Based on research by Enoch Kusi Asare, DBA, CPA, J. Lee Whittington, PhD, and Robert Walsh, PhD.

Clarify expectations and commit to ongoing expectation-based feedback.

The contemporary practice of performance management is under attack. Many consultants have suggested that all performance evaluation programs should be suspended, and several organizations have followed this advice. However, these research findings indicate that these calls are premature and may be uninformed. These results indicate that when practiced as a comprehensive and integrated system, performance management systems have a strong positive relationship with high levels of employee engagement, job satisfaction and affective commitment to the organization.

Key Points

• Accounting work is characterized by high job demands and tight deadlines. With less task variety, accounting work is susceptible to employee disengagement.

• Enhanced performance management practices promote engagement among accountants.

• Engagement promotes job satisfaction and affective commitment among accountants.

Overview

• For over a decade, the Gallup organization has consistently reported that only one in three employees is engaged at work. This study demonstrates that performance planning and implementation are critical to enhancing accountants’ work attitudes and behaviors.

• The enhanced performance management system tested in this study emphasizes performance planning along with frequent, helpful, ongoing expectations-based feedback during performance implementation.

• At a time when many are suggesting that performance evaluations should be abandoned, this study suggests a different direction. Instead of abandoning performance evaluations, this research presents an evidence-based recommendation that performance evaluations should be embedded in a comprehensive performance management system. Rather than viewing performance evaluations as an independent activity occurring at the end of some specified performance period, this study suggests that managers should develop a system for managing performance that explicitly links expectations in the form of clear goals developed in a thorough performance planning session with regular concurrent feedback.

Based upon the following peer-reviewed manuscript: Asare Kusi, E., Whittington, J. L., Walsh, R. J. (2020). Promoting desirable work attitudes and behaviors among accountants: A field study. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, 35(10), 1591-1604.