Alternative paradigms and the study and practice of performance

management and evaluation

Steve McKenna
a,
, Julia Richardson
b
, Laxmikant Manroop
a
a
School of Human Resource Management, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J1P3, Canada
b
School of Administrative Studies, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J1P3, Canada
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Performance management and evaluation (PME) is a well-established element of any
organizational system of human resource management. However, the research field for PME
is dominated by a one-dimensional approach located within positivist ontology. This paper
explores and compares this positivist approach to PME with approaches located in other
paradigms, more specifically interpretivism and critical theory. The paper argues that
paradigmatic diversity in the study of PME would contribute a multidimensional, more
sophisticated and nuanced approach. While research on PME within interpretivist and critical
paradigms has been conducted over many years it is largely ignored or rejected in North
America where a focus on managerialist prescriptions drives the research agenda. This paper
calls for innovation through paradigmatic diversity in PME research and scholarship rather
than further, incremental development of prescriptive models.
2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Multiple paradigms
Interpretivism
Critical theory
Performance management
1. Introduction
Performance management and evaluation (PME) is widely accepted as a central feature of the human resource management
(HRM) systemin contemporary organizations. As a sub-set of HRM, PME is subject to the considerable growing pains that continue
to be endured by HRM despite its evolution as a scholarly eld in recent years (Jamrog & Overholt, 2004). Indeed, HRM scholars
and practitioners alike continue to struggle to explain its parameters and objectives; what is the core focus of HRM? What are its
unique characteristics? Can it be a science? Can there be a grand theory of HRM? Thus, for example, Paauwe (2004) questions
whether a grand theory is needed? As a specialism within the HRM eld, scholars and practitioners of PME pose similar
questions: what are its parameters and objectives? What is its core focus? What, if any, are its unique characteristics? Can PME
really be a science with predictive and prescriptive qualities? Is it possible to have a universally applicable grand theory of PME?
The purpose of this paper is to identify the value and contribution of alternative paradigms for discovering knowledge and
their potential contribution to a broader, more sophisticated and nuanced body of research and practice in PME. By alternative
paradigms, we refer to paradigms that are situated outside the positivist ontologies which have dominated HRM research and
practice more broadly. In this regard, the paper responds to Ferris, Hall, Todd Royle and Martocchio (2004) who call for HRM
scholars to adopt and engage with different paradigmatic perspectives. Indeed, following their lead, this paper signals the
potential contribution that alternative paradigms make to HRM as a discipline. First, however, in order to ensure that this paper is
appropriately contextualized, it is useful to address the pervasiveness of positivist ontologies in HRM and PME and the
concomitant resistance to alternative paradigms.
Whilst much of the North American HRM and PME literature is rmly located within a positivist paradigm, positivism
continues also to dominate scholarly activity elsewhere. In this regard resistance to or ignorance of alternative paradigms is
Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: smckenna@yorku.ca (S. McKenna), jrichard@yorku.ca (J. Richardson), lmanroop@yorku.ca (L. Manroop).
1053-4822/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2010.09.002
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
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j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ humr es
ubiquitous. Brewster (1999, p. 49), for example, has noted that resistance to alternative paradigmatic scholarship in HRM is like
the sh's knowledge of the water where he suggests that these researchers not only see no alternatives but do not consider the
possibility that there could be anysome of those who become aware of the alternative paradigmrespondby denying the value
of the alternative. Focusing specically on PME and continuing this line of thought further, this paper extends the debate by
signalling the conceptual and empirical value of work carried out within alternative paradigms. Avoiding a clash of
epistemologies, the paper will suggest that just as these paradigms contribute to a more composite view of PME, they also
offer an alternative world view. This view, we will suggest, introduces an important and yet overlooked political and ideological
dimension to the debate concerning the role of PME in contemporary HRM scholarship and practice.
Much of the North American PME research is rmly rooted in a positivist/functionalist paradigm characterized by a focus on
causeeffect relationships, statistical testing and linear thinking (Latham, Almost, Mann, & Moore, 2005). This is not to say,
however, that PME research conducted outside of North America is immune to this positivist bias, far fromit. Yet, it is important to
note that a positivist scholarly agenda drives much of the publication in North American journals, the criteria for research-funding,
professorial hiring and tenure and promotion practices. In this regard the paper focuses initially on a characterization of the
development of PME scholarship in a North American context. In particular, we problematize the idea of PME as a scientic eld of
study concentrating explicitly on the conceptual, methodological and practical limitations of relying solely on positivist paradigms.
The idea of PME theory will then be discussed, highlighting the limitations of viewing PME in a one-dimensional and essentially
uncritical fashion. The paper then investigates PME with the intention of emphasizing the value of multidimensionality and
paradigmatic diversity. The concluding section argues that unless PME scholars are willing to embrace more diverse ontologies,
epistemologies and methodologies, they will be conned to a narrow understanding of its respective processes and practices.
