Page 21 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance
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Preface xxi
Besides the assessment of past and present performance, organizations are highly
interested in measuring performance potential and in predicting future performance.
Daniela Lohaus and Martin Kleinmann’s chapter deals with the assessment of perfor-
mance potential from an academic perspective, putting great emphasis on conceptual
and methodological issues. Additionally, they provide an overview of potential analy-
sis methods and particularly focus on assessment centers. Wieby Altink and Helma
Verhagen approach the issues of potential assessment from a more practice-oriented
perspective. They link their description of what constitutes ‘potential’ to a broader dis-
cussion of recent and future developments in work and organizational contexts. They
present methods of how to measure potential and give an overview of approaches that
aim at the development of potential. They illustrate the implementation of potential
assessment and development with a case study of a large production company.
Part III centers around the crucial question. “How can we improve performance?”
Contributors to this part suggest answers in five areas: goal setting and feedback inter-
ventions; training; mentoring; pay and reward systems; and a broader human research
management. For many years goal-setting theory has been one of the most powerful
approaches for improving performance. In their academic chapter Gary Latham, Edwin
Locke, and Neil Fassina examine whether the ‘High Performance Cycle’ developed ear-
lier by Locke and Latham is “standing the test of time”. Their review of recent empirical
research on goal setting shows substantial support for the ‘High Performance Cycle’.
Moreover, this chapter demonstrates how goal-setting research has made progress during
the last decade. Jen Algera, Ad Kleingeld, and Harrie van Tuijl discuss how goal setting
and feedback intervention can be put into practice. Basically, they argue that long-term
implementation of goal setting in organizational practice creates specific difficulties that
are often overlooked in goal-setting research. By referring to case experiences they de-
velop specific guidelines on how to introduce goal setting and feedback interventions in
organizations and how to make them a sustained success.
In their academic chapter on training, Beryl Hesketh and Karolina Ivancic address
the question of how to design training interventions that meet organizations’ need for a
highly skilled, expert-like workforce. By drawing on literature from expertise research,
and cognitive and organizational psychology, they describe (transfer of) training needs
analysis, training design principles, training methods, and organizational issues which
impact training as well as evaluation issues. Brigitte Winkler approaches the training
process from a practitioner’s perspective and describes the core steps within the de-
velopment and implementation of training programs. She presents detailed examples
from an introductory-level leadership training within a large organization and provides
specific guidelines for putting training programs into practice.
Terri Scandura and Betti Hamilton, as well as Jim Clawson and Douglas Newburg,
focus on mentoring and its relationship to individual performance. In their academic
chapter, Terri Scandura and Betti Hamilton provide a review of the empirical litera-
ture on mentoring and describe the benefits that mentoring can have for the proteg´e,
the mentor, and the organization. They suggest that mentoring has a positive effect on
various performance indicators, including learning and innovation. Jim Clawson and
Douglas Newburg continue on the practical side of mentoring, specifically describing
how to design a mentoring program and commenting on some typical problems that
one might confront when putting such a program into practice. They describe a specific