Empirical Study on the Supervisor's Responses to the Subordinate's Poor Performance

부하의 낮은 업적에 대한 상사의 반응에 관한 연구

Performance evaluation continues to receive attention today as it has for the past few decades. The problem addressed in this paper concerns the relationship between supervisor's causal attributions and their subsequent responses behavior. Previous study in personnel and other disciplines has indicated the importance of causal attributions in the interpretation of poor performance. However, most study has focused on antecedents of attributions than supervisor's responses to the subordinate's poor performance. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of supervisor's causal attributions and subordinate's responses to a subordinate's poor performance. Specifically, using in the public sector context, the study examined the effects to two dimensions of causal attributions: locus of causality and stability, as well as on the punitiveness of supervisors's responses. The result supported that when the subordinate is internal causes for the performance failure, supervisor's responses were more punitive. Consistent with previous studies, internal attributions were found to result in more punitive behavior than external attribution. In addition, attributions to effort and luck were found to result in more punitive behavior than attributions to ability and task difficulty. Thus, the first hypothesis and second hypothesis supported. These result suggest the importance of appropriately for performance evaluation.