Page 38 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

16 performance concepts and performance theory
learning and competence development become increasingly important. Individuals need
to be willing and able to engage in continuous learning processes in order to accomplish
their present and future tasks successfully. This development has implications for our
theorizing on performance. Campbell (1999), Hesketh and Neal (1999) and London and
Mone (1999) proposed to incorporate learning into the performance concept. Simi-
larly, Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, and Plamondon (2000) recently suggested ‘adaptive
performance’ as a new performance concept in which ‘learning’ constitutes a major
performance dimension.
This development is a profound departure from past conceptualizations in which
learning was seen as a prerequisite for performance, i.e., learning mattered mostly with
respect to future performance in which the newly acquired skills or knowledge were
needed. Now, learning itself is seen as part of the performance concept, which should
be measured and rewarded as a performance component (London & Smither, 1999).
One might question whether it makes sense to include learning into the core of the
performance concept. For example, one might argue that what ultimately counts for an
organization is the individuals’ performance and not their learning—although learning
might help to perform well. This line of reasoning stresses that learning is a highly
relevant predictor of performance but is not performance itself.
Nevertheless, even if we do not want to go so far as to conceptualize learning as part
of performance, permanently changing work requirements and associated demands for
learning have an effect on our theorizing about performance. Research on skill acqui-
sition has shown that the predictors of performance differ across the various phases of
skill acquisition (Ackerman, 1988; Murphy, 1989). When learning becomes a contin-
uous necessity, the duration and occurrence of the traditional skill acquisition versus
maintenance stage changes. Then, skill acquisition is no longer a single event which is
completed before the maintenance stage starts. Rather, individuals will go back and forth
between the skill acquisition and the maintenance phase. This implies that ability (i.e.,
general mental ability) becomes increasingly important because it is needed during the
skill acquisition phase (Murphy, 1989).

PROACTIVITY

In today’s work environments proactivity becomes increasingly important. To perform
well it is no longer sufficient to comply with prescribed job requirements but to go
beyond what is formally requested (Frese, 1997; Parker, Wall, & Jackson, 1997). This
development has consequences for conceptualizing performance and for specifying per-
formance predictors. With respect to the performance concept, proactive behaviors such
as personal initiative become an essential part of contextual performance (Frese et al.,
1996, 1997). Moreover, personal initiative has been shown to be related to company per-
formance, particularly in entrepreneurial businesses (Koop, De Reu, & Frese, 2000). One
can assume that the relevance of personal initiative and similar behaviors (cf. Morrison &
Phelps, 1999) increases further when environmental and global changes become even
more dynamic.
In addition, this development implies that proactivity might become an important pre-
dictor of task performance. For example, research has shown that a proactive personality
is related to job performance in real estate agents (Crant, 1995). Other variables such as
role breadth self-efficacy plays a similar role (Parker, 1998).