Uses survey research to investigate two general questions concerning managerial competencies and performance appraisal: whether a set of managerial competencies currently being used by organizations to describe successful managers can be identified; and whether organizations are appraising these same competencies as part of their managerial performance appraisal processes. The six competencies most often identified as critical to managerial success appear to be proper choices, given the discussion of the attributes needed for a competency to be effective. The results also show, however, that many of these same organizations are not appraising these competencies in their managerial-performance appraisal processes. Concludes that failure to appraise the competencies reduces the effectiveness of the competencies and the managerial performance appraisal programs.

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley, where the first author was a visiting scholar while writing this article. We would like to thank Charles N. Halaby, StephenJ. Mezias, and four Law & Society Review reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and Stephen Petterson and Scott Novak for their assistance with the data analysis.

Regression analyses based on a sample of 3372 nonunionized and unionized employees showed that, while the desire to join a union is associated with a wide range of work attitudes, perceived company performance, and facets of satisfaction, one's desire to leave one's union is associated with a narrow range of economic concerns. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of the declining unionization rate in the United States. E  '        ,            satisfaction helps account for employees' desire for union representation. Employees who are more dissatisfied with various aspects of their jobs are more likely to demand union representation, ceteris paribus . Furthermore, economic or "extrinsic" satisfaction appears to be more important than noneconomic or "intrinsic" satisfaction in determining the desire for unionization among blue-collar workers. By contrast, however, few studies have been conducted with respect to decertification, and no direct relationship between employee satisfaction/dissatisfaction and decertification has been demonstrated. Freeman and Medoff (1984) and Barling, Fullagar, and Kelloway (1992) summarize much of this research.A unique aspect of this study is that a common set of independent variables that encompass work attitudes, perceived company performance, employees' intention to leave their company, and several facets of employee satisfaction are used as predictors of the desire to join and to leave a union. This allows us to examine how the same factors affect both the desire to join and the desire to leave a union.

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley, where the first author was a visiting scholar while writing this article. We would like to thank Charles N. Halaby, StephenJ. Mezias, and four Law & Society Review reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and Stephen Petterson and Scott Novak for their assistance with the data analysis.

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