Performance monitoring and its effects on employee performance and well-being

• Main Author: McClelland, Charlotte Rebecca
• Published: University of Sheffield 2011
• Subjects: 658.3125
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.556986

The focus of this Thesis is on examining and explaining the effects of performance monitoring on employee performance and well-being outcomes. The use of monitoring, organisational systems and practices for managing employees' performance behaviours, is extensive, despite an ongoing and unresolved debate over its effects on employees. Job design, goal-setting and feedback, leadership and organisational justice theories were used as a basis for constructing a more comprehensive and integrative research model on performance monitoring and its effects than has been examined to date. Herein, characteristics of the monitoring process were hypothesised to motivate cognitive and attitudinal reactions in employees, in turn affecting outcomes. The role of managers was further positioned as antecedent to the employee experience of monitoring. To test the model, survey data from around one thousand call centre employees and managers were collected within two longitudinal field studies, and analysed statistically using multiple regression, structural equation modelling and latent growth modelling. Findings from the main cross-sectional analyses supported that performance monitoring had both direct and indirect effects on employee performance and well-being as a function of its utility, and that manager support was a critical factor. Learning, mental-effort, and perceptions of the fairness and privacy invasiveness of monitoring were established as explanatory mechanisms. This was the first field research to document a monitoring-performance relationship. The model was further explored on a longitudinal basis, providing limited support for the direct effects of monitoring over time. Overall, performance monitoring that developed employees was found to have the most global benefits. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed, and directions for future research presented.