Performance appraisal: Verisimilitude trumps veracity

Few administrative functions have attracted more attention and so successfully resisted solution than employee evaluation. Since performance appraisal is impossible, what actually happens is personnel appraisal. When such hypocrisy occurs, civil service systems predicated on merit are undermined. This article commences with the evolution of the appraisal function, the root of ethical problems found in service ratings. Common types of evaluation (with their strengths and drawbacks), who does them, and typical rating errors are then examined. This climaxes with a discussion of the fundamental and beguiling reason for these deficiencies. Diagnosis completed, attention shifts to ways to improve appraisals, which leads to a specification of the characteristics of a system that could withstand legal, if not ethical, scrutiny. The analysis closes by sketching future, not necessarily promising, trends.