1.1 Study Background:
In the present context of human resource management, assessing outcomes of performance appraisals has become one of the most pressing concerns on the human resource managers, policy makers and decision makers. It is because human resource managers want to see what impacts performance appraisals are leaving on their employees and then subsequently organizations. This indeed helps them identifying the variables who positively or negatively affect employee attitudes, and devising their performance appraisal strategies accordingly.
Performance appraisals, which are employed to assist individual development and organizational planning, are considered an important part of effective human resource management either it is national or international. Much earlier, Meyer et al., (1965) discussed the ‘split roles’ of performance appraisals, citing developmental feedback and decision making as the two major purposes for conducting appraisals. Over two decades ago, Bernardin and Beatty (1984) identified many interdependent purposes of performance appraisal; include improving the use of resources and serving as a basis for personnel actions. Similarly, Cleveland, 2003) have shown that in practice, performance appraisals appear to be directed to four purposes: to make distinctions among people, distinguish a person’s strengths from his or her weaknesses, implement and evaluate human resource systems in organizations, and document personnel decisions.
Performance appraisal is a vital component of a broader set of human resource practices; it is the mechanism for evaluating the extent to which each employee’s day-to-day performance is linked to the goals established by the organization (Coutts and Schneider, 2004). Performance appraisal, as a process of identifying, observing, measuring and developing human performance in organizations (Taylor et al., 1994), has attracted the attention of both academics and practitioners. The