Subjective performance evaluations and employee careers

Abstract

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Careers within Firms: Occupational Mobility over the Life Cycle

“…Other studies using data from different firms reveal a wide variety of practices. See Frederiksen, Lange, and Kriechel (2017), who harmonize several personnel data sets. Further, some of the earliest work on occupational mobility within firms -for example, Gitelman (1966) -found substantial rates of upward and downward occupational mobility in a watch company in the second half of the 19th century.…”

Supervisors and Performance Management Systems

“…We focus our analysis on the domestic workforce. systems (Frederiksen, Lange, and Kriechel, 2017), the tails of the distribution are rarely used and ratings are concentrated in a small subset of the support: 90 percent of ratings are either a 3 or a 4. For this reason, our empirical investigation is built around a pass-fail performance metric, which equals 1 if the rating is 4 or 5 and zero otherwise.…”

“…Thus, in equilibrium any assignment is viable and both positive and negative assortative matching are entirely consistent with our set-up. 22 While we allow for imperfect information about supervisor type, we assume this information is common to all market participants so that supervisors are paid their expected marginal product. This deviates from an important literature on asymmetric learning whereby the incumbent rm retains an information advantage over competing rms (Greenwald [1986 Waldman [1984]).…”

“…They aect employee compensation, task assignment, promotions and retention (Frederiksen, Lange, and Kriechel, 2017). However, ratings are also aected by the identity of the rater: the worker's supervisor.…”

The Complementary Use of Experiments and Field Data to Evaluate Management Practices: The Case of Subjective Performance Evaluations

“…Third, appraisal outcomes are used in the personnel planning process for decisions on promotions, reallocations, or dismissals. Frederiksen et al (2012), for instance, analyze data sets on subjective performance ratings from six large, international companies that have been used in several prominent studies on internal labor markets and find that performance evaluations predict career outcomes such as promotions. 5 Fourth, performance appraisals give employees direct feedback about their performance and potential strengths and weaknesses.…”