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Performance appraisal systems are often considered primarily in their role as criterion measures for validation studies. Even when they are considered in other organizational roles, there has traditionally been a strong focus on improving the accuracy of the appraisals. The present article argues that the proper focus of performance appraisal is to change employees' behavior on the job—both task performance behavior and contextual performance. Specifically, appraisals are best considered as part of a larger performance management system, where the entire focus is on improving performance. Such a focus has important implications for how concerned we are about perceived accuracy and fairness. Furthermore, when viewed in this way, it is clear that we must consider how to leverage individual level performance up to the level of the firm, since improving firm performance is critical to any organization's strategic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study that examines the importance for managers of public universities to pay close attention to performance management practices and information communication technology (ICT) adoption. It explores the method of the study uses disproportionate stratified purposive approach to determine responses from 900 employees from public universities in Uganda. The findings of the study reveal the importance of performance management practices in agency relations and goal setting with ICT adoption to achieve managed performance in public universities.

This article focuses on what some sceptics see as disillusionment with conventional evaluation practice, in that many governments experience only limited use of evaluation findings. This has contributed to a significant increase in results-based performance measurement. Yet not everyone in the evaluation community welcomes this development. The authors make the point that significant complementarities exist between evaluation and performance measurement and therefore the boundaries between these practices may need to be redefined. In other words, evaluators will need to enter into a constructive dialogue with performance management practitioners. By investigating their methodological similarities and differences, the authors argue that evaluation studies and performance measurement are highly complementary forms of knowledge production. Finally, they argue that evaluation tools may in fact strengthen a number of the identified shortcomings of performance measurement systems when applied in performance management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jacqueline Geoghegan describes how performance managing modern matrons can improve patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]