Performance Appraisal in Local Government: A Current Update

Performance Contract Management in Regional Local Government - Victoria

“…Given this, even though there may have been considerable information exchange across the LGUs during the development of their systems, there are significant similarities between them. Second, these similarities have consistently been found in the performance evaluation systems of local government units in the USA (Lacho, Stearns and Villere 1979;Moore and Staton 1981;Lacho, Stearns and Whelan 1991;Roberts and Pavlak 1996;Roberts, 1998). Therefore, there is an indication that public sector performance evaluation may have a characteristic of its own.…”

“…In general, the use of performance evaluation in local and municipal government is a relatively new development in Victoria and other parts of Australia. In contrast, it has been the norm for well over 20 years in many local government administrations in the United States (US) (Lacho, Stearns and Whelan 1991) and more recently in the United Kingdom (Keen and Vickerstaff 1997) 4 and Europe (Hegewisch and Larsen 1996). For example, performance appraisal (PA) has been used to determine merit pay rises, promotion, dismissal and demotion (Lacho, Stearns and Villere 1979;Roberts 1995;Roberts and Pavlak 1996).…”

“…Many studies identified that the most common system in use was management by objectives (MBO), either on its own or in combination with other performance appraisal systems (Moore and Staton 1981;Ammons and Rodriguez 1986;Ammons 1987;Lacho, Stearns and Whelan 1991). Key benefits of evaluation were identified as participation (Moore and Staton 1981), feedback (Ammons 1987) and goal clarity (Moore and Staton 1981).…”

Role of Leader-Member Exchange and Impression Management in Employee Performance at Hotels

“…Performance appraisal has been recognized as an important management tool for measuring employee job performance, clarifying personnel decisions such as promotion, demotion, transfer, or retention, and allocating financial rewards; as well as helping develop employee capacity through feedback or identifying their training needs (McGregor 1972;Decotiis and Petit 1978;Huber 1983;Mohrman et al 1989;Lacho et al 1991;Murphy and Cleveland 1991;Longenecker and Nykodym 1996;Gabris and Ihrke 2001;Roberts and Pavlak 1996;Oh and Lewis 2009).…”

“…They also emphasized that if PA is properly used, it can contribute to boosting employee motivation and their productivity. Lacho et al, (1991) highlighted the usefulness of the PA management tool in terms of making an organization more efficient by helping justify large personnel expenditures given that the added expense is one of the major costs for the government, managers consistently contend they are unwilling to abandon PA because they view them as important assessment tools and managerial aids. Huber (1983) further suggested that performance appraisal serves three purposes: evaluation, development, and employee protection, what makes his suggestions distinct from the descriptions of the purpose of performance appraisal by other authors is that Huber emphasized the role of performance appraisal as a tool that helps prevent any misunderstanding between employees and supervisors.…”