The merits and limitations of trait-based and objective based appraisal systems.

 

Appraising on the basis of performance against objective has the great advantage of being operational. Appraisals are not apart from the job that managers do but are a review of what they did as managers. There are always questions of how well a person did ; of whether goals were missed or accomplished, and for what reasons; and of how much in the way of goal attainment should be expected. But information about what a  person has done, measured against what that individual agreed was a reasonable target available. This information furnishes strong presumptions of objectivity and reduces the element of pure judgement in appraisal which gives better visibility to managerial needs, development programmes can be better pinpointed.

There are certain weaknesses in the implementation of objective based appraisal. One of them is that it is entirely possible for persons to meet a miss goals through no fault of their own luck which often plays a part in performance. For example a new product's acceptance may be for beyond expectations, and its success will make a marketing managers look exceptionally good, even though the quality of the marketing programme and its implementation might actually be poor. There may also be an overemphasis on output quantity and not enough attention given to the quality of the product or service.