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Guiding employees with performance management
Performance management
in the twenty-first century appears destined to face the challenge of creating
and re-creating ever more competitive and effective performance systems. Doing
so will require understanding and appreciation of the evolution of performance
systems through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and understanding the
basic elements that made them successful. We may begin with an historical review
of performance systems and build to the present, identifying the characteristics
of such systems as we progress.
The first stirrings of modern shop management practices appear within the
discipline of industrial engineering. The dominant personality in this field
unquestionably is Frederick Winslow Taylor, the universally acknowledged father
of scientific management. Taylor's accomplishments training within a context of
a robust and supportive work culture. Indeed, one of the best paths to high
performance at the turn of the twenty-first century appears to be in systematic,
purposeful construction of a performance culture formed around the selected
skills and attitudes of individual workers, augmented by intensive training
within a performance culture. Attention to relevant individual differences and
to work group values is indispensable to creation of such a culture. Indeed, an
argument for the necessity of discriminating good from poor potential workers
probably turns on the individual's potential to the shape and quality of
organization culture. Ultimately, the robustness of a culture is determined by
the clarity, honesty and openness of its communications. These are issues that
must also be visited.
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