Relationships between attitudes toward organizations and performance appraisal systems and rating behavior

Data collected in seven separate samples in three countries (the USA, Canad a and Israel) were used to examine the relationships between perceptions of one's organization (climate, commitment), beliefs about appraisal systems (self-efficacy, uses of appraisal) and raters' orientations to appraisal sy stems (confidence and comfort) and specific rating behaviors. We obtained g ood fits for structural models suggesting that attitudes and beliefs accoun ted for substantial variance in raters' likelihood of giving high or low ra tings, willingness to discriminate good from poor performers, and willingne ss to discriminate among various aspects of job performance when completing actual performance ratings. Proximal attitudes and beliefs (i.e., those di rectly related to the performance appraisal system) appear to have stronger links to rating behavior than do more distal attitudes (i.e., attitudes to ward the organization in general).