What Are the Arguments for and Against Performance Management?

What are the arguments for and against performance management?

A vast amount has been written about performance management since the first article by Warren in 1972. According to Briscoe and Claus (2008), performance management is the system through which organisations set goals, determine performance standards, assign and evaluate work, provide performance feedback, determine training and development needs and distribute rewards. It is a systematic and continuous process for improving organisational performance by developing the performance of individuals and teams (Armstrong, 2009). There have been heated debates on the pros and cons of the performance management. For example, Armstrong and Ward (2005) reached a conclusion that performance management has the potential to improve the performance of organisations and act as a lever to achieve cultural change, while Coens and Jenkins (2002) argued performance management system is hard to practice. This essay makes a discussion on the arguments for and against performance management, and follows a conclusion that

Performance management is expected to improve organisational performance generally by creating a performance culture where the achievement of high performance is a way of life, and specifically it is supposed to be achieved by improving individuals (Armstrong, 2009). This can be explained through the six stages that performance management requires. In the first stage, when setting work goals, an agreement on the performance goals is supposed to be achieved, by which employers are able to communicate a shared vision of the organisation’s strategy or goals, and ensure that the employees understand the importance of their contributions to the goal. In the stage of determining performance standards, the individual requirements and expectations of all employees in terms of input and output expected from them are defined, thus reducing confusion and ambiguity. By given feedback, employers can identify where...