GROUP MEMBER:

1. NURUL NABILAH BINTI RAMLAN (2021495176)

2. NUR HIKMAH BINTI ABU BAKAR (2021868498)
3. NURUL FAIZA BINTI MOHD AMALUDDIN (2021614834)
4. HANANI BINTI HANAFI (2021459268)

Answer of Tutorial Chapter 5

1. Key accountabilities are broad areas of a job for which the employee is responsible for
producing results. Objectives are statements of important and measurable outcomes.
Finally, a performance standard is a yardstick used to evaluate how well employees have
achieved each objective. Performance standards provide information on acceptable and
unacceptable performance regarding, for example, quality, quantity, cost, and time.

The first step in determining accountabilities is to collect information about the job. Tasks
included in the job description can be grouped into clusters of tasks based on their degree
of relatedness. Each of these clusters or accountabilities is a broad area of the job for
which the employee is responsible for producing results. Once the accountabilities are
identified, we need to determine their relative degree of importance and specific
objectives. The purpose of establishing objectives is to identify a limited number of
highly important results that, when achieved, will have a dramatic impact on the overall
success of the organization. After objectives are set, employees should receive feedback
on their progress toward attaining the objective, and rewards should be allocated to
employees according to whether they have reached their objectives. Once accountabilities
and objectives have been determined, the next step is to define performance standards.
Standards can refer to various aspects of a specific objective, including quality, quantity,
and time.

2. Comparative systems base the measurement on comparing employees with one another.
Advantages of using relative measurement methods include: these types of measurement
procedures are usually easy to explain, decisions resulting from these types of systems
 are fairly easy and cut and dry, and they tend to control for several biases and errors made
by those rating performance better than absolute systems. Disadvantages associated with
the use of relative systems include: employees usually are compared only in terms of a
single overall category, and we don’t have information on the relative distance between
employees.

Absolute systems base the measurement on comparing employees with a prespecified

performance standard. Advantages of using absolute systems include: the essay system
has the potential to provide detailed feedback to employees regarding their performance,
behavior checklists are easy to use and understand, and critical incidents allow
supervisors to focus on actual job behavior rather than on vaguely defined traits.
Disadvantages of using absolute systems include: essays are almost totally unstructured,
detailed and useful feedback is difficult to extract from the numerical rating provided by
a behavior checklist, and collecting critical incidents is very time consuming

3. What are the different areas in which this individual is expected to focus his/her efforts
(key accountabilities)? Within each area, what are the expected objectives? How do we
know how well the results have been achieved (performance standards)?

4. Accountabilities are determined to identify a limited number of highly important results

that, when achieved, will have a dramatic impact on the overall success of the
organization.

5. Good objectives have the following characteristics. They are:

● Specific and clear
● Challenging
● Agreed upon
● Significant
● Prioritized
● Bound by time
● Achievable
 ● Fully communicated
● Flexible
● Limited in number

6. Standards must include an action (increase), the desired result (to $22,000), a due date
(by December 1st), and some type of quality or quantity indicator (the increase in sales
from $15,000 to $22,000 and at a cost not to exceed $3,000)

7. There are two types of competencies: differentiating and threshold. Differentiating

competencies are those that allow us to distinguish between average and superior
performers. Threshold competencies are those that everyone needs to display to do the
job at a minimally adequate standard. In other words, the difference is that threshold
competencies are essential in order to perform a job, whereas differentiating
competencies will distinguish the top performers from the rest.

8. When judging the extent to which an objective has been achieved, the following three
aspects of the specific objective should be considered in comparison to what was
expected:
● Quality—in terms of how well the objective was achieved
● Quantity—in terms of how much of the objective was achieved, how many
objectives were achieved, how often the objective was achieved, and at what cost
the objective was achieved
● Time—in terms of due dates, the schedule, cycle times, and how quickly the
objective was achieved

9. Good performance standards have the following characteristics. They are:

● Related to the position
● Concrete, specific, and measurable
● Practical to measure
● Meaningful
● Realistic and achievable
 ● Reviewed regularly

10. An indicator is an observable behavior that gives us information regarding the

competency in question.

