Abstract
Performance appraisal politics is widespread in the organization. It provides a new perspective for improving performance appraisal to study its effects on employee attitudes. In addition, its influence on employees’ attitude is still blank. This paper utilizes questionnaire survey and structural equation model to study the impact of different types of perception of performance appraisal politics on employees’ affective commitment. The result shows that different types of perception of performance appraisal politics have different effect on employees’ attitude. Perception of public-private concerned high ratings has positive effect, however, perception of organizational-interested low ratings, selfish high rating perception and self-interested low rating perception have negative effect. The effect strength was decided by employee’s attribution about perception of performance appraisal politics. Perception of organizational support played a complete mediate role in the impact of perception of performance appraisal politics on employees’ affective commitment. Based on the findings of the study, managers can reduce employees’ negative perception of performance appraisal politics and passive consequences by restricting estimators’ selfish leniency and conscious oppressive evaluation, guiding employees to attribute performance appraisal politics positively and enhancing perception of organizational support.
Highlights
The traditional assumption is that appraisers should have no bias or prejudice in the performance evaluation process, which is justified as a pure desire by current studies
Note: The single-factor model means that all survey questions are attributed to one factor; the two-factor model means that performance appraisal politics perception is attributed to one factor, and perceived organizational support and affective commitment are attributed to another factor; the three-factor model means that performance appraisal politics perception, perceived organizational support and affective commitment are attributed to one factor respectively; the six-factor model is that perception of public-private concerned high ratings, perception of hypocritical and selfish high ratings, perception of self-interested low ratings, perception of organizational-interested low ratings, perceived organizational support and affective commitment are attributed to one factor respectively
Perception of public-private concerned high ratings provides employees with a sense of job security and improvement opportunities, reflecting organization’s care and support for employees, so it has a positive impact on affective commitment and perceived organizational support; perception of hypocritical and selfish high ratings and perception of self-interested low ratings cause role conflicts and ambiguity for employees, and organizations fail to create a fair working environment; perception of organizational-interested low ratings brings employees a sense of job insecurity and organizations fail to recognize the value of employees
Summary
The traditional assumption is that appraisers should have no bias or prejudice in the performance evaluation process, which is justified as a pure desire by current studies. Organizational commitment is viewed as a measurement of employees’ psychological state and has triggered a large number of studies, scholars in the field of performance appraisal politics start to pay attention to this issue (Sogra et al, 2009). This paper focuses on affective commitment, the most important component of organizational commitment, and studies the affecting mechanism of performance appraisal politics on it. There are two goals of this research, namely, identifying the differential impacts of different types of performance appraisal political perceptions on employees’ affective commitments, and the mechanism of the influence process. It will be of great significance for organizations to manage performance appraisal politics in different ways and enhance employees’ positive attitudes
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