Organizational Behaviour Comportement Organisationnel

self-appraisal group reacted more negatively to their appraisals than the control group.To our knowledge, the study by Roberson et al. (1993) represents the only fieldinvestigation that compared the reactions of a group of employees who were asked to selfappraisewith a group who were not asked to self-appraise. Given the multitude of correlationalstudies supporting the favorability of self-ratings, we feel it is premature to conclude thatincluding formal self-ratings in an appraisal results in employees expressing less favorableappraisal attitudes than a more traditional top-down system. Thus, we examined the differences inappraisal reactions between employees who were asked by their managers to self-appraise andemployees who received performance ratings from their managers, with no self-ratingcomponent. In contrast to Roberson et al., we compared employees in an organization where itwas at the discretion of individual managers whether or not to include self-ratings in theappraisal. Thus, we compared two naturally existing groups of employees rather thanexperimentally assigning participants to a self-appraisal or no self-appraisal rating condition.Similar to the original prediction of Roberson et al., and consistent with previous correlationalresearch regarding self-appraisals, we hypothesize the following:H1: Employees who are asked by their managers to self-appraise will have morefavorable reactions than employees who are not asked to self-appraise.Spontaneous self-appraisal. In an attempt to understand and explain their counterintuitivefindings, Roberson et al. (1993) further analyzed their data and found that there was nosignificant difference in the extent to which employees in each group “systematically reviewedtheir job responsibilities, past performance, strengths, weaknesses, and job problems before theappraisal session” (p. 135). In other words, even when not asked to do so, employees engaged inself-evaluation. Consistent with this finding, some researchers (e.g., Atwater, 1998) havesuggested that employees engage in spontaneous self-appraisals even when not asked to do soformally. However, no research has specifically examined this issue. Although the findings ofRoberson et al. are suggestive, their study did not directly assess the extent to which informalself-appraisals occur in lieu of formal self-appraisals. One purpose of the present study is to fillthis gap. Based on Roberson et al. the following hypothesis is suggested:H2: When not asked by their supervisors to formally self-appraise, employees willengage in informal self-appraisal.In another experimental study examining self-ratings, DeGregorio and Fisher (1988), in alaboratory setting, compared five different conditions involving various levels of participation byparticipants who completed an in-basket task. Two of these conditions involved self-ratings as themeans of participation. In the joint feedback condition participants self-rated and these selfratingswere subsequently discussed in a feedback session. In the private self-appraisal condition,participants self-rated but these ratings were not discussed in the feedback session. Resultsindicated that participants reacted favorably to all participation conditions, with the exception ofthe private self-appraisal condition where the ratings were not discussed.Integrating the results of the Roberson et al. (1993) and DeGregorio and Fisher (1988)studies with the general literature on self-appraisals, one is left with a rather confusing picture ofthe effects of self-ratings on employee reactions. First, Roberson et al. did not find support for thepositive effects of self-ratings and actually found reactions to be more positive when employeeswere not asked to self-rate compared to when they were formally asked to do so. Second,Degregorio and Fisher did find support for the positive effects of self-ratings, but only when thoseself-ratings were discussed in a feedback session. However, when self-ratings were collected, butnot discussed, the pattern of results was similar to Roberson et al., such that reactions were lessfavorable than in a condition where self-ratings were not collected.108