{"id":3670,"date":"2025-04-02T20:50:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T20:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=3670"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:15:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:15:19","slug":"performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\/","title":{"rendered":"Performance Management Is Often Biased or Misused"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

Performance management is critical for all organizations because it drives major decisions about who gets a bonus, who gets promoted, who gets demoted, and who gets transferred or cut. Such decisions are most effective when they are fair and merit-based and made in ways that are consistent with the organizational goals.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to Academy of Management Scholar Herman Aguinis<\/a> of the George Washington University School of Business and author of Performance Management for Dummies, who said that performance management done correctly serves all of those important purposes. Unfortunately, he estimates that about 90% or more of companies don\u2019t do performance management the right way.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people hate performance management. Why? Because employee ratings are often biased, and some supervisors use performance management to punish people they don’t like,\u201d Aguinis said. \u201cFor example, I have seen cases of supervisors giving employees a very high performance rating so that person can be transferred out of their unit, because they don’t like them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is how perverse performance management can be sometimes,\u201d he says. \u201cAlso, you tell me the name of a supervisor who likes to give negative feedback to employees or share negative or bad news with them\u2014most don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

At many organizations, performance reviews are annually or quarterly at most. It\u2019s a task that HR pushes on managers, who typically do it as fast as possible without much attention to detail. For all these reasons, most supervisors and employees alike hate performance management, Aguinis noted.<\/p>\n

Many companies, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, decided to halt performance management\u2014a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was we should stop providing ratings or performance feedback, because it causes a lot of damage when not done properly, and during the pandemic, managers were saying, \u2018I don’t see my employees in person\u2014I don’t interact with them on a daily basis, so I don’t know what’s going on, and thus let’s just do away with performance management,\u2019\u201d Aguinis said. \u201cObviously, it was a very bad idea, because managers don’t know who to promote, and when it\u2019s time for bonuses and rewards, leaders don\u2019t know how best to allocate resources, so people came back around.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany companies, including Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and Deloitte, that had announced the end of performance ratings and performance management all, came back with a vengeance,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were some tweaks, but it is still performance management.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher Performance management is critical for all organizations because it drives major decisions about who gets a bonus, who gets promoted, who gets demoted, and who gets transferred or cut. Such decisions are most effective when they are fair and merit-based and made in ways that are consistent with the organizational goals. That\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,74,77,76],"tags":[],"sp_smart_badges":[],"ppma_author":[70],"class_list":["post-3670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethics","category-hr","category-pay","category-performance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPerformance Management Is Often Biased or Misused - Academy of Management Today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daniel Butcher\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Daniel Butcher\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/d1297a59039d9ca7bac9d9f0952e508c\"},\"headline\":\"Performance Management Is Often Biased or Misused\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-04-02T20:50:40+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-07-09T15:15:19+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":429,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/03\\\/upset-employee1.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"ETHICS\",\"HR\",\"PAY\",\"PERFORMANCE\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/performance-management-is-often-biased-or-misused\\\/\",\"name\":\"Performance Management Is Often Biased or Misused - 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Such decisions are most effective when they are fair and merit-based and made in ways that are consistent with the organizational goals. 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