operations Management Operations Scheduling Operations Strategy Order-Winning and Order-Qualifying Criteria Outsourcing and Offshoring Participative Management Poka-Yoke Popular Press Management Books Porter’s Five Forces Model Production Planning and Scheduling Productivity Concepts and Measures Product-Process Matrix Project Management Purchasing and Procurement Quality Gurus Quality and Total Quality Management Reverse Supply Chain Logistics Robotics Safety in the Workplace Scalable or JIT Workforce Service Factory Service Industry Service Operations Service Process Matrix Simulation Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma Statistics Strategic Integration Supply Chain Management Synergy Teams and Teamwork Technology Management Technology Transfer Theory of Constraints Time-Based Competition Upselling Warehousing and Warehouse Management World-Class Manufacturer

QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Communication Customer Relationship Management Domestic Management Societies and Associations Five S Framework Gap Analysis Goals and Goal Setting Innovation International Management Societies and Associations Japanese Management Management Awards Manufacturing Resources Planning Marketing Research Operations Strategy Opportunity Cost Order-Winning and Order-Qualifying Criteria Outsourcing and Offshoring Participative Management Popular Press Management Books Productivity Concepts and Measures Quality Gurus Quality and Total Quality Management Quality of Work Life Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma Strategic Planning Tools Teams and Teamwork Value Analysis Value Creation Vendor Rating World-Class Manufacturer

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Activity-Based Costing Business Process Reengineering Capacity Planning Cellular Manufacturing Coalition Building Communication Competitive Advantage Competitive Intelligence Computer Networks Computer-Integrated Manufacturing Conflict Management and Negotiation Customer Relationship Management Cycle Time Decision Support Systems Distribution and Distribution Requirements Planning Economies of Scale and Economies of Scope Effectiveness and Efficiency Electronic Commerce Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer Enterprise Resource Planning Expert Systems Fulfillment Group Dynamics Industrial Relations Inventory Management Inventory Types Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances Lean Manufacturing and Just-in-Time Production Location Strategy Logistics and Transportation Long Tail Make-or-Buy Decisions Manufacturing Resources Planning Market Share Multiple-Criteria Decision Making New Product Development Operations Management Operations Scheduling Operations Strategy Organic Organizations Organizing Poka-Yoke Problem Solving Process Management Product Design Product Life Cycle and Industry Life Cycle Production Planning and Scheduling Productivity Concepts and Measures Product-Process Matrix Purchasing and Procurement Quality and Total Quality Management Reverse Auction Reverse Supply Chain Logistics Risk Management Span of Control Stakeholders Teams and Teamwork Vendor Rating Warehousing and Warehouse Management

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Artificial Intelligence Assessment Centers Autonomy Concurrent Engineering and Design Conflict Management and Negotiation Consulting Contingency Approach to Management Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning Trends Continuous Improvement Corporate Social Responsibility Delegation Domestic Management Societies and Associations Downsizing and Rightsizing Employee Evaluation and Performance Appraisals Employee Handbook and Orientation Goals and Goal Setting Group Decision Making Human Resource Management Innovation Instant Messaging International Management Societies and Associations Job Analysis Knowledge Management Knowledge Workers Management and Executive Development Management Audit Marketing Communication Mission and Vision Statements Morale Motivation and Motivation Theory Multimedia Multiple-Criteria Decision Making Organizational Culture Organizational Learning Organizing Participative Management Personality and Personality Tests Popular Press Management Books Problem Solving Project Management Safety in the Workplace Sensitivity Training Simulation Stress Succession Planning SWOT Analysis Teams and Teamwork Training Delivery Methods Virtual Organizations Women and Minorities in Management

Management has applications in a wide variety of settings and is not limited to business domains. Management tools, as well as the art and science of management, find applications wherever any effort must be planned, organized, or controlled on a significant scale. This includes applications in government, the cultural arts, sports, the military, medicine, education, scientific research, religion, not-for-profit agencies, and in the wide variety of for-profit pursuits of service and manufacturing. Management takes appropriate advantage of technical developments in all the fields it serves.

The growth of the discipline of management has also led to specialization or compartmentalization of the field. These specialties of management make learning and study easier, but at the same time make broad understanding of management more difficult. It is particularly challenging to the entrepreneur and the small business owner to master the subject areas, yet this group is compelled to excel at all management functions to further their business’s success. Management specialties have grown to such an extent it is difficult for any single manager to fully know what management is all about. So rapid have been the strides in recent years in such subjects as decision making, technology, the behavioral sciences, management information systems, and the like, to say nothing of proliferating legislative and governmental regulations affecting business, that constant study and education is required of all managers just to keep current on the latest trends and techniques. Thus, managers and executives need a comprehensive management online reference source to keep up-to-date. Having the management essays and research papers in one comprehensive site saves valuable research time in locating the information.

