Page 351 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

ARTHUR AND DOVERSPIKE
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also differentiating the goals of diversity training from the goals of affir­
mative action (Doverspike, Taylor, & Arthur, 2002; Von Bergen et al., 2002).
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Performance management is used here to encompass the major areas of per­
formance appraisal and compensation. The former refers to the measure­
ment and evaluation of performance and the latter refers to the rewarding
of performance using various means of compensation. The interrelatedness
of these facets of performance management is highlighted by the fact that
compensation, specifically pay, may be linked to performance appraisal.

Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal can be conceptualized as a systematic description
of an individual's job-relevant strengths and weaknesses, that is their job
performance. Although job performance data can be obtained either objec­
tively (hard criteria) or judgmentally (soft criteria), the term "performance
appraisal" is typically used in the context of, albeit not limited to, the latter.
From the perspective of the present chapter, appraisals are problematic if
they are influenced by employee characteristics such as race, sex, and age.

Reducing the Negative Effects of Performance Appraisal Performance
evaluations can result in discriminatory outcomes via two mechanisms,
(a) poor or ineffective appraisal or rating practices and (b) intentional dis­
tortion resulting from motivational and political factors. Concerning the
former, two strategies have traditionally been advocated to address the
problems with judgmentally based performance data: rating scale devel­
opment and rater training. The results of rating scale comparisons indicate
that format modification alone does not result in much improvement in
performance evaluations (cf. Woehr & Miller, 1997). However, frame-of-
reference training, which emerged from the social cognitive approach to
performance appraisal, appears to be quite effective as a rater training
approach to increasing the accuracy of ratings (Woehr & Huffcutt, 1994).
In addition to rater training, job analysis should serve as the basis for
constructing the appraisal instrument and the appraisal process so that
employees are evaluated only on job-related factors.
Rater training is based on the premise of providing raters with the skills,
tools, and information needed to accurately evaluate performance. How­
ever, it is also acknowledged that evaluations can reflect not the inability or
limitations in raters' capacity to evaluate accurately, but instead, specific