11. When describing a competency, we need to provide the following components:

● Definition of a competency
● Description of specific behavioral indicators that can be observed when someone
demonstrates a competency effectively
● Description of specific behaviors that are likely to occur when someone doesn’t
demonstrate a competency effectively (what a competency is not)
● Suggestions for developing the competency

12. Comparative measurement systems are as follows:

● Simple rank order is simply when employees are ranked from best performer to
worst performer.
● Alternation rank order is when the supervisor selects (in the following order) the
best performer (i.e., #1), then the worst performer (e.g., #2000), then the second
best performer (i.e., #2), then the second worst performer (e.g., #1999), and so
forth, alternating between top and bottom until the list is completed (and they
meet in the middle).
● Paired comparisons are when explicit comparisons are made between all pairs of
employees to be evaluated, such that each employee’s performance is compared to
all other employees’ performance.
● Relative percentile method asks raters to consider all ratees at the same time and
to estimate the relative performance of each by using a 100-point scale. If an
employee receives a 75-point mark on the scale, it means that about 25 percent of
employees are better performers and about 75 percent of employees are worse
performers than this individual. This method may include one such scale for each
competency as well as one scale to evaluate the overall performance of all
employees.
 ● Forced distribution apportions employees according to an approximately normal
distribution. For example, about 20 percent will fall under the “top performers”
category, about 70 percent will fall under the “average performers” category, and
about 10 percent will fall under the “underperformance” category.

13. Absolute performance measurement systems compare employees with prespecified

performance standards, using the following approaches:
● Essays describe the employee’s strengths and weaknesses, making suggestions for
improvement. An advantage is that essays have the potential to provide detailed
feedback; disadvantages to essays include the fact that they are unstructured and
may lack detail, their usefulness depends on the supervisor’s writing skill, and
they are difficult to use in decisions regarding compensation, partially due to the
lack of quantitative information provided. They are also quite time consuming,
considering the number of employees the supervisor may have.
● Behavior checklists use a form listing behavioral statements that are indicators of
the various competencies to be measured. An advantage is that such a checklist is
easy to understand; disadvantages are that the scale points used are often arbitrary
and that it is difficult to get detailed and useful feedback from the numerical
rating.
● Critical incidents: This approach involves gathering reports of situations in which
employees performed behaviors that were especially effective or ineffective in
accomplishing their objectives. An advantage is that this allows the supervisor to
focus on actual employee behavior rather than on vaguely defined traits; the
disadvantage is that collecting such information is very time consuming.
● Graphic rating scales are considered the most popular tools to measure
performance. It is important to ensure that the response categories are clearly
defined, that interpretation of the rating by an outside party is clear, and that the
employee and the supervisor would both understand the rating. Behaviorally
Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) improve on graphic rating scales by using
critical incidents as anchors. Their development is dependent on active employee
 involvement at several points as well as final supervisor and employee checking
of the items for dependability of the ratings.

14. Voice Behavior is a type of behavior that emphasizes the expression of constructive
challenge withthe goal to improve rather than merely criticize, it challenges the status quo
in a positive way, and it is about making innovative suggestions for change and
recommending a modification to standard procedures even when others, including
an employee’s supervisor, disagree.

15. It is important to consider cultural differences when defining and measuring performance
because they are contextual factors that will affect how organizational members’ added
value is measured and perceived. For example, organizations in the United States tend to
value behaviors that are individualistic in nature and that demonstrate individual
achievement, self-reliance, competition, and disengaged emotional styles. In such
organizations, individuals from groups that align themselves with collectivistic values
may view these behaviors as negative, and their behaviors may be perceived as
dependent, lacking sufficient commitment, and weak in initiative.

16. The behavior approach is most appropriate under the following conditions:
● The link between behaviors and results is not obvious.
● Outcomes occur in the distant future.
● Poor results are due to causes beyond the performer’s control.

17. Adopting a results approach to measuring performance is most appropriate in the

following three job examples:
● Professional basketball players’ offensive performance is well measured by their
free throw shooting percentage.
● The performance of a postal delivery worker can be measured using the results
approach: whether the mail is delivered to every customer within a particular time
frame.
● The results approach is appropriate for measuring an artist’s performance, such as
by the public response to their exhibit and profits made from pieces sold.