Issues and Debates

 Introduction

As the world of business continuously becomes competitive, managers are faced with the problem of augmenting employee performance that will increase organizational output for the business to stay put and at the top of the competition. However, they face constant pressure related to the ensuring that the organization achieves performance targets and achieve adorable performance levels. They also suffer the pressure of ensuring that employee’s work supports and furthers the organization's goals. All the same, there has to been developed a way of measuring and ensuring that the above pressures are put in check.

 As such, performance management is the process used by organizational leaders to manage its performance. The constant issue here is how actually to tell that an employee applies his or her current skills to achieving the outcomes desired. Fortunately, the answer to this issue has traditionally been found in the performance evaluation process. Here, managers will look for hard data that will tell how well an employee or the whole team performed their duties. Apparently, performance evaluation is not just enough as it is short of assuring that an employee does the right thing. After all, a manager may evaluate an employee as determined and industrious but his/her hard work does not meet the organization's purpose (Boote & Beile, 2005).

It is at this point that key performance indicators come into play. These are defined as the quantifiable metrics that display how well an organization is achieving its mission, vision and stated goals through the help of its employees. A manager will thus have to play his/her role and ensure that he properly identifies plausible performance measures as well as feasible key performance indicators.

Current Theories

There are many theories that can be related to the topic role of the leaders in managing and measuring performance and identifying the use of key performance indicators (KPIs). These are as discussed below.

The Theory of Performance (ToP) (Don Elger)

The theory of performance proposes that performance indicators and performance improvements can be measured through a framework of six indicators that combine to show how effective the collaborative efforts of a team are. According to Elger, the verb perform refers to the production of valued results. According to this theory, performance is a function of context, the level of knowledge, levels of skills, the level of identity, personal factors, and some fixed factors. Context refers to the environment of work while the level of knowledge refers to the years (time) of experience. Skills level refers to the academic levels while the level of identity is the inner competence of the employee. Personal factors may constitute of health status that may be concealed while the constant factors may include the availability of resources that may inhibit or increase employee’s efficiency. The implication of this theory to this study is that the management should look at these factors before scrutinizing an employee and citing him/her as competent or incompetent. To manage workers performance requires the leader first to determine whether the workers force is constituted of the rightful personnel. That can be done through surveying the individual worker’s output per a specified period such as weekly ( Poister, Hall, & Aristigueta, 2015).

Expectancy Theory (Victor H. Vroom)

The expectancy theory attempt s to describe how an employee’s motivation to achieve a particular goal or a performance target can be explained in terms of what outcome would become beneficial to him/her. According to Vroom, an employee is motivated when his/her achievement is valued by the management. In other words, what motivates the worker is their expectancy of some performance appraisal from the management when a certain level of outcome is arrived (Lautman & Pauwels, 2013).The theory describes how an employee perceives or understands the relationship between his effort, performance, and rewards. In this theory, Vroom centered his focus on factors involved in stimulating or prompting an individual to put in more effort into something. He identified three factors that leaders can combine to trigger employees’ efforts. These include expectancy that he defined as the extent to which the employee believes that a certain level of performance will produce a particular result. Second is instrumentality that he defines as the extent to which the leader prompts the individual to believe that effective performance will lead to desired results and lastly valence that refers to the strength that the leader makes the worker believe that that those attractive rewards are available ( Poister, Hall, & Aristigueta, 2015). According to Vroom, these three factors combine and create a “force” or effort. He suggested that “force” is a result of the multiple of “expectancy” and “valence” in the formula: Force = Expectancy x Valence i.e. F = f (E x V). This formula can be used by the management to measure or predict such things like job satisfaction and workers mobility. It is also reflective of key performance indicators (Caldwell, Hayes & Long, 2010). 

Reactance Theory (Brehm)

According to this theory, a leader predicts the performance of an employee based on their reaction with respect to the freedom to choose their action or extent of restrictions. According to Brehm, free will is directly proportional to high performance (Kaplan, 2009).

Proposed relationships among constructs

There major proposition here is that performance or output is correlated to the good relation relationship between the leader and the team. Also, there is a relationship between rewards and workers’ job satisfaction. If the leader is generous and offers rewards to employees based on good performance, he/she is likely to get good results from these workers (Danks & Allen, 2014). The above three theories are also related in some ways. They all point to the efforts of the leader to motivate the team that in return will lead to increased performance as the output.

Contradictions

Looking at the above theories, I contradict with their proposed roles of management in measuring performance indicators and determining key performance indicators. To me, measuring employee’s duty performance may entail the following routine. First, the leader should focus on productivity of each employee as an individual and when working collaboratively with peer workers (Kaplan, 2009). The trend in units of production from hiring time to the present represents how much he/she is efficient or is promising.  Key performance indicators of the team production can be analyzed through checking the trend on profitability for instance during the last five years of operation. Other management indicators present include the sales volumes, rate of financial accumulation among others (Ilies, Turdean & Crisan, 2009). Customer satisfaction is also a very important thing to feature on. That can be done by through interviewing customers and from their words of mouth, the management will be able to identify the deficits and their strength based on customers’ perception (Danks & Allen, 2014).

Inconsistencies

There has not been any theory cited as best, and neither is there a universally acceptable set of key performance indicators revealed to be useful in all aspects of business management. As such, different managers find different sets of key performance indicators useful than the rest. Besides, theories are continuously being developed, and so far, none can be cited as best to explain how managers should measure workers’ performance and which set of KIPs are best. The three theories above are exemplary. They contradict in many aspects (Androni, 2015).

Ambiguity

Due to the inconsistencies, managers face challenges to commit themselves to any method of measuring employees’ performance (Lautman & Pauwels, 2013).

Conclusion

Leaders play an important role when it comes to the achieving of organizational goals. However, for them to ensure the productivity of workers is maintained and that none of them is underperforming, it is imperative that they develop performance measures and identify rightful key performance indicators with which they can determine the points of concern that limit workers’ efficiency.

 References

Andronie,  E. (2015). Learning and leadership, key success factors in the globalized economy. Elearning & Software for Education, (2), 396-403.

Caldwell, C., Hayes, L., & Long, D. (2010). Leadership, trustworthiness and ethical stewardship. Journal of Business Ethics 96(4), 497-512.

Danks, S., & Allen, J. (2014). Performance-based rubrics for measuring organizational strategy and program implementation. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 27(1), 33-49.

Ilies, L., Turdean, A., & Crisan, E. (2009).Warehouse performance measurement – A case study. 

Kaplan, R. (2009). Measuring performance: Expert solutions to everyday challenges. Harvard Business Review Press.

Lautman, R., & Pauwels, K. (2013). Identifying metrics that matter: What are the real key performance indicators (KPIs) that drive consumer behavior?Gfk-Marketing Intelligence Review, 5(2), 46-52.

Poister, H., Hall, L., & Aristigueta,  P. (2015). Managing and measuring performance in public and nonprofit organizations: An integrated approach. Audiobook Publishing.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in legitimate paper writing services if you need a similar paper you can place your order from best custom research papers.