In the growing age of specialists, there is a growing lack of generalists. Typically, a business manager spends a large percentage of their career developing a great familiarity and proficiency in a specialized field, such as sales, production, shipping, or accounting. The manager develops a very specialized knowledge in this area but may develop only a peripheral knowledge of advances in other areas of management. Yet as these individuals are promoted from a specialist-type position up the organizational chart to a more administrative or generalist supervisory or leadership position, the person with newly enlarged responsibilities suddenly finds that their horizon must extend beyond the given specialty. It must now include more than just a once-superficial understanding of all aspects of managing, including purchasing, manufacturing, advertising and selling, international management, quantitative techniques, human resources management, public relations, research and development, strategic planning, and management information systems. The need for broader management understanding and comprehension continues to increase as individuals are promoted.

This site has as its goal to bridge this gap in understanding and to offer every executive, executive-aspirant, management consultant, and educator and student of management, both comprehensive and authoritative information on all the theories, concepts, and techniques that directly impact the job of management. This reference source strives to make specialists aware of the other functional areas of the management discipline and to give the top manager or administrator who occupies the general manager position new insights into the work of the specialists whom he or she must manage or draw upon in the successful management of others. In addition, this site proposes to make all practitioners aware of the advances in management science and in the behavioral sciences. These disciplines touch upon all areas of specialization because they concern the pervasive problems of decision-making and interpersonal relations.

Every effort has been made to achieve comprehensiveness in choice and coverage of subject matter. The essays provided frequently go far beyond mere definitions and referrals to other sources. They are in-depth treatments, discussing background, subject areas, current applications, and schools of thought. In addition, information may be provided about the kinds of specialists who use the term in a given organization, the degree of current acceptance, and the possibilities for the future as the subject undergoes further development and refinement. Longer essays frequently provide charts, graphs, or examples to aid in understanding the topic.

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Artificial Intelligence: Cultural Policy, Management, Education, and Research

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The impact of AI on cultural management and cultural policy cuts across multiple disciplines and creative fields, from the theorisation of the very nature of cultural producers, to the practical construction of art form and audiences. Dynamic shifts in both conceptualisation and practice are rapidly ...

Keywords : Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Digital Policy, Copyright, Operations

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Mapping the landscape: a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of literature on entrepreneurship in tourism (2013–2023)

• Published: 24 August 2024
• Volume 14 , article number  29 , ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Uzma Mumtaz 1 &
• Mohammad Faisal   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7724-9064 2  

Several investigations have evaluated the research trajectory concerning entrepreneurship; nonetheless, only a few studies have examined the literature trajectory regarding entrepreneurship in tourism. Therefore, this research explores papers spanning from 2013 to 2023, mapping thematic, intellectual, and conceptual frameworks using bibliometric techniques. The research delves into scientific output, prolific authors, influential articles, co-occurrence of keywords, co-citations, and many others. The keywords “tourism” OR “travel & tourism” AND “entrepreneurship” OR “entrepreneur” were strategically employed to encompass 514 articles and review papers published in English between 2013 and 2023. VOSviewer was used as a technique for doing topic grouping alongside performance analysis. With 85 articles, 2023 is the most productive year. The most influential institution is “ The Hong Kong Polytechnic University ” and the nation is the United Kingdom correspondingly. Likewise, the most renowned journal is “ Tourism management ,” and the most productive journal is “ journal of sustainable tourism ”. Furthermore, the most cited article is “ Scale, change and resilience in community tourism planning .” This research provides researchers with insights into the existing state of research on entrepreneurship in tourism and offers guidance for future research. This study is the inaugural endeavor to present both performance evaluations and scientific clusters of the literature on entrepreneurship in tourism.

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Uzma Mumtaz

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The idea of writing this paper emerged after discussion between both the authors. UM who is the first author performed the literature search and data analysis, and MF who is the corresponding author drafted, supervised and revised the work. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Mumtaz, U., Faisal, M. Mapping the landscape: a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of literature on entrepreneurship in tourism (2013–2023). J Glob Entrepr Res 14 , 29 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40497-024-00399-z

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40497-024-00399-z

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