The Effect of Rater Accuracy on Performance Assessments within Organizations

Abstract

Past literature has argued that assessments within organizations are largely unreliable. Assessments conducted in organizations reflect the presence of a rater effect and a resulting distortion of assessment data. Nevertheless, most organizations continue to develop evaluative indicators that evaluate organization members inaccurately. We examined the relationship between the evaluation results reflecting the bias and the actual performance of the organization. In this study of evaluations from university laboratories, we investigated differences between evaluations of individuals and actual laboratory performance. University laboratories are parallel with workplace groups as the professor (manager) leads a group of students (employees) through given tasks and work to give a competitive edge to the university (company). Contrary to the findings of previous research, the results of this study showed significant relationships between some assessment indicators and actual laboratory performance, regardless of the presence of the rater effect.