Introduction
1.1 Background And Need For The Study
It was Ducker (970:80) who stated that the principle objectives of any organization is survival and from this all other objective flow. Thus, if a profit is needed for survival profits is the objective, if survival depends on growth, their growth becomes an objective etc.
In pursuit of this survival there exist certain differences between the ends and means of the organization on one hand, and the goals and values of the individual employees on the other. These difference sometimes generate tension, which tends to focuses on the nebulous concepts of control. That means that the control human element in the enterprise.
Controlling of human performances is safety focused upon three separately identified functions.
Selection, supervision and incentives. Against this background, it is part of the personnel manager’s concern to secure the labour force which the enterprises / organization required to meet its objectives. Different method been established to help make this more reliable. Once secured, there remains the need to cannot (supervision and incentive) in order to hold the selected employees to the appropriate causes of action indicated by those objectives supervision and incentive depends on their efficacy and fairness, on the ability of the organization to measures the performance of employees against some notional nouns of performance, which are derived from the set objectives.
The knowledge and appreciation of performance appraisal system dates back to sometime in the sixteenth century at the time of saint ignatus of Loyola after he had founded the society of Jesuit. In his attempt to provide a comprehensive portrait of Jesuits activities and potentials, he used the combination of reporting and rating systems. By this system, each member of the organization made a safe rating, each supervisor prepared reports on his subordinates, performances and also special report was sent directly to the society’s father-general from any Jesuit who had information relating to his on her colleagues performance which he / she thought father general might not receive.
In 1842, the USA congress passed a law requiring the Departmental heads to make annual reports stating among other things whether each clerk has been carefully employed and the removal of some to permit the appointment of other would lead to a better dispatch of the public business of course, this step did influence performance appraisal. Among many appraisal systems that were developed and tried at that time was the one by Carl Scharz for the pension office in 1987, which was used to measure employee performance by simply counting the number of errors, they made in a year.
Performance Appraisal is a continuous assessment of the subordinate’s performance against the organizational goals. Defined by Evinma C., Nwandu E. Nnenna B. Ani and Ojemba B. Agbo (2003) as the name given to the regular formalized and record review of the way in which an individual is performing his job. There are formal or conventional appraisal system and informal or unconventional system.
In any situation where an organization has laid down policy on a formal procedure to be followed in appraising its staff, conventional appraisal system is used. It could be the confidential reporting or an open appraisal system.
The confidential reporting system is one in which the supervisor makes a secret evaluation of the subordinate’s performance without giving them the opportunity of seeing their comments, or remarks that has been made on him / her. This system has received a lot of criticism because of its pitfalls. Nonetheless some organizations make use of this system and exploit it’s potentials depending on the situations.
The open report system is the direct opposite of the confidential system. It applies in a situation where the employee is allowed to be through his / her appraisal form so as to make some comments on his / her supervisor’s assessment. By doing this, the employee knows on the sport his / her supervisor’s opinions or impressions about his / her performance. This system ahs received the recommendation of many writers and authors including the celebrated, “Udoji Public Service Review Commission of 1972-1974.
The importance of performance appraisal program especially at this era of emphasis on productivity, efficiency and profitability is that it is a potential instrument for achieving organizational objectives as well as helping the individuals within the organization to achieve their personal objectives, therefore a formal system.
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