Appraisal Of Ethical Performance: A Theoretical Model

Abstract

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ethical behavior of organizational members has been the subject of considerable interest during the past decade both among practitioners and academics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, performance appraisal systems, for the most part, have exclusively concentrated on business performance to the exclusion of ethical dimensions of job performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Given the increasing importance of ethical issues in organizations, there is a need to correct this aberration in the current approach to appraisal system development and include ethical dimensions in the performance appraisal domain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>As a first step to the inclusion of ethical dimensions to the job performance, we propose a cognitive model for appraisal ethical performance in organizations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The performance appraisal literature based on the cognitive processing paradigm (e.g., Landy and Farr, 1980) provides a rich theoretical foundation for studying ethical judgment process. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, the cognitive approach describes how the performance judgment process is influenced by schematic, attributional and affective influences when processing ratee performance information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></p>