Page 143 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

psychological variables impacting on appraisal 125
hypotheses. The first is the self-consistency position, which asserts that individuals with
low self-esteem will prefer less positive feedback (because it fits with their self-image)
while people with high self-esteem will want more positive feedback (for the same
reason). The self-enhancement position, on the other hand, suggests that both high and
low self-esteem individuals will want positive feedback, and that the latter will be espe-
cially motivated to seek it out. Neither position has achieved consistently greater support
over the other. It may be that one principle holds in some situations but not in others
(Shrauger, 1975). Unfortunately, little of the research in this area has been done on ap-
praisal in a field context; however, it seems clear that self-esteem is frequently related to
self-assessment and feedback responses.
Another highly relevant aspect of how the individual views himself is provided by
Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977). This defines Self-efficacy as a person’s belief in his
capabilities to meet the demands of a given situation, and there are numerous studies in
the organisational field showing its relationship to variables such as managerial ambition
(Van Vianen, 1999) and ratings of work performance made by others (Robertson & Sadri,
1993). Again, though largely ignored in the appraisal literature, it seems very likely that
self-efficacy has an impact on numerous aspects of the appraisal situation. For example,
Locke and Latham (1990) give it a central place in goal theory, and it has also been
shown to related to feedback responses (Waldersee, 1994). Thus, setting objectives that
represent tasks for which the individual has a low level of self-efficacy is unlikely to be
a productive strategy in an appraisal.

Locus of control and attributional style

Spector (1982) reviewing the literature on locus of control cited evidence of its cor-
relation with many organisational variables highly relevant to the appraisal situation,
including effort, performance, job satisfaction and compliance with authority. Among
other things, internals show a preference for participative bosses and respond more posi-
tively to incentive systems. More recently, Tang, Baldwin and Frost (1997) hypothesised
that internals would be less affected by appraisal feedback than externals, and found
results in line with this; perceived feedback showed no significant impact on an area of
organisational commitment for internals whereas it did for externals. The interpretation
of feedback and willingness to act on it are both likely to be influenced by the attributional
style of the person appraised, which in turn is related to a number of personality variables
(Mitchell, 1989) including self-esteem (see also the work of Herold et al., cited below). It
is also related to gender. Women have been consistently found to attribute success more
externally than men, thereby taking less credit for their performance, and have lower
self-esteem (Beyer, 1990; Feingold, 1994). In an appraisal context, where an appraisee
might need to project a positive self-image to some extent, this could clearly work against
female appraisees, despite the possibility of a more positive appraisal response on their
part noted earlier (Fletcher, 1999).

Feedback attitudes

There are several aspects of feedback that may impact orientation to PA. Perhaps the
most fundamental is that feedback seeking is an individual difference variable in its own
right (Ashford, 1986; Ashford & Cummings, 1983). Some individuals characteristically