The negotiated character of performance appraisal: how interrelations between managers matters.

This study is based on empirical material that was gathered by interviewing managers, at different hierarchic levels of a company, about their work with employee performance appraisal. The analysis, theoretically based on structuration theory (Giddens 1979, 1984), shows how managers describe the meaning of their work and how it is realised through their interactions with other actors in a social process. The present findings help increase our understanding of what could be called the negotiated character of performance appraisal and the complexity of managerial work, as has been sought after in previous research (see, e.g. Willmott 1987; Whittington 1992; Hales 1999). Through this and similar investigations, more attention will hopefully be focused on the manager's role as a social actor, on the question of the accuracy of performance appraisal as well as on viewing organisational management as a social practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]