A quality control chart for work performance appraisal

摘要

A substantial disagreement between total quality management/Deming's principles and traditional management is in the area of work performance appraisal. Deming advocates argue that many of the faulty management practices in performance appraisal originate from a failure to understand variation among workers and a failure to distinguish between the 'common causes' and the 'special causes' of variation. Deming advocated the use of quality control charts as a proper tool to distinguish special causes from common causes. However, the implementation of most control charts requires that the performance ratings be quantitative on the interval scale of measurement, which may not be the case in practice. Deming, however, did show how to construct a control chart for performance appraisal when the performance ratings were reported only on the ordinal scale of measurement