2. PME in North America: A characterization
A characterization of PME research, as it has developed in North America, is clearly specic to the respective context and
motivated predominantly by North American scholarly concerns and inclinations. Legge (2005, p. 3), for example, has noted that
under the inuence of US academic imperialism, modernist positivistic perspectives are now dominantreected in evidence-
based approaches that privilege the search for causal relationships in the service of performativity. North American work in the
eld of PME is, indeed, located predominantly in the realm of industrial and organizational psychology which, by denition,
excludes a broader critical social science perspective (Watson, 2004). The need for multidimensionality is important in order to
align scholarship in PME with the multidimensionality that is emerging, albeit slowly, in HRM scholarship more generally. It will
also align PME scholarship to contemporary debates about multiple capitalisms that have emerged in HR scholarship (Amin,
1994; Best, 1993; Clegg, 1990; Whitley, 2000). Thus, the development of PME as an emergent eld of scientic inquiry in North
America, deriving from the history of scientic management, the human relations movement and industrial psychology, presents
an interesting contrast to the evolution of other forms of people management which have been very different elsewhere and
which have had diverse implications for PME because of the diversity of institutional and the social arrangements of capitalism
(Baddar Al-Husan, Brennan, & James, 2009; Bamber, Lansbury, & Wailes, 2004; Bjorkman, Fey, & Park, 2007; Chow, 2004; Farndale
& Paauwe, 2007; Gamble, 2003, 2006; Sparrow & Hiltrop, 1997). In short, consideration of contextual and institutional inuences
extends our understanding of the limitations of a scientic approach towards PME.
Furthermore, the inuence of scientic management on PME research and the ontology and epistemology it reects is
represented in the idea that best practice can be discovered through quasi-natural science methods. While the human relations
movement theoretically sought to mitigate the negative effects of the early industrialized work environment, in fact, scientic
management and human relations have come together in the modern industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology axis. I/O
psychology seeks to establish prescriptions for not only the best way to undertake work of various kinds, and to measure
performance at doing it, but also to identify the best behavioural competencies that employees should demonstrate, for example
best ways to coach employees within a performance management system (Latham et al., 2005). Indeed, we would argue that the
idea of discovering best practices is the contemporary focus of I/Opsychology in North America, and a distinguishing feature of its
PME scholarship. This focus emphasizes good science by replicating the study of the natural and physical world in order to
establish laws which form the basis for subsequent work in the area of HRM generally and very specically PME. PME
developments, therefore, are constrained by discovered laws of performance management and evaluation (e.g. DeShon,
Kozlowski, Schmidt, Milner, &Wiechmann, 2004; Donovan & Williams, 2003; Drach-Zahavy & Erez, 2002; Heslin, Carson & Vande-
Walle, 2009; LePine, 2005; Seijts, Latham, Tasa, & Latham, 2004; Wiese & Freund, 2005; Yearta, Maitlis, & Briner, 1995). In North
America in particular, the dominance of I/O psychology and the positivist paradigm has presented signicant challenges for those
PME scholars who are interested in exploring and/or adapting different paradigmatic approaches. As Brewster (1999 p. 48) has
noted
even where the data and analyses are sound, however, a disadvantage of this paradigm, perhaps of US research tradition
in particular, is that the pressure to publish and the restricted nature of what is acceptable has led to much careful
statistical analysis of small-scale, often narrow, questions whose relevance to wider theoretical and practical debates is
sometimes hard to see.
The following section briey juxtaposes the assumptions about the nature of science implicit in the dominant positivist I/O
psychology approach to PME with those that characterize interpretivist and critical paradigms.
149 S. McKenna et al. / Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
3. Assumptions about the nature of science and PME
While we may debate the character of PME and PME scholarship and how they vary in relation to unique institutional and
cultural contexts, more fundamental concerns deserve immediate attention. The idea of science introduced previously, for
example, and the extent to which PME can be studied scientically is especially pertinent here. More specically, we should be
concerned with the extent to which the scientic study of a social phenomenon, such as PME, is closely connected to broader
understandings and debates about the nature of science and the attendant themes of ontology, epistemology, conceptualizations
of individual action and research methodology. Exploring this theme further, we begin by addressing the idea of science more
fully in relation to PME and contrast it with alternative ontologies, epistemologies and research methodologies to consider their
potential contribution to a deeper understanding of PME.
3.1. Positivist ontology, epistemology and methodology
A positivist ontology assumes that the social world exists independently of an individual's appreciation of it (Burrell &
Morgan, 1979, p. 4) and can, therefore, be understood as a collection of facts. PME scholars working within the positivist paradigm
assume a world of actors and agents that can be understood by using statistical validity and reliability to measure reality and its
effects. Characterized by an intention to deal with applied problems and guide further research, this type of scientically
informed investigation requires clear denition of major constructs and relationships (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). Hypothesizing
and testing of relationships between relevant variables is seen as the only way and the correct approach to ensure the
development of PME theory and to prescribe effective practice. A consequence of this way of seeing is that a certain way of
knowing about the world evolves. In other words, knowledge about PME is predicated on discovering statistical relationships
between identied variables in order to enable the formulation of prescriptions for action. Precise desirable outcomes can be
expected, even predicted, if certain rules or laws are followed. Similarly, individual action can be determined, at least to some
extent, as a result of its scientic underpinning. This expectation has pervaded work in PME for many years to the point where
new developments are largely a rehash of old arguments (Latham et al., 2005). Indeed, if positivist work in PME has produced
laws, any new development would in any case be expected to be merely an incremental development of those laws and the
truth that it represents, not a paradigmatic break from them. We take this argument up more substantially later.
