Evolution of Performance Appraisal.

Performance assessment is as old as organised activities of human being. It has evolved in concept and application. This Blog analyses the history of performance assessment and its transition towards a holistic performance management system from ancient times to 21st Century. 

Performance assessment or appraisal of an individual is as old as mankind. The holy Bible has many examples where the evaluation of individual performance is an important issue. “The Lord has filled him (Bezalel) with the spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in knowledge and all manner of workmanship to design artistic works, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in carving word, and to work in all manner of artistic workmanship” (Exodus, 35, pp. 31-3). Moses selected the man who was known to be most skilled craftsman from the tribes of Israel to build and furnish the tabernacle of the Lord in approximately 1350 BC (Wiese and Buckley, 1998).

Around 3000 BC, the ancient Egyptians had to “encourage” their workers to build the great pyramids – and, unwittingly, they utilized performance management systems to do so. Their system revolved around whipping those workers who did not perform as required, to achieve their goals. This worked effectively for them as evidenced by the splendid pyramids that they built. There is evidence that other ancient civilizations such as Rome and China also had performance management systems (Furnham, 2004).

Indus Valley (before 1500 BC) 

While ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia relied heavily on slaves and forced labor, the Indus civilization appears to have relied more on craftsmen and trade. Standardized weights enabled traders to make fair trades. The weights may have been used by officials to levy taxes. The Indus people of Mohenja-Daro and Harappan had a system of measurements. They smelted, cast and used copper and bronze. Harappa kilns produced millions of bricks. The Indus people used the wheel for transportation. Their performance measurement criteria back then was the total production by each individual. Quality of the product also mattered. Potters producing better quality vessels and of better designs used to be appreciated. 

However, this period produced many craftsmen having different skillset. The remains of the ancient Indian civilisation unearthed at Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Kaushambi and the various inscriptions found all over the country show that the development of goldsmithy, blacksmithy, carpentry, ivory- carving, ceramics industries and spinning and weaving of yarn and cloth was phenomenal in ancient India (Saran, 1957) 

16th and 17th Century

 Ignatius Loyala established a system for formal rating of the members of the Jesuit Society (Whisler & Harper, 1962). Ignatius was a nobleman who had a military background. He formed the Society of Jesus, which was approved in 1540 by Pope Paul III. He wrote the Jesuit Constitution, adopted in 1553, which created a centralised organization and stressed acceptance of any mission to which the pope would call them. According to Pontes (2010), formal performance appraisal programs were not new. St. Ignatius of Loyola used a combined system of notes and reports of activities and potential of each of his Jesuits. In 1648, Dublin (Ireland) Evening Post has a system of evaluating legislators by using a rating scale based upon personal qualities (Hackett, 1928), as cited in (Wiese & Buckley, 1998). 

18thand 19th Century

 In the 18th -19th centuries there were early forms of performance appraisal in Britain and USA, and most Western armies did appraisals in the 19th century (Furnham, 2004). In 1776 Adam Smith discussed the application of principle of specialization to manufacturing workers, its control and concept (Balasubramanian, 2002). With this, the monitoring of manufacturing workers’ performance was easy and rewarded accordingly.

 Performance management theory and practice in the United States started with the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century. The earliest performance appraisal programs during the Industrial Revolution were relatively crude and simple. Workers were evaluated and paid primarily on the basis of quantity output -- the number of "pieces" they satisfactorily turned out. Frequently, management provided for bonuses and other tangible rewards to recognize employee contributions to the company (Pratt, 1991).

 In 1800, James Watt introduced standards of operating procedures, specifications, work methods, incentive wages and even bonus based on performance at the time of Christmas. However, it was Robert Owen who recognized the need for personal practices in 1810. He was the first who assumed responsibilities for training of workers (Balasubramanian, 2002).

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, performance appraisals were used primarily by military and government organizations – due to their large size, hierarchical structure, geographic dispersal, and the necessity to promote the top performers to higher organizational levels. At this time, most private organizations used informal measures to evaluate individual performance and make subsequent administrative decisions (Wiese & Buckley, 1998).

