ABSTRACT

This chapter suggests that psychologists have been too narrow in their focus in research on performance and he presents a performance-model sequence describing links between arousal, motivation, behavior, performance, and the evaluation situation, and the role of task, social, and organizational factors in determining these relationships. It describes the ways in which social, task, and situational factors influence motivation, performance, and appraisal. The purpose of identifying these factors of production is to provide a conceptual guide for specifying the performance model. The performance is appraised or evaluated in some way and then the organization responds to these appraisals by providing feedback, rewards, job assignments, and various other things. The concepts of performance, process, and structure can be illustrated from some of our work in the coal-mining industry. In this industry production or performance occurs in highly interdependent crews. The chapter provides a useful service in refocusing our attention on social, task, and situational factors as they affect performance.