ABSTRACT
Most medium to large organizations used to go through an annual appraisal ritual, which was rarely popular with anyone. A pile of appraisal forms would land on the desks of managers and supervisors, who then had to rate the work performance of their staff. Most managers disliked doing this. Although it is easy to rate the best and the poorest workers, distinguishing between the majority who are neither outstanding nor incompetent is both difficult and open to all manner of bias and inaccuracy. Often managers would have only limited knowledge of the workers and the tasks they performed. If they returned a poor report, they then had to live with the consequences of resentful staff; a good report might mean competition for the manager’s own job or key people being promoted out of the department.