3.2. Interpretivist ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies
Positivism and postpositivism are well rehearsed arguments in the literature as the received wisdom in social and behavioural
science (Fuller, 2006). Non-positivism and anti-positivism, however, although broadly grouped under interpretivism, are not so
clearly delineated. Burrell and Morgan (1979 p. 227) note that the interpretive paradigm embraces a wide range of philosophical
and sociological thought which shares the common characteristic of attempting to understand and explain the social world
primarily from the point of view of the actors directly involved in the process. Thus, the interpretivist paradigm is predicated on
assumptions about the social world that are somewhat different fromthose that characterize positivism. In particular the idea that
rather than one truth to be discovered that might be used as the guide for action, there are multiple, socially constructed truths.
Interpretivists are not, therefore, concerned with knowing about objective reality that exists out there. Rather, their concern is
with knowing and exploring specic subjective realities that exist in here, in the experiences and thinking of actors in the social
world. Consequently the methodology required and the methods used to conduct such investigations are (and must be)
essentially different from those employed by positivists.
Gubrium and Holstein (1997) offer a helpful way of organizing key elements of the interpretivist paradigm while recognizing
that it is represented in many different streams of thought. First, they note that interpretivists are sceptical of received wisdom
and that this scepticism infuses their methodology to challenge the commonsensical, the obvious and the supposed real.
Second, as interpretivists are interested in specic realities they are concerned to explore and scrutinize the social world at close
quarters. Third, individuals are viewed as agentic, constructing, reconstructing and designing their lives and the social worlds
within which their lives evolve. They and their actions are not merely determined by discovered laws of behaviour or by the
desire of their superiors to control them and make them compliant. Fourth, subjectivity is to be celebrated as an essential aspect
of the researcher, the research participant and the research process. Therefore, rather than striving for the impossibility of
achieving objectivity in research in and on the social world, recognition of the inherently subjective nature of social research
creates greater integrity in the research process. Finally, scholars working within an interpretive paradigmemphasize the inherent
complexity of the social world where life and experience cannot be simplied, rationalized and/or predicted because it is
ambiguous, discontinuous, fragmented, compartmentalized and differentiated. From this perspective, then, the fatal aw of the
positivist paradigmis that it seeks to squeeze order into a social world where there can never be any at the expense of the disorder
that requires much more focused research attention.
3.3. Critical ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies
In addition to representing an objective, rationalist, scientic and therefore prescriptive view of the social world, uncritical
positivist approaches have also been identied as managerialist. This argument, advanced by critical sociologists and those
involved in critical management studies, proposes that the prescriptive, functionalist and normative approach associated with
150 S. McKenna et al. / Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
conventional research privileges management and managerial need for control as a central research agenda. Firmly located in a
positivist epistemology, these approaches are neither objective nor neutral, but fundamentally informed by managerial need for
control over the workforce. Research conducted within this dominant paradigm, therefore, is not concerned with efcient working
practices and meeting the needs of the employees. Rather, its concern is control of and power over the labour process in order to
ensure that what is done, how it is done and by whom remains securely within managerial control. Research on work processes
and practices, therefore, particularly those undertaken in I/O psychology, is simply an extension of Taylorist control mechanisms.
There are two main strands of thought that we wish to highlight in relation to a critical ontology, both of which emphasize the
centrality of the concepts of control and power. First, structuralism highlights the idea that power and therefore control, is
embedded in the structures of society. As a consequence, we can understand workplace relationships better if we appreciate
power imbalances and inherent inequalities that pervade the social system. These imbalances can be based on social hierarchy,
gender, race, etc., but they are important in determining how control is exercised in the workplace. The second strand relates to
post-structuralism which contends that power is not something that is owned but that forms of power are exercised through
subjecting individuals to their own identity or subjectivity (Knights & Willmott, 1989, p. 553). Power is not structurally located,
therefore, it is interactional and shows itself as much in the micro-processes of the social world as in the macro-processes.
From a critical ontology it is important to defamiliarize what is portrayed in conventional, functionalist and prescriptive
approaches. In particular, we must identify howprocesses reect power and control not only in howwork is carried out, but also in
how people are expected to carry it out. The specic value of these critical approaches is that they seek to uncover the ways in
which subjectivity and identity are created through power in an attempt to develop dependence, apathy and compliance, and
therefore control, while purportedly building trust, commitment and empowerment. As a consequence, mechanisms, measures
and processes are developed in organizations that enable individuals to self-regulate and self-monitor.
