Performance Management: Putting Research into Action

Goals

A central premise of performance management systems is that individual (and team) goals need to be closely aligned with higher-level organizational goals. For example, Schiemann (Chapter 2 in this book) describes how Continental Airlines selected on-time performance to be an organization-wide goal in part because so many different roles (for example, logistics, pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, maintenance, baggage handlers) can affect on-time performance. On-time performance thereby served as a unifying goal for different functional groups across the organization.

One trend related to organizational goal setting is the use of balanced scorecards. Kaplan and Norton’s (1992, 1996) balanced scorecard framework is based on the premise ...