Business Management- Bibliography and Literature Review Assessment Answer

Business Management Assignment

Assignment Task

What are the primary problem in measuring in strategic business management and how can they be most effectively alleviated?

The primary problems in measuring organizational performance on strategic business management and ways to effectively alleviate them

In this dynamic competitive environment there is a need to improve continuously, add value to the work, do more with fewer resources and increase the productivity. This raises the need to implement performance management system within the organization to reflect upon the changes being inculcated within the organization, emphasize on integrated work and multidimensional influence (Mohrman & Cohen, 1995). Thus performance management refers to a system that gathers information from prevailing operations, provides feedback to employees, and uses the information gathered to help the members improve effectively leading to the growth of the organization (Bernardin, 1998).

Literature review

However, implementation of such system has always been regarded as one of the most difficult areas of human resource development practices (Austin, 1992; Bernardin, 1996; Cardy and Dobbins, 1994). Instead of improving the efficiency it generally leads to more conflicts, problems, and resistance among the employees. Therefore to establish a successful performance management system it is firstly important to clearly understand what actually needs to be measured in terms of performance measures, the employees should rewarded and given proper development opportunities after fair and accurate performance evaluation and provide them with acceptable feedback to help them learn from their weaknesses. Therefore the three important elements of performance management system include, 1) defining performance for each employee, 2) evaluating employee performance, and 3) providing feedback on employee performance.

Defining performance is one of the most critical parts of performance management system (Arvey and Murphy, 1998). It is really important to communicate and inform the employees what actually is expected from them in terms of performance. Assessing the competencies of an individual is not a measure of his/her performance and hence performance evaluation should be based on the record of visible outcomes to be fair. However, there are a number of limitations associated with results-based approach (Cardy & Dobbins, 1994). Results-oriented measures account for only a few job performance requirements. The employees may develop a results-at-any-cost mentality and may endeavor to obtain outcomes somehow, which may actually be dysfunctional for the organization. The problems like opportunity bias that are not under the control of the employee also affect the outcome of such evaluation approach.

During the evaluation process, the raters may intentionally influence the administrative ratings. They may do this with in intention to motivate and encourage poor performer or out of personal liking. So the administrative raters should be encouraged to be honest and provide accurate record with true assessment of the employees work performance. Providing feedback at frequent and regular intervals, apart from the ones given during the appraisal period may help improve the evaluation process (Villanova, 1993, London, 1997). Policies can also be formulated to rate and reward the raters for providing honest and accurate ratings to the rates. Also the employees should be made aware of the developmental process and how this evaluation will them improve further.

It has also been shown that clear, relevant and descriptive feedback help in better and accurate evaluation in comparison to evaluative outcome feedback (Bernardin , 1996, Pettijohn, 2001). However, it is has been observed that poor performers generally tae the feedback in negative sense and does not lead any improvement in the performance. Many employees start perceiving their supervisors as biased after the feedback. They also lose motivation after the appraisal. Therefore, effort should be made to maintain a supportive atmosphere to help build a positive relationship between employees and supervisors.