Explaining the Gap in Performance Evaluations of Supervisors and Employees

Abstract

Organizational success in the global market is driven by performance quality, innovation, and efficiency, particularly in today’s competitive and dynamic era. However, there may be gaps in performance evaluations between supervisors and employees. The current paper aimed to discover the factors that predict this gap in terms of the demographics and personality of the two parties as well as disparities in their four efficacy (self, occupational, collective and means) evaluations of their employees. A sample of dyads of 94 employees and supervisors (Total N = 188) in high-tech industries took part. The findings indicate that supervisors’ and employees’ tenure was the main demographic predictor of performance evaluation gap. The personality of supervisors and employees only explained the gap in efficiency performance. The gap in efficacy evaluations between supervisors and employees in predicting the gap in performance evaluations was associated with the gap in internal efficacy evaluations (self and occupational efficacies) in predicting the gap in performance evaluations with respect to the quality and creativity performance evaluation facets. However, as regards the gap in efficiency performance evaluations, the gap in means efficacy between supervisors’ and employees’ evaluations was the only predictor for the efficacy gap. This model thus explains a vast majority of performance gap evaluations between supervisors and employees ranging from 61%-88% of performance evaluation differences. These results shed light for the first time on predictors of the gap in performance evaluations between supervisors and employees.