Doing it for themselves? Performance appraisal in project‐based organisations, the role of employees, and challenges to theory

• Published date: 01 April 2019
• Date: 01 April 2019
• Author: Deanne Den Hartog,Anne Keegan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12216

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Doing it for themselves? Performance appraisal in

project‐based organisations, the role of

employees, and challenges to theory

Anne Keegan

1

|Deanne Den Hartog

2

1

HRM and Employment Relations Group,

College of Business, University College Dublin,

Ireland

2

Organizational Behaviour, Leadership and

Management Section, Amsterdam Business

School, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,

The Netherlands

Correspondence

Anne Keegan, HRM and Employment

Relations Group, College of Business,

University College Dublin, Blackrock A94

XF34, Ireland.

Email: anne.keegan@ucd.ie

Abstract

We explore performance appraisalin project‐based organisa-

tions and provide novel insights into appraisal processes in

this context. These include the central role of employees in

orchestrating the appraisal process, the multiple actors that

have input to appraisal including project managers, the dis-

tance between employees and their official line managers,

and the weak coordinating role of human resourcespecialists

in these systems. We draw attentionto the drawbacks of cur-

rent theorising on appraisal to predict and explain outcomes

from appraisal systems that are not premised on stable line

manager/employee dyads. Theorising based primarily on

social exchangetheories needs to be reconsidered in this con-

text and new theories developed. We also question how

human resource specialists can better support employees,

and managers of all kinds, in their implementation roles in

polyadic human resource management systems to ensure

transparency, equity, and fairness of appraisal processes in a

project‐based organisationalcontext.

KEYWORDS

PBOs (project‐based organisations), performance appraisal,polyadic

HRM systems

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, dis-

tribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2018 The Authors. Human Resource Management Journal Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Received: 24 May 2017 Revised: 30 August 2018 Accepted: 3 September 2018

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12216

Hum Resour Manag J. 2019;29:217–237. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj 217

1|INTRODUCTION

Project‐based organisations (hereafter PBOs) are becoming more prominent in many countries and industries (Lundin

et al., 2015; Schoper, Wald, Ingason, & Friðgeirsson, 2018). Throughout this paper, we refer to polyadic HRM (Human

Resource Management) systems to emphasise that HRM systems in PBOs involve at least four but potentially more

actors in shifting configurations. These change from project to project as employees work with different and often

multiple project managers, teams and clients, and line managers. We contribute to current theorising on performance

appraisal processes through two case studies in PBOs where we show how the particularities of this context chal-

lenge assumptions in the performance appraisal literature. Two of these assumptions are particularly important.

The first assumption is that HR specialists devolve practices to line managers to deliver them securely to

employees. HRM triads (Werner, Jackson, & Schuler, 2012) comprising line manager/employee dyads and HR special-

ists are seen as a key form of multi‐actor HRM systems (Meijerink, Bondarouk, & Looise, 2013). These triads enable

the implementation of appraisal practices by line managers who, supported within such HRM triads, enact practices as

intended allowing for strategic outcomes envisaged by top management including transparency, equity, and fairness.

The second assumption is that line managers are particularly important to HRM practices such as appraisal for

reasons rooted in social exchange theories. The importance of line managers in current theorising on appraisal is

linked with assumptions that “employees' experience of these [practices] is inexorably linked with their relationship

with their FLM [Front Line Manager] because the FLM is seen as the agent of the organisation, and in most cases the

deliverer of the HR practices”(Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007: 16).

Although these two core assumptions likely hold in most traditional hierarchical organisations, we show that nei-

ther holds up in PBOs. In that context, employees are mainly driving appraisal processes themselves, rather than line

managers. Although line managers are formally often still responsible for the process, they have insufficient line of

sight to employee performance and must base their evaluation on information gathered and coordinated by the

employee. Project managers, who are the closest observers of the employee's performance, have few formalised

or standardised roles in this setting, meaning their contribution to appraisal is inconsistent, and their input often

ignored by line managers. The role of HR specialists emerges as distant and somewhat ineffective in aligning the var-

ious actors within these polyadic HRM systems.

The particularities of performance appraisal in PBOs pose challenges to HRM and appraisal theorising on issues

including how social exchange processes work in a context with shifting constellations of employees and managers

and how HR specialists support managers of all kinds as well as employees in the implementation of HRM practices

to ensure the transparency, equity, and fairness of appraisal processes in PBOs. Given the evidence that PBOs are

becoming more prominent, the implications of polyadic HRM systems for employees' and manager's roles in the

implementation of HRM practices need to be better understood.

Our main aim in this paper is to explore the nature of the performance appraisal process in PBOs. We carry out

exploratory case studies using an interpretivist methodology in two exemplary PBOs to examine performance

appraisal in this context. We contribute to current theorising by extending the focus of appraisal theorising beyond

the HRM triad and away from the line manager.

The paper is structuredas follows. First, we describekey features of conventional modelsof performance appraisal

and theirtheoretical underpinnings.Second, we introducePBOs, discuss theirfeatures, focus on the particularities of pro-

jects asa context for appraisal,and present our researchquestion. Third, we presentour assumptions,methods, and data

analysis.We then present our key findings.Three main themes emergedfrom our analysis of the data which are(a) distri-

bution of responsibilities forappraisal, (b) distance,and (c) dilemmas of appraisal.After presenting these themes,we dis-

cuss the theoretical implicationsof our study, and its limitations, before concluding with commentson future research.

2|CONVENTIONAL MODELS OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Performance appraisal systems fulfil practical, legal, and strategic purposes (Addison & Belfield, 2008; Noe,

Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2012) and help shape employees' behaviours and attitudes as well as their sense

218 KEEGAN AND DEN HARTOG