Perceived Social and Psychological Effects of Performance Appraisal in Selected International Donor Organizations in Kenya

Abstract

In the work environment there is the inevitable practice of performance appraisal. The human inclination to judge can create positive and negative effects in the workplace. The study therefore attempts to find out the perceived social and psychological effects of performance appraisal among employees in selected international donor organizations. The study was carried out in international donor organizations which had their head offices located in Nairobi. A structured questionnaire was administered to the managers and other sta from these organizations. The target respondents were the non-managerial employees althoug their responses were compared with those of their managers to ascertain any disparity betweer them. The questionnaires were administered to all the staff in the donor organizations because their numbers tended to be small. Chi-square tests were used in analyzing the data. The results indicated that performance appraisal brings about increased confidence levels amor employees, rivalry between the management and the employees, dissatisfaction, eagerness by employees in finding out how they are rated by their supervisors and performance appraisal shock. The study also revealed that in some cases the age, gender and education level of the respondents determined the perceptions of the social and psychological effects in relation to performance appraisal.