20th Century

In 1914, development of performance appraisals in United States industry began with early work in salesman selection by industrial psychologists at Carnegie-Mellon University, who used trait psychology to develop a man-to-man rating system. The army used this system during World War I to assess the officer performance. After the war, business leaders, impressed by the achievements of the army researchers, hired many of the men who had been associated with the work in man-to-man appraisals. Industry wanted to use the contributions of this new breed of psychologist (Scott, 1941) as cited in (Wiese & Buckley, 1998). 

Between 1918 – 1950, the widespread use of performance appraisal techniques with blue-collar employees didn't start until after World War I. Appraisal systems for measuring managerial and professional employee performance weren't used extensively until about 1955 (Pratt, 1991). 

Prior to World War II, performance appraisal systems tended to exclude top management, generally used graphic-rating scales and had just one or two forms for all employees regardless of the job performed or skills necessary (Spriegel, 1962).

In the US, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1966 and 1970 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Guidelines for Regulation of Selection procedures created a need for improvement in organizational appraisal practices. These legal considerations exerted strong pressure on organizations to formalize, validate, and organize appraisal systems (Murphy & Cleveland, 1995)

Table 1: Performance Appraisal Approach and Measure in different timelines

Time Frame	Approach	Measure
3 rd AD	Qualitative judgement on character	How
Pre 1800s	First examples of traits / competencies	How
1800s	Narrative report	What / How
1920s	Task based output e.g., ‘piece work’	What
1950s	Trait-based, critical incident technique	How
1960s	Management by Objective	What
1970s	Assessment Centre	How
1980s	Hybrid	What / How
1990s	Performance Management Competency Development 360 feedback / evaluation Balanced scorecard	What / How How How What / How

(Mills, 2002).

By the end of 20th century, performance appraisal appears to be nearly universal, and the apparent importance of performance appraisal as a tool for managing human resources has increased. Innovative use is now being made in some organizations of a selfappraisal system, especially for managers and higher-level professionals (Pratt, 1991).

Performance appraisals are being used in almost all the organizations across the world in some form. The performance management system has been continuously evolving in every industry to cope up with current scenario, which enables individuals to work in alignment with organisational goal. In 21st century, performance management system has become an integral part of Employee Engagement (Rath, 2018).

Amstrong, M. (2009) ARMSTRONG’S HANDBOOK OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE. 11th edn [online].Available at: Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice by Armstrong, Michael. - PDF Drive [Accessed on 7th of  December 2022]

Balasubramanian, C.A. (2002) Personnel Management, Everest Publishing House, 5th Edition.

Furnham, A. (2004) Performance management systems, European Business Journal, 16(2), pp. 83-94.

Mills, C. (2002) Performance Management under The Microscope, Shri Publication, IndIa.

Murphy, K. R. & Cleveland, J. N. (1995) Understanding Performance Appraisal: Social, Organizational and Goal Based Perspectives, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Pratt, H. J. (1991) Principles of Effective Performance Management, ARMA Records Management Quarterly, 25(1).

Rath, A. (2018) "Evolution of Performance Management System: A Review of Literature", INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CREATIVE RESEARCH THOUGHTS, 6(2), p. 875 [Online]. Available at: https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT1813200.pdf. [ Accessed on 7th of December, 2022].

Saran, K. M. (1957) Labour in Ancient India, Osmania University Library Archives, Vora & Co, Mombay.[Online]. Available at: https://archive.org/stream/labourinancienti031368mbp/labourinancienti031368mbp_djvu.txt. [ Accessed on 7th of December 2022].

Spriegel, W. R. (1962) Company practices in appraisal of managerial performance, Personnel, 39(77).

Whisler, T. L. & Harper, S. F. (1962) Performance Appraisal: Research and Practice, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Wiese and Buckley, 1998