I am an undergraduate student at Univ. of San Francisco, working on my Sr. project for my B.S. in Organizational Behavior. My topic to research & present in the form of a dissertation... is the effectiveness and validity of personal performance appraisals - specifically the 360-degree.

I am randoming soliciting Internet contacts: 1) to find out if anyone knows of existing research done on this topic (I have only found information suggesting its use and why) 2) does anyone know of studies done on comparable forms of emplyee appraisals? 3) does anyone know of studies done on comparable management skill building (i.e. I personnally attended a workshop that used the 360 to evaluate my strengths & weakness as a manager - & therefore needed to work on improving my manager style) 4) does anyone know the history or origin of the 360, and what did we all use/rely on prior to its high volume use of the recent years.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Marge Hughes email: marge.hughes@wellsfargo.com personal address: 1510 Foxhollow Ln, Daly City CA 94014 day phone (415) 222-6815 eve phone (415) 584-6811

-- Marge Hughes (marge.hughes@wellsfargo.com), December 28, 1997

Answers

Hi, I am currently an undergraduate student in HR. I have done an essay on performance appraisals quite a while ago. If I remember correctly the old tradition was appraised by supervisors only. Nowadays it is within a circle of all,that is it has to be appraised by observation and written by more than one employee supervisor /manager, even employees appraising supervisors. Look up journal articles eg: "Human Resource Management" "Personnel Review" "Journal of Personality" and any related management journals.

-- Donna Saint (donnas@crc.net.au), May 02, 1999.

Quite a bit of information on skills based 360 feedback is available from Organizational Performance Dimensions. See www.opd.net.

-- Lois Taller (mail@personalstrengths.com), September 02, 1999.