COMMON COMPARISON STANDARDS - AN APPROACH TO IMPROVING AGREEMENT BETWEEN SELF AND SUPERVISORY PERFORMANCE RATINGS

This study examined differential comparison standards (i.e., comparati ve bases for performance evaluation) and their effects on agreement be tween supervisory raters and self-raters within the context of a perfo rmance appraisal system. The purpose of the research was to examine di fferential comparison standards as an underlying mechanism in the trad itionally poor correlation between self and supervisor performance rat ings. Supervisor and subordinate rater dyads (N = 106 dyads) evaluated job performance across 3 dimensions, using 5 different comparison sta ndards (ambiguous, internal, absolute, relative, and multiple). Result s support the hypotheses, indicating that more explicit and objective comparison standards produced higher levels of interrater agreement. T he implications of these findings in terms of comparison standards bei ng adopted in current research and future performance appraisal system s are discussed.