Critical structuralists may identify with the possibility of a truth that can be discovered, however, they operate within critical
realism (Archer, 2000), suggesting that in order to access this truth, broad social, political and economic forces need to be
acknowledged. A key plank of critical structuralism, therefore, is the assumption that social, political and economic forces reect
the power and control needs of a dominant group(s). Conversely, post-structuralists argue that power and control are exercised at
a more micro-level but that they also produce the dependent subject, involved in their own subordination. What is common to
both structuralism and post-structuralism is the idea that things are done to people. As we consider critical approaches in relation
to PME in the following section, however, we also contend that people are more agentic in confronting power and control than is
acknowledged in the current body of critical scholarly work. Employees are not simply duped into following managerial initiatives.
4. Exploring positivist, interpretivist and critical approaches to the study of PME
4.1. Positivist approaches to PME
Like HRM more generally, we recognize that the study of PME is dominated by the unquestionably modernist perspective of
positivism (Legge, 2005 p. 337). Positivist research in PME is driven by a concern to provide managers with better tools with
which to manage employees and employment relations. It is, therefore, prescriptive and managerialist in its orientation.
Positivist approaches to PME commence fromthe assumption that performance is identiable, denable and measurable; it is,
in other words, an objective fact. It also assumes that processes can be discovered through which the achievement of performance
can be enhanced. Thus, causal relationships between variables can be uncovered or discovered in a systematic way and used to
determine the actions and behaviour necessary to augment performance as it has been dened by the organization/manager.
Goal-setting theory and its specic elements, for example, are rmly established as laws of PME, where goals are critical in
directing human action because they make it purposeful. The essentially functionalist and scientic nature of this theory is
evident when Locke and Latham(1996, p. 5) write that the ultimate basis of goal-directed action is the organism's need to sustain
life by taking the actions its nature requires. Positivist scholarship offers considerable support for the phenomena that enable
performance to be managed and enhanced (Aguinis, 2007; Antoni & Beckmann, 1990; Longenecker, Scazzero, & Stanseld, 1994;
Mourier, 2000), for example, that difcult goals lead to higher performance than easy goals, provided the former have valence for
the individual actor; specic goals are more effective than do your best statements; ongoing feedback is important; commitment
to goals is important and so on. Indeed, any new developments in PME are mere extensions of these laws, offering further
prescriptions to improve PME (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998; Latham et al., 2005). From this perspective, setting goals and other
practices, are important laws that determine performance enhancement because they have been scientically validated and are,
therefore, social facts.
While positivist approaches have clearly offered much in the way of direction to managers and organizations as to how
performance might be enhanced there are scholarly as well as practical limitations of this one-dimensional approach to the study
of PME. McLean (2008) has noted that PME in the positivist, functionalist paradigmis concerned with the need for control over the
way work is done by managers, and as a consequence work performance and workplace behaviour is subject to rating, judgment
and description by those in positions of power in the organizational hierarchy. Systems of PME are put in place that reect the
prescriptive laws that have become the regime of truth. If employees react negatively to these systems they are considered
dysfunctional and PME systems need to be readjusted or the training of coaches needs to be more effectively conducted (Latham
et al., 2005).
There is inherent in positivist/functionalist approaches to PME the assumption that the systemof PME is neutral; that managers
and employees share the same goals and objectives once they have been mutually agreed on and; that an accurate measure of
151 S. McKenna et al. / Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
performance can be established. Research within this paradigm constantly seeks to produce more accurate and scientic laws of
PME that can be universally applied. Yet, there is a wealth of research that indicates howproblematic it is to achieve the ideal PME
system for a number of reasons, e.g., the political context of organizational life (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, & Cardy, 2006; Hartel et al.,
2007; Longenecker, Gioia, & Sims, 1987; Murphy & Cleveland, 1995), legal ramications (Marrin, Barrol, & Kehoe, 2000),
performance goals (Loomis, 2003; Schweitzer, Ordonez, & Douma, 2004) and rating errors (Cleveland & Murphy, 1992; Levy &
Williams, 2004; Martin & Bartol, 1998). However, positivist/functionalist solutions to these limitations are driven by the search for
more sophisticated and nuanced schemes and techniques validated through science. There is an assumed connection between
PME systems and organizational performance, the validity of PME itself is never questioned. McLean (2008, p. 25) noted that:
The prescriptive literature, even when it attempts to be critical of appraisal, addresses criticisms by reviewing the impact
of appraisals on managers or organizational performance rather than through giving effective voice to workers.
In the positivist, prescriptive approach to PME voice is related to interactional justice, summarized in the following question
were the views of an individual taken into account within the pre-determined PME system and processes that have been
established? (Latham et al., 2005). The voice given to employees is offered within the system for enhancing organizational
performance, it is not about the system itself and the potential impact of a PME system on employees or indeed the organization.
