An assessment of manager/subordinate perceptions of performance appraisal effectiveness

This study postulates that performance appraisal will be effective to the extent that managers and subordinates have a shared perception of its purpose and function and the degree to which it meets the needs of both groups. A two part research project was conducted to: 1) identify manager/subordinate perceptions of the purposes served by the formal performance appraisal process; 2) determine the extent to which these purposes are being satisfied in organizational practice; and 3) assess if managers and subordinates have a shared perception of the effectiveness of the appraisal process. The sample for the study included 36 managers and 143 subordinates from a division of a large Midwest service organization. The results were mixed with regard to the appraisal system effectively accomplishing its diverse goals. However, in general, there was support for the notion that both managers and subordinates find the appraisal process to be a worthwhile organizational practice. Approximately 70% of the respondents indicated that they would participate in the appraisal program whether they were required to do so or not.

Prime Minister and President: Harold Macmillan’s accounts of the Cuban missile crisis

This chapter analyses the successive ways in which Macmillan re-wrote his experiences of the Cuban missile crisis and in the process sought to re-configure the memory of the event in Britain.

Sensory imagery in individuals who are blind and sighted: examining unimodal and multimodal forms

Introduction: Previous research has suggested that visual images are more easily generated, more vivid and more memorable than other sensory modalities. This research examined whether or not imagery is experienced in similar ways by people with and without sight. Specifically, the imabeability of visual, auditory and tactile cue words was compared. The degree to which images were multimodal or unimodal was also examined. Method: Twelve participants totally blind from early infancy and 12 sighted participants generated images in response to 53 sensory and non sensory words, rating imageability and the sensory modality, and describing images. From these 53 items, 4 subgroups of words, which stimulated images that were predominantly visual, tactile, auditory and low-imagery, respectively, were created. Results: T-tests comparing imageability ratings from blind and sighted participants found no differences for auditory and tactile words (both p>.1). Nevertheless, whilst participants without sight found auditory and tactile images equally imageable, sighted participants found images in response to tactile cue words harder to generate than visual cue words (mean difference: -0.51, p=.025). Participants with sight were also more likely to develop multisensory images than were participants without sight (both U≥15.0, N1=12, N2=12, p≤.008). Discussion: For both the blind and sighted, auditory and tactile images were rich and varied and similar language was used. Sighted participants were more likely to generate multimodal images. This was particularly the case for tactile words. Nevertheless, cue words that resulted in multisensory images were not necessarily rated as more imageable. The discussion considers whether or not multimodal imagery represent a method of compensating for impoverished unimodal imagery. Implications for Practitioners: Imagery is important not only as a mnemonic in memory rehabilitation, but also everyday uses for things such as autobiographical memory. This research emphasises both the importance of not only auditory and tactile sensory imagery, but also spatial imagery for people without sight.

Confronting law affectively: encounters of a Patpong sex tourist

When considering spaces of sex-work such as Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand, the inclination is to be drawn into habitual debates concerning the legitimacy of sex-work and the clear objectification of sex-workers. While these concerns are valid and real, there are significant absences in terms of the theoretical mapping of the space, such as the affect of the presence of law, bodies, space and the sexual encounter itself. Law emerges as the most significant presence, since it both forms the transactional surface of Patpong and produces the confusion and revilement that results from the confluence of cold legal exchange with the tactile intimacy of the sexual encounter. This text explores the ethnographic space of Patpong in order to understand ways in which law’s transactional, effective surface is both embodied through subjectivication and spatially emplaced, yet also disrupted through the affective agency of the bodies and spaces it enfolds in order to produce this surface. This exploration will point to the limitations of law’s effective surface and suggest ways in which law might be located within a regime of affect, which returns the law to the body it subjectivises.

Reducing job-irrelevant bias in performance and appraisals: compliance and beyond

Job-irrelevant discrimination seems as ubiquitous as the performance appraisals in which it is commonly detected. This paper explores both compliance-based and more proactive approaches that deal with the various possible sources of discrimination in performance appraisal ratings. The suggestions lead to a code of practice for performance management in firms across cultures and national boundaries.