Scott Hebert

1. I was conducting a training program to enhance manager’s skills and abilities with performance appraisal/evaluation recently. During one of the sessions, I always make some version of the following statement, “Managers/supervisors should not judge employees/subordinates based on the manager’s expectations.” What decision making error, discussed in our chapter, would I be attempting to minimize or eliminate as manager practice the art and science of performance evaluation? Defend your choice.

This is an example of a false consensus effect (p. 80). Since the supervisor and the employee presumably work in the same department, it is easy for the supervisor to have expectations that the employee will measure up to the supervisor’s level of expertise. As an expert in the field, it is easy for the supervisor to forget that what is easy for someone with many years of experience is not expected to be easy for a more junior employee. I have run into this situation many times as a manager. I generally prefer to hire junior technicians and train them. Usually, I have no problem remembering that these are junior level people and do not have the benefit of my experience. I have found that when I have more experienced technicians, I tend to assume their skill level matches mine. I will often find myself reacting negatively when these experienced technicians do not know something, and have to remind myself that it is perfectly normal for different people to have different skills.

2. Almost everyone in our Master’s degree program(s) has developed some degree of global mindset. What events or activities in your life have helped to nurture the global mindset you have developed so far? What actions can you take now, while still attending school, to further develop your global mindset?

For the past three years, I have worked for an Australian company. This has influenced my global mindset in two ways. First, I deal with Australians every day. This includes employees and customers. I have learned about their business practices, and even become more familiar with US legal requirements for businesses based on my interaction with our Australian management. Additionally, I spent six weeks living in Sydney and working for the home office. During that time, I was exposed to their lifestyle, cuisine, and crazy amount of beer drinking. This had such an impact on my family, who spent two weeks with me, that my sons are huge cricket fans and follow the game as closely as they do any American sport. Secondly, working for an Australian company has exposed to me to people from other countries, as well. Our company employs people from many Asian-Pacific countries and includes a strangely large Canadian population.

3. After listening to our media story for Lesson 3, you will know about a company that maintains open pay records for their employees. Open Pay remains a fairly common practice in public employment (i.e. public school employees, UNT employees, etc.,) but un-common in the for-profit firm. Our Chapter 3 has substantial content on ‘perception of others’ in organizations. One of the most common questions we ask one-another is, “did you hear that some or our co-workers are getting pay increases?” Using our media story and Chapter 3, what benefits would open salary records be in for-profit firms?

I work for a company that has a voluntary open salary program. Talking about salaries is encouraged, but the company does not publish salary information as a matter of employee privacy. The problem with an open salary as employed by my company or described in the NPR article, is that the salaries are still negotiated. So, although employees know how much everyone makes, the salaries seem to be hit or miss. For example, in my company, I make 60% more than my boss. I have many more years of experience, but in the end, it would be reasonable for him to expect to make at least as much as I do. I think a voluntary open salary program is much more effective in a setting where job positions are tied to salary bands. This would avoid the case experienced by Mr. Jadatz where he was earning $40,000 less than his predecessor.

Tags: management, organizational_behavior