ABSTRACT
Job performance – employee behaviors relevant to the goals of the organization (Campbell, 1990; McCloy, Campbell, & Cudeck, 1994) – is a core criterion in human resource decisions. Yet, no one comprehensive model of job performance covers all the multidimensionality and complexity inherent in this criterion (Borman, 1991; Campbell, 1990). This makes job performance a difficult variable to grasp and measure (Austin & Villanova, 1992). Most performance models operationalize performance as a stable or static phenomenon, interpreting deviations from mean performance as a lack of extrinsic and intrinsic reliability (Thorndike, 1949) and thus as task-irrelevant error or noise. These models ignore the temporal multidimensionality and variable nature of individual job performance (Barnes & Morgeson, 2007). Yet, performers not only show idiosyncratic profiles of personal strengths and weaknesses, but performance changes over time as well (Cascio & Aguinis, 2011). Further, there is substantial and meaningful variability of individual performance within the same general time frame of a performer’s career and on the exact same task: Stewart and Nandkeolyar (2006) observed the weekly performance of 167 salespeople and found that 73% of the variance in weekly sales was within-person. Fisher and Noble (2004) asked 121 employees to report their task performance five times per day for two weeks and found that 77% of the variance in self-ratings of performance was within-person. Obviously, individuals do not perform at exactly the same level at all times.
