06 Terms to Remember
Actual criterion: Our best practical approximation of the ultimate criterion, constrained by cost, time, and feasibility.
Campbell’s Model: Distinguishes between performance (behaviors), effectiveness (results), and productivity (efficiency ratio).
Composite criteria: Weighted combinations of multiple performance dimensions to create single performance indices.
Contextual performance: Activities that help or hurt the broader organizational, social, and psychological environment, beyond formal job tasks.
Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs): Behaviors that harm or detract from organizational effectiveness, such as theft, sabotage, or interpersonal abuse.
Criterion: An evaluative standard that functions as a measuring instrument for assessing employees’ or organizations’ success or failure.
Criterion contamination: Occurs when the actual criterion measures aspects not part of the ultimate criterion, including random error and systematic bias.
Criterion deficiency: Refers to important aspects of the ultimate criterion not included in the actual criterion measure.
Criterion relevance: The degree to which the actual criterion relates to the ultimate criterion.
Declarative knowledge: Information known about how to accomplish tasks.
Dynamic criteria: Reflect the phenomenon where performance levels and relative rankings change over time.
Effectiveness: The evaluation of performance results, recognizing that outcomes often depend on forces beyond individual worker control.
Fairness: Captures employees’ perceptions of criterion reasonableness and justice, influencing motivation and acceptance of decisions.
Job performance: A hypothetical construct intended to reflect how well individuals perform their assigned work roles.
Maximum performance: What individuals can achieve when fully motivated and focused.
Multidimensional view of performance: Recognizes that different performance aspects may be relatively independent and require separate consideration.
Objective criteria: Performance measures derived from organizational records, involving minimal subjective judgment (e.g., absence rates, productivity).
Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs): Voluntary behaviors valued by organizations but not formally required, a subset of contextual performance.
Performance: Specifically refers to actions or behaviors that individuals exhibit that are relevant to organizational goals.
Personnel measures: Encompass various administrative actions and records that may indicate job performance, like absences, accidents, and disciplinary actions.
Practicality: The extent to which criteria can and will be used by organizational decision-makers.
Predictors: Assessment tools and procedures used to evaluate job candidates.
Procedural knowledge: Knowing how to actually perform tasks.
Productivity: Captures the relationship between effectiveness and efficiency by calculating the ratio of output achieved to the cost of achieving that level of output.
Reliability: Concerns the stability and consistency of criterion measurement over time and across measurement occasions.
Sensitivity: Requires that criteria be capable of discriminating between effective and ineffective employees.
Subjective criteria: Rely on human judgments and evaluations, such as performance appraisal ratings.
Task performance: Work-related activities that contribute to the organization’s technical core and formal job requirements.
Typical performance: What individuals normally do under regular work conditions.
Ultimate criterion: Encompasses all aspects of job performance that define success, representing a comprehensive but abstract ideal.