Understanding the Effectiveness of Performance Management Practices

Effective employee management is an essential element for achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage. Through a variety of performance management practices organizations can translate competitive strategies into individual performance expectations and transform employee potential into desired organizational outcomes. Despite the promise of robust performance management practices, a significant research gap exists between the scientific research in Organizational Behavior (OB) and the performance management practices espoused by the “practitioners.” The purpose of this thesis research is to explore a set of performance management practices as an initial step toward providing direct, empirical support for the linkages between performance management practices, the intended behavior or attitude of employees, and the desired employee outcomes measured by perceived organizational support and organizational commitment. The selected performance management “best-practices” of goal-alignment, role-clarification, engagement, accountability, and feedback were tested via self-report survey data from a sample of active-duty military and federal civil-service employees. The results identified the relative effectiveness of the selected practices with respect to perceived organizational support and organizational commitment