Despite Deming's (1986) warning that PME systems could have a debilitating effect on performance and employee morale, the
dominant paradigm in PME perpetuates the importance of a validated and just system. The voice of the employee should be
heard within the systemto ensure justice. Furthermore, employees' voices should be heard through multisource feedback, where
self-appraisal is part of the gamut of comments made about an employee that enables an organization to gain a holistic view of
every individual.
5. Interpretivist approaches to PME
The prescriptive nature of positivist approaches to PME offer some insight into how PME systems should operate in an ideal
environment that is subject to managerial control and where performance of the organization in a way dened by management is
paramount. Interpretivism challenges assumptions that are implicit in positivist functionalism, such as the notion that ideal
environments can ever exist. This challenge evidently limits the potential success of positivist prescriptions because there can
never be an ideal environment in which the prescriptions can be applied (Goodall, Wilson, & Waagen, 1986; Pacanowsky &
O'Donnell-Trujillo, 1983). For example, social constructionist approaches would argue that behaviour is a function of employees'
interactions, perceptions and interpretations of the work environment, which in turn inuences performance (Pacanowsky &
O'Donnell-Trujillo, 1983). In this regard, positivist approaches to PME are unable to capture the dynamic social context and other
environmental contingencies to which participants react and as they are experienced (Farr & Levy, 2006). For interpretivists,
therefore, prescriptions while interesting, are actually much less useful than positivists would suggest and are always inevitably
decient. Consequently, interpretivists argue that PME processes and systems operate within complex human systems and in
mysterious ways. Thus, an objective of interpretivist research is to appreciate and acknowledge the mystery of PME and how it
evolves by taking into account respective contextual and individual processes.
We have noted that while positivist PME research seeks to identify general laws and rules that can be applied to the way
systems are designed and operated, these systems are rarely applicable in real organizational contexts where complex and
composite contextual features will establish how such systems actually function. Beard (1997) for example, in a study of the
performance appraisal of public accounting interns found that while performance appraisal as a process is conducted, the interns
were frequently dissatised with the quality of information received (Beard, 1997, p. 16). Eleven interns kept journals of their
personal experiences of work and were interviewed upon completion of their internship. Beard (1997) contends that the culture
of public sector accounting centres performance appraisal on outcomes not employees' development. More importantly, she found
that the interns developed intuitive evaluation; that is, ways of getting feedback outside of the performance management and
appraisal process. This informal feedback, however, was initiated by the interns themselves, not by the public accounting rms
within which they worked. Beard (1997, p. 23) posits that modern, formal performance management systems are no longer
relevant in a post-positivist work environment. Such systems are not suitable for managing and evaluating performance where
work is not mechanistically performed with strictly dened job responsibilities. People need to be evaluated, therefore, in a
manner that is consistent with the way work needs to be done, and this is very context specic and must take into account the
micro-level circumstances of an organization. These cannot be articulated in the form of a standardized system and set of
processes.
Pursuing this line of thought further, Murphy and Cleveland (1991) suggest that positivist models of PME have paid inadequate
attention to the organizational context in which appraisals occur. In this regard, they make a strong argument for newapproaches
to PME that would take into consideration the relevant social and situational context. Similarly, Ilgen, Barnes-Farrell, & McKellin
(1993) argued passionately for a new direction in PME scholarship and practice one that acknowledges the rating environment
or the social milieu in which people operate.
Barlow's (1989) case study of a specic PME system offers a useful exemplar of a constructionist approach to latent functions
(Merton, 1957) in the performance evaluation of managers. The case study highlights that although the intended function of the
respective management evaluation system was to evaluate managerial goals and objective achievement, its latent functions were
far more consequential. In particular, the study proposed that rewards, especially promotion, were based more on political
152 S. McKenna et al. / Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
processes involving senior management than objective criteria. Within the case study organization any manager who wanted
advancement had to recognize that the formal performance system was an institutionalized myth, which operated as a facade
behind which myths of technique and irreconcilable contradictions of power were sheltered from examination (Barlow, 1989, p.
512). Senior management could continue to protect entry to their cadre through social selection by relying on the formal systemof
performance evaluation to avoid inspection. The specic benet of this type of qualitative case study research is that it allows
access to the micro-practices and politics of everyday organizational life while raising signicant questions concerning ethical
practice and abuse of power.
Boyd and Kyle's (2004) discussion of social justice offers another example of howPME can be investigated froman interpretive
perspective. Their approach reects a more critical perspective of PME by challenging the notion that one's personal life and work
life can and should be separated, and that a person can be evaluated as an abstract individual fairly, independent of one's race,
gender, [and] family responsibilities (p. 256). For Boyd and Kyle (2004), this practice promotes injustice and limits the scope of
PME because it ignores employees' experiences of reality as both members of broad social groups and as unique individuals. They
argue that organizational development can only be enhanced if managers are willing to become interpretive researchers by
allowing workers to take ownership of the performance evaluation process, and reporting on their performance to other members
of the organization, instead of being reported on by management (Boyd and Kyle, 2004). In this way the PME system is effectively
constructed by employees themselves.
