Case 5.1

Case 5.1, Comparing Co-Workers against Each Other: Does This Motivate Employee?

1. I feel that forced ranking performance appraisals can be a great tool to use but also have downfalls as well. Take Expectancy Theory for instance; First-level and Second level outcomes, Instrumentality, Valence, and Expectancy all play a role in the forced ranking performance appraisal (p132). Forced ranking performance appraisals would work well under expectancy theory because employees are more likely to be motivated when they perceive their efforts will result in successful performance and, ultimately, desired rewards and outcomes. If an employee puts in effort and there are great results then they should be rewarded highly under the forced ranking rule and vice versa. As long as the employees have realistic thinking when it comes to rewards then Expectancy theory is a great tool to use, but it also has its downfalls. What if you have a great team that works hard and does a great job at their job but you have to rank each person and the bottom five people are to get fired. I don’t believe that this is fair treatment, especially if everyone is doing a great job. Someone will always have to be last and I also believe that it creates a competition among the employees and can turn a team atmosphere into a competition and cause disruptions, because it can turn employees against one another.

Equity Theory also has a stand in forced ranking appraisals. Under equity theory, motivation is examined on how a person might respond to perceived discrepancies between their input/outcome ratio and that of a reference person (p134). By using equity theory, it may help put forced ranking in perspective. If there is an employee that has a ranking similar to their reference person then that is good, but then there are also those employees that have a rather large difference from there reference person which is not so good especially if the person that ranked lower could have drastic impact on...