Page 185 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

168 analysis of performance potential
an extrovert personality. Thus, potential analyses should strive to identify employees
who are likely to develop that profile. One could imagine, however, that a high level
of flexibility could well be compensated by good skills in planning, organizing, etc.
However, in this case, an employee with good planning and organizing skills would not
be considered.

STABILITY OF PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Another methodological problem of potential analysis is the stability of personal charac-
teristics which are said to determine range and executed or executable level of capabilities
(Landy & Farr, 1983). Prediction of future job-related performance that refers to personal
characteristics is based on the assumption that these characteristics are stable. Schmidt
and Hunter (1998a) argue that the relevant characteristics of employees such as general
mental ability or the ability to acquire job-relevant knowledge are in fact stable through-
out a person’s working life. This stability, however, does not refer to an absolute level
(ofperformance)buttoaperson’srankwithinareferencegroup,astheremaybeandprob-
ably will be changes within a person as a result of learning through experience. If this fact
was valid without restrictions, then it would be promising to measure the crucial charac-
teristics and the performance of each employee on the present job in comparison to that of
relevant reference groups. By this means the individual’s rank and the degree of possible
performanceimprovementscouldbedetermined.However,thisprocedurewouldnottake
into account that there might be other factors that cause inconsistency in an individual’s
behavior. That means that, even if the relevant characteristics are indeed stable, there
is still the chance that other characteristics of the person will change. For example, mo-
tives and interests may vary according to experience with job, colleagues, and supervisors
or the private situation of an employee drastically shifts and influences the observable
behavior of that employee. Moreover, depending on the requirements of the present
job some qualifications might increase due to their repetitious execution while others
might stagnate or even degenerate (Lattmann, 1994) because of insufficient opportunities
to practice them. Therefore, one would not necessarily gain an accurate picture of an
individual by solely considering the present status of his or her personal characteristics.

UNCERTAINTY OF PREDICTIONS

A whole set of methodological issues of potential analysis is connected with the un-
certainty of predictions of performance or development rather than their assessment.
Research has shown that the best predictor of future performance is present or past
performance (e.g., Gordon & Fitzgibbons, 1982; Ouellette & Wood, 1998; Schmidt &
Hunter, 1998a) and that individuals with more abilities profit more from training (Vance,
Coovert, MacCallum & Hedge, 1989). However, this prediction refers only to situa-
tions in which present job requirements and future ones are more or less identical. This
knowledge is only applicable and usually applied when appointing job applicants whose
application documents show that they have already done an equivalent job satisfactorily
in another organization, rather than appointing someone who is supposed to have the
potential to do the job in question but has never done it before. Potential analysis, how-
ever, seeks to predict performance in jobs which structurally differ from the present job,