Following this tradition, Goodall et al. (1986) argue that organizations stand to benet from PME insofar as it reects the
realities of the work situation. Employees' performance depends on their perception and understanding of their respective
organizational culture, structure, climate, and their interaction with others. In other words, employees construct meanings about
their work situation which guide their organizational actions. Positivist PME, with its narrowfocus on performance outcomes, is ill
equipped to consider contextual factors. Consequently, scholars in the interpretive tradition over many years have called for a re-
designed PME system that can capture the broader organizational context (Beard, 1997; Goodall et al., 1986; McKenna, 2002;
Pacanowsky & O'Donnell-Trujillo, 1983).
As a further example, in an in-depth qualitative study of 60 senior executives, Longenecker et al. (1987) examined the extent to
which political considerations inuenced executives when they appraised subordinates. The authors found that factors other than
the subordinates' actual performance frequently determined the ratings subordinates received. In the study, executives openly
admitted that politics was a reality in the PME process. Longenecker et al. (1987) concluded that upper level managers acted not
because their organization's PME procedures were not sound, but rather decided to play by their own rules that they had
constructed instead of those associated with the system.
The examples previously discussed highlight the extent to which PME systems can sometimes be appropriated to hide/serve
other purposes. They also enable the identication of latent functions that override the apparent manifest functions of such a
system(Merton, 1957) and focus attention on the importance of attaching HRMactivity generally and PME systems specically to
wider systems of power in organizations. Rather than being neutral and rational ways of measuring performance objectively, we
see here how PME systems reect the exercise of power in organizational contexts in ways that are anything but neutral and
objective. The particular value of this type of research encourages a deeper approach to the study of morality and ethical behaviour
in organizations which can promote further debate over a more humane body of HRM practices (Legge, 2005).
Several scholars have touched upon the ethical dilemmas of positivist PME in organizations. For example, Banner and Cooke
(1984) signalled the challenges of managing the procedural aspects of PME such as evaluation criteria, measurement indicators,
and type of instruments. Longenecker and Ludwig (1990) argue that the key ethical concern in PME is not so much its procedural
aspects but the ethical integrity of the person doing the actual rating. Citing the works of Sherman et al. (1988) and Peters and
Austin (1983), Longenecker and Ludwig (1990) argue that managers violate the theoretical assumptions of positivist PME such as
objectivity, honesty, and accuracy in the interest of practical reality because they operate in organizational environments that
place a high priority on getting results, on minimizing conict, and ultimately, on survival (p. 962). As a result, the dynamics of the
environment force managers to focus on their own self-interests and those of the organization in their effort to manage
subordinates (Longenecker & Ludwig, 1990).
Ontologically and methodologically the interpretivist paradigm offers important alternatives for the investigation of PME
because it is sceptical of the received wisdom of functionalist approaches associated with positivism. Moreover, research
located within this paradigmhas identied howPME systems operate naturalistically and howthey are constructed by users to
operate in ways that produce functions entirely at odds with the manifest functions that the respective system was designed to
have. These ndings make signicant contributions to developments withinPME froma scholarly as well as practical perspective
because they emphasize how micro-practices impact on the way ideal PME systems actually work in practice. Furthermore,
much of the research to which we make reference in this section is not new, but the insights remain under-developed in
contemporary PME research, where issues of ethics and power and abuse of power in organizations are more important than
ever before.
6. Critical approaches to PME
As previously noted, critical approaches to PME develop from the tradition of structuralism or post-structuralism. In a broad
sense, both structuralism and post-structuralism posit that PME is something that is used to control a workforce in the interests of
those who hold power and who wish to maintain a measure of societal and workplace inequality. In other words, it is a technique
or device used by management to retain control of the way work is done and over the labour process more generally. Not only is
153 S. McKenna et al. / Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
this power and control embedded in the systems of work and, as a consequence within the system of PME, it is also, according to
some critical scholars, internalized by the workforce themselves who accept it to the point that they become self-monitoring and
self-regulating in line with the behaviours and competencies management requires of them.
A good exemplar of post-structuralist work in this area is that of Townley (1993, 1994). Using Foucault's (1995) concept of
disciplinary power, she argues that PME systems are techniques whose aim it is to classify and order individuals as subjects. PME
systems function, therefore, in an essentially unnoticed way to create, dene and enforce an identity on employees while they are
at work (Barratt, 2002). To that extent, employees are controlled indirectly through PME systems which are designed to shape the
contribution they make in the workplace. PME is primarily concerned with ensuring that employees are manageable and perhaps
even malleable through techniques of classication, monitoring and measurement (job description, job specication, job analysis,
goal-setting, etc.). They are also manipulated into becoming self-regulating; that is, they self-monitor to ensure that they conform
to the managerially determined requirements of appropriate thought and action. If they do not conform they will have to take
corrective action to get back on track; a notion implicit in the idea of persistent feedback in PME.
