Review

Appraising appraisal

PUBLIC SECTOR MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS: Theory and Practice in the National Health Service
Hugh Flanagan and Peter Spurgeon
Open University Press, 1996, £14.99

This book is about the concept of personal managerial effectiveness, and its appraisal, in the NHS. It takes a long, hard look at the assumptions underpinning the individual performance review system which has been used since the late 1980s to set annual personal objectives for all senior and general managers in NHS organisations. It does so from a broad theoretical perspective which rightly owes more to management experience outside than inside the NHS.

The individual performance review system, which is the gateway to performance-related pay, has not been well loved by NHS managers. One reason the system has been difficult to work with is brought out strongly: that ‘effectiveness’, which is what performance appraisal is supposed to be about, is a complex and elusive concept. It is situationally specific and inevitably subjective. So in turn are its management and measurement.

The argument is well made, for example, that personal effectiveness will be redefined if the NHS moves into a period of greater stability following the huge structural and cultural upheavals of the last decade. And, leaving aside the time dimension, there are great variations in definition between organisations and between individuals within organisations

Another reason for the present system’s equivocal reputation is that thorough individual appraisals can be very time consuming. This is nothing in itself to do with the ‘rightness’ of the system, but everything to do with people’s capacity to handle it.

The same issue may limit the number of managers who will read this book. It is a serious and comprehensive account of something inherently complicated and is not an easy read. Human resources directors, who have usually been the professional guardians and advocates of individual performance review, will find it helpful.

The most useful message they can reinforce in their organisations is probably that the content of individual objectives — and therefore of the effectiveness appraisal process — is much more important and interesting than the prescribed processes of setting, recording and monitoring them. It is also much more difficult, as Flanagan and Spurgeon show, and no amount of routinised or thoughtless process which overlooks this will turn appraisal into anything other than a burden of doubtful value.