Maximizing the Value of 360‐degree Feedback

Citation

Williams, A. (2001), "Maximizing the Value of 360‐degree Feedback", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 22 No. 7, pp. 664-674. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijm.2001.22.7.664.4

Employee performance and its evaluation have been a major source of interest in human resource management (HRM) dating back to Taylor and his contemporaries. In the process it has created a vast literature, and acted as one of the major tools for the evaluation of human performance at work. This study deals in detail with the conceptual and operational framework that underpins an increasingly popular means of performance rating at work; on the grounds that while 360‐degree feedback is being increasingly talked about, it has a much larger potential than that attached to the notion that it is a tool exclusively used by the HRM manager.

While this book can be perceived as a manual for the application of a specific form of performance evaluation and as such stands in the long tradition of that genre its claims are more ambitious in form and substance. For its main purpose is to act as a rationale for the view that it could play a larger role than that of the conventional management tool. As the distilled research of a centre devoted to the study of creative leadership, its apparent and primary purpose is to offer a systematic means for the longer term attainment of positive organizational change, a much larger focus than that required by the description of an operational methodology. This means that to understand the full utility of 360‐degree feedback, it is necessary to treat it, not as a tool to fix problems, but as an evolving process.

The operational model which builds on the work of Nadler and others, is grounded in the fields of organizational and industrial psychology. As a result, the reader feels a strong sense of familiarity when, in the introduction, 360‐degree feedback is described as a means whereby individual ratings on performance are obtained. The intellectual parentage of the process can thus be traced back to employee attitude surveys and performance appraisals.

But while the argument runs, such traditional methodologies are grounded in the reality of current and functional work performance, a further claim is made for this particular progeny. Moving beyond conventional diagnostic and problem‐solving functions, its key use lies in its ability to be constructively predictive about organizational change. Individual performance assessment as a consequence becomes a series of multiple activities, in which peer evaluates the worker by co‐workers, both super and subordinate, and increasingly we are told by customers.

The system as prescribed in the body of the study is subject to a wide range of customised variations which appear to be dependent on the perceived needs of a given organization and a wide variety of expectations as to both individual and collective outcomes. The notion of individual self‐development is seen as actively coexisting with organizational development. It is here that readers steeped in the more traditional perceptions of HRM with its goal and role congruencies, stakeholder interests and common cultural values, might tend to lose their way. For what is proposed in the key chapter on the rationale for 360‐degree interventions, is an organization in which those high‐performing individuals identified by both work performance and endorsed by feedback, look after themselves using the process as a core means for self‐development.

The rationale for this approach lies in the larger debate on the need for industrial organizations to engage in transformational activities. These are then perceived to be ongoing, presumably because the only constant in terms of Drucker’s immortal paradox is change. They have also raised, as the book points, out a debate as to whether the 360‐degree feedback process should be used as an appraisal system, or in line with the arguments stated above, as a means whereby the human capital of the firm is sustained and developed. A problem appears here because it is difficult to ascertain the role and status of employees in the model. They are clearly jewels in the corporate crown, but the inevitable question of the degree of autonomy they enjoy in operational practice is not specified with any clarity.

Another problem seems to arise when the inevitable question is asked: Does the process have some degree of universal applicability? In other words, does the system travel well outside the US business environment? A reported attempt at replication (p. 210), outside a Western business environment, seemed to raise the same pattern of differences in the all‐important area of rating responses that was first identified in Hofstede’s classic study on managerial cultures. In turn, the serious problems that arise in language translation were also identified. The authors had little to offer, however, in the matter of a solution to the semantic problems involved in designing a universal test instrument that could be used in any required test situation. Rather they thought that responsibility for effective products (p. 213) should be left to the publishers of standard test instruments.

To be fair, the authors are also honest about the many problems facing the cross‐cultural use of the techniques involved in the process. On the other hand, they were confidently of the view that there would be an ultimate acceptance of the system’s multinational value as a process instrument sometime in the future. The concluding discussion in the study strongly endorses the use of 360‐degree feedback as a continuous process, but with a seriously limited utility where an organization would simply use it on a one‐off basis.

For the professional HRM manager, the value of the book lies in its technical description and methodological narrative. Unfortunately, for the generalist reader the density of some of the technical arguments and the need to be aware of the professional literature to fully understand the professional debate presents a problem. The book could also have benefited from a section which looked at the nature of organizational change in a more comprehensive way, with arguments grounded in the growing literature on organizational scenarios, as well as the emergent information and knowledge‐based industries. In its absence, one is left with the strong impression that 360‐degree feedback may find its best clients in traditional forms of industrial organization, where managerial processes mirror market stability and an equity base grounded in fixed forms of capital. How far these will qualify as learnin‐based firms in the future might have been a chapter that would have been worth reading.

It remains to commend the book for its value as a manual, which will gain much use on the evaluative side of the methodological argument. Its contribution as a guide to a developmental strategy is less clear, in the absence of an effective discussion on the structural consequences of change on organizations. In sum, this is a volume that would be a useful addition to the HRM library collection of business schools, firms, public sector organizations and tertiary institutions.