Performance Management

Armstrong and Baron(2005,P.14) The term Performance management and Performance Appraisal are sometimes synonymous but they are different, Performance management is a comprehensive continuous and flexible approach to the management of organisation, teams and individuals which involves the maximum amount of dialogue between those concerned .Performance appraisal is more of a limited approach which involves manager making top-down assessment and rating the performance of their subordinate at an annual performance appraisal meeting .To define performance appraisal in its own context , Performance appraisals are a valuable performance management tool to evaluate the performance and value employees provide as well as set of goals for the next review period (Rasley,2012).while performance management is the systematic measuring and monitoring of organizational progress against corporate target as cascaded down to business as well as operational level of an organization ,or is the systematic process of planning work and setting expectations, continually monitoring performance, developing the capacity to perform, periodically rating performance in a summary fashion and rewarding good performance (willams,2010) The last couple of years have seen organisation use performance management and performance appraisal as a tool to measure effectiveness although we cannot really lay our hands on a specific date about performance appraisal but looking as far back as the third century A.D ,according to Kevin, Murphy and Cleavland (1995, p.3)Sin yu an early Chinese philosopher criticised a biased rater employed by the Wei dynasty on the grounds that ‘the imperial rater of nine grades seldom rates men according to their merits but always according to his likes and dislikes, while the origin of performance management can be traced to the early 1960’s where performance appraisal systems were practiced. During this period annual confidential reports (ACR’s) which was also known as employee