Regarding organizational justice, performance appraisal (PA) systems are among the most crucial mechanisms shaping the employee work experience. Nonetheless, research has mostly neglected to explain the relationship between the characteristics of PA systems, employees' perceptions of PA justice, and work engagement in the public sector. Based on a combination of observational and experimental data from 11 public sector organizations in Italy, this article aims to unfold the nature of these relationships. Following the recent calls for diversified methodological designs, a combination of structural equation modeling with a discrete choice experiment is provided. The results show that designing PA systems with rater–ratee feedback sessions and calibration mechanisms leads to fairer perceived PAs, with PA justice being associated with public employees' work engagement.

Performance appraisal (PA) plays a strategic role in public sector human resource management (HRM), acting as a driver for better performance. Drawing from previous theoretical research on the social context of performance appraisal systems and their effectiveness, the study develops a generalizable theoretical framework for classifying performance appraisal systems according to their structural and process proximal variables: purpose, rating source, and structured face-to-face feedback sessions. Through a multiple case study analysis, the theoretical framework has been applied to a sample of Italian PA systems for senior civil servants, aiming to explore the relationship between the structural and process proximal variables of PA systems and rating discriminability, intended as a measurement of performance effectiveness. The results show that the framework accurately represents the variation of the design of performance appraisal systems in the Italian context, highlighting the central role played by multi-source feedback and face-to-face rater-ratee interactions in promoting rating discriminability.

Performance appraisal is recognized as a powerful human resource management (HRM) practice. However, its effectiveness depends on how public employees perceive appraisal systems. Based on the Social Exchange Theory, this study aims to empirically explore the impact of the perceived developmental purpose of performance appraisal on a relevant and critical individual attitude in public HRM literature, such as work engagement. Additionally, the study investigates perceived performance appraisal justice as a potential mediator of such a relationship. The analysis of an online survey administered to 1,482 Italian civil servants through a structural equation model shows that perceived developmental appraisal has a positive impact on the work engagement of public employees. This relationship is partially mediated by interactional performance appraisal justice perceptions, while distributive and procedural justice do not significantly affect work engagement. This contribution addresses specific research gaps in the public sector HRM literature. Our results suggest that public organizations can enhance engagement through perceived developmental, interactional, and fair performance appraisal systems.

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Il presente contributo intende offrire una prima mappatura delle pratiche in uso in materia di formazione con riferimento alla gestione dell'emergenza legata alla distocia di spalla. Attraverso la triangolazione di fonti informative differenti e, in particolare, mediante i risultati di un questionario somministrato alle aziende sanitarie della Regione Lombardia, si evidenzia l'importanza delle attivita di formazione e in particolare dell'uso dei simulatori nella prevenzione dei rischi - clinici ed emotivi - che caratterizzano il fenomeno. I risultati evidenziano come, laddove previsto, l'uso del simulatore sia positivamente associato alla percezione di utilita dello strumento da parte del personale mentre, con riferimento alla dimensione organizzativa, tali iniziative di formazione vengono gestite internamente dalle aziende e finanziate con risorse proprie, a testimonianza del rilievo attribuito alla prevenzione dei rischi relativi alla distocia di spalla tra le organizzazioni sanitarie incluse nell'analisi.