Participation in the performance appraisal process and employee reactions: A meta-analytic review of field investigations

The relationship between participation in the performance appraisal process and various employee reactions was explored through the meta-analysis of 27 studies containing 32 individual samples. The overall relationship (rho) between participation and employee reactions, corrected for unreliability, was .61. Various conceptualizations and operationalizations of participation and employee reactions also were discussed and analyzed. Overall, appraisal participation was most strongly related to satisfaction, and value-expressive participation (i.e., participation for the sake of having one's "voice" heard) had a stronger relationship with most of the reaction criteria than did instrumental participation (i.e., participation for the purpose of influencing the end result). The results are discussed within the framework of organizational justice.