Critical approaches raise important questions about the functions of PME and whose interests it represents. Rather than being
designed for the benet of all employees and thus serving neutral and unitarist purposes uniting all employees in an organization
around mutually agreed interests, PME is viewed as representing partial interests. The objective of PME, therefore, is to remove
control from employees rather than to empower them and as a consequence reects and adheres to the principles of Taylorism.
From this standpoint, PME systems are not concerned with measuring performance accurately or fairly, but with transmitting
management's expectations about required performance to employees, who will then internalize those expectations as a form of
control. If this is the case, one way of looking at PME in organizations is to view it as an arena within which management and
employees vie for control of the way in which work is done and the behaviours and identity of the person doing it. Managers need
to persuade employees to accept their denition of the way work should be done and what kind of an employee should do it. From
a Foucauldian (Foucault, 1995) approach this concerns the extent to which managers are able to persuade employees to accept
their own subordination (McLean, 2008). Yet, it also raises research and practical questions concerning how employees might
accept, resist or negotiate such persuasion. Critical approaches to PME highlight the responses of employees to the imposition of
PME systems, noting that organizations are sites of conict and plurality, not simply compliance/commitment and shared values.
What is particularly important about critical approaches to PME is that they highlight the submerged voice of those who
experience HRM initiatives (Legge, 2005, p. 41). Moreover, they allow and acknowledge that employees are active agents whose
acceptance, resistance or negotiation of managerial initiatives in HRM generally and PME specically, shapes the actual form that
these initiatives take within any given organizational context. Furthermore, employees have some capability to determine the
identities that they create for themselves in organizational contexts within structural constraints (Archer, 2000). In a study of the
introduction of American PME practices and other HRMinitiatives into a Chinese organization, for example, McKenna, Richardson,
Singh and Xu (forthcoming) report howemployees decided which to accept, which to negotiate and which to resist or ignore, thus
fundamentally shaping the operation of any given practice in the organizational context. Investigation of how employees make
sense of PME is critical, therefore, if we are to understand how it actually operates within organizations. The same can also be said
of research that identies how employees accept, negotiate and resist PME initiatives (McKinlay & Taylor, 1996; Truss, 2001;
Brown & Benson, 2003; Watson, 2004). In this regard, perfecting performance management and evaluation techniques through
enhanced training or measurement sophistication is irrelevant to the functioning of PME systems. PME systems are located within
a social context which must be understood and acknowledged when investigating how (and for whom) they function.
Critical approaches offer an alternative to positivist/functionalist approaches to PME because, among other things, they
question the assumption that organizations represent the interests of all its members. PME systems may be introduced by
management to enhance performance in accordance with managerial denitions of performance but may not be acceptable to
employees. This opposition does not reect dysfunctional behaviour, as positivist/functionalist arguments would suggest, but the
response of active agents individually or collectively, asserting their own interests and identities that they wish to preserve and
represent. Investigating these interests, identities, resistances and negotiations is at the core of much critical research that places
employees rather than managers at the centre of study.
7. Conclusion: Alternative paradigms and the study and practice of PME
The specic purpose of this paper has been to identify the value of alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies in
the study of PME in order to contribute towards a more composite and dynamic body of PME scholarship. We have focused
attention on juxtaposing the dominant approaches associated with positivist functionalism with alternative approaches located
within interpretivism and critical theory. To contextualize the discussion, the paper commenced by addressing the dominance of
positivist functionalism in North American PME scholarship. This dominance was juxtaposed with the willingness of scholars,
some in North America but most elsewhere, to embrace more emic issues and concerns. We also considered assumptions about
the nature of science more broadly and how the concept of science is viewed differently from disparate ontological positions.
The main body of the paper explored positivist, interpretivist and critical approaches to the study of PME. We have
acknowledged that the dominant positivist approach has made contributions to the study and practice of PME from a
managerialist perspective, seeking to prescribe ways in which managers can better control the outcomes of work in organizations.
However, we also contend that if PME scholarship and practice are to evolve into a richer body of knowledge, its current trajectory,
understood as more of the same or a rejection of alternative and equally valid views of PME, must be challenged. In other words,
the search for a deeper, more complex understanding of PME theory and practice must extend beyond the functionalist paradigm
154 S. McKenna et al. / Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
and positivist methodologies, and must question not simply serve, the practical concerns of managers. Instead, we must be
prepared to embrace a diversity of approaches, which may challenge the very premise of what has been constructed thus far.
7.1. Implications for research and issues of practical value
An approach to PME informed by critical and/or interpretivist perspectives would enable an understanding of PME that is quite
different to that provided by the dominant positivist perspective. It would especially privilege the alternative voice of the
employee; that which is not manipulated or manufactured by management. Critical and interpretivist approaches represent a rich
and organized system of critical knowledge which can be applied to PME in a manner that is as valid as those proposed by
managerialist scholarship. For example, we have highlighted howinterpretivist research can give voice to those impacted by PME
initiatives. The idea of giving voice, not constrained by voice within a PME system, to the usually unrepresented is important. PME
is a technique of management, knowing what employees make of PME initiatives is of obvious importance. Constructionism(Burr,
2003) can highlight the underlying political, emotional and social processes that inuence the creation and function of PME
systems as in Barlow's (1989) and Longenecker et al.'s (1987) studies. Knowledge of these processes enables researchers'
engagement with them. PME is better and more fully understood if viewed from divergent and perhaps even contradictory
perspectives using a range of creative methods. Constructionism enables researchers to interpret how PME systems are politically
and socially constructed. Critical post-structuralist approaches facilitate the exposure of the potential for manipulation, injustice
and immorality in PME systems and may facilitate the development of more humane and ethical systems of management.
Furthermore, critical approaches identify the fundamental role that employees play in the way in which PME systems operate.
Employees do not simply accept such systems as imposed by management, they have agency to accept, resist or negotiate the
manner of the system's operation (McKenna et al., forthcoming; Delbridge & Ezzamel, 2005).
For real innovation to occur in PME scholars are better advised to look beyond the more immediate locales to explore
alternative perspectives. In doing so they can move towards a more holistic and potentially more useful body of knowledge about
PME. Yet, such a move would require paradigmatic tolerance and an acceptance that positivism represents only a partial view of
the eld under study. There is a need to embrace and engage with theoretical and practical diversity that is informed by multiple
ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies. This is not to say that prescription is in itself a problem but rather that any
prescriptions, if it is within a paradigm to offer them, needs to be based on a fuller appreciation of specic contexts. As a simple
example, it seems intuitively important that PME research is concerned with the voice and concerns of both managers and
employees at a much deeper and more nuanced level than positivist approaches allow.
Furthermore, it is also important to acknowledge that within critical approaches there is a level of thinking that fundamentally
rejects the idea of PME and contends that its only concern is to support performativity; that is, the objectives of organizational
performance, competitiveness and protability (Watson, 2004; Legge, 2005). Scholars adopting this position may, quite
reasonably from this paradigm, reject the proposition that their work can be used to complement and overcome the practical
limitations of positivist scholarship. Additionally they might actively oppose suggestions that their work can be used to further
embed managerial prerogative in the workplace, and argue that their motivation is to expose, rather than support, the PME agenda
as an array of tools that are rooted in a systemof control over employees and the desire to create a conforming subject. More work
is required to identify how employees oppose and re-negotiate this pressure to conform, what outcomes it produces and how it
impacts on the working lives of people individually and collectively. Such research enables more productive debate of the kind that
is now occurring in the eld of management study more broadly (Clegg, Kornberger, Carter, & Rhodes, 2006).
In PME like HRM more generally (Watson, 2004) a critical analysis is needed to enhance comprehension of how PME systems
develop within specic organizational situations. By denition PME systems and practices are techniques for managerial action
and control and there will be many (most) researchers whose objective it is to discover how better this control (effectiveness)
can be achieved. From a scholarly position, however, this is not enough. Not only is it paradigmatically one-dimensional, but by
focusing only on the enhancement of the techniques of PME, such research ignores the existence of a diverse body of stakeholders.
New developments in PME should relate not simply to the development of new prescriptions for managerial action, but should
question the very basis of these prescriptions and the very basis of the ideals that they may serve. Paradigmatic development and
tolerance for a more composite picture of a social phenomenon under study is surely the objective of scholarly work. In PME such
rich diversity has been palpably lacking.
Finally, what is the practical value of paradigmatic diversity for performance management and evaluation? Clearly both
interpretivists and those adopting a critical approach would respond with, what exactly does practical value mean? and
practical value for whom? Even Deming (1986), hardly a radical thinker in the tradition of critical management studies, argued
that PME systems produced mediocrity in performance and a decline in moral and should be abolished. Have any organizations
been courageous enough to try this experiment? And, if so, with what success? If the requisite performance can be achieved
without PME systems we might conclude that such systems have another purpose, perhaps to control. Have organizations
established performance management systems in a way that has involved all organizational stakeholders? Are systems in
operation where the power relationship in managing performance has been neutralized? Where are the organizations who
distribute more fairly and equitably the outcomes of collective good performance to all organizational members, regardless of
title? Instead of nding ever more scientically validated ways to prescribe best practice in PME, researchers might engage with
actual organizations that make fairer and more just systems actually work. Researchers might also nd examples of where ethical
and equitable PME actually exist, thereby redening best practice from practice itself, rather than engaging in the endless (and
meaningless) search to provide best practice in the abstract. Practical value derives, we argue, from the close study of practice
155 S. McKenna et al. / Human Resource Management Review 21 (2011) 148157
itself, from which lessons can be learned about fairness or unfairness, justice or injustice, ethical or unethical activity in PME.
Engaging with the social and organizational world at close quarters is a prerequisite for appreciating how practice evolves in the
world and it is here that practical value is created. New developments in PME require this close engagement.
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