Performance appraisal and employee commitment: The mediating role of job satisfaction

Abstract

Commitment is essential for employees to establish and maintain a long‐lasting employer–employee relationship, hence the call for more research to investigate its antecedents. The purpose of our study was to empirically investigate the relationship between performance appraisal and employee commitment. Analysis of survey data drawn from academics across the UK Higher Education Institutions found a positive relationship between performance appraisal and employee commitment, explained through the mediation of job satisfaction. The study is novel as it extends performance appraisal and employee commitment theorization by highlighting how job satisfaction mediates both constructs differently at intrinsic and extrinsic levels. Practically, our study provides insights that will support the development of performance appraisal systems that influence job satisfaction and commitment of academics.

Performance appraisal process as a determinant of employee commitment: a serial mediation analysis

“…Our findings suggest that employee reward is critical for performance appraisal outcomes to effectively affect employee commitment. This is significant as it responds to calls for research investigating the role of reward in the performance appraisal process and employee commitment relationship (e.g., Pepple and Ambilichu, 2023).…”

“…Our study contributes to the performance appraisal process and wider HR literature by theorising a procedural and distributive model through the lens of OJT and SET. First, it provides an important contribution to the OJT by deepening our understanding of the role of performance appraisal process in stimulating employees' commitment to organisations, thus, contributing to existing research on the antecedents of employee commitment in organisations (e.g., Cafferkey et al, 2017;Pepple and Ambilichu, 2023;Pepple et al, 2021). This is important because Solztani and Wilkinson (2020) noted that performance appraisal process continues to be one of the challenging areas in HR practice.…”

“…Our conceptualisation of reward includes the pay, recognition (e.g., celebrations, acknowledgement, certificates), employment security and promotions, that employees receive (see Allen and Kirkman, 2001). Employee commitment is the identification of an individual to an organisation, believing in the goals and objectives of the organisation and the willingness to exert effort towards the goals of an organisation and maintaining long-term membership with an organisation (Brockner et al 1992;Pepple and Ambilichu, 2023).…”

“…An understanding of performance appraisal process and employee commitment relationship has significant practical implications particularly in the context of the higher education sector because of the increasing job demand for academics in universities and the need for universities to maintain committed academics in the workforce (Pepple and Ambilichu, 2023). For instance, although teaching in the higher education sector is generally seen as a long-term career, research suggests that this is changing such that the longer academics stay in post, the lower their level of commitment (Qudah et al, 2018).…”

“…By so doing, we make two theoretical contributions. First, we contribute to the OJT by highlighting the critical role of performance appraisal process as a vital HR practice in stimulating employees' commitments to organisations and enriching existing literature on the antecedents of employee commitment in organisations (e.g., Cafferkey et al, 2017 Pepple andAmbilichu, 2023;Van Waeyenberg et al, 2022). Second, we contribute to the HR literature by highlighting the pathways in which performance appraisal process influences employee commitment in organisations, drawing on OJT to explore this indirect serial mediation relationships, thus, deepening understanding of the complex process in which performance appraisal influences employees' willingness to maintain long term membership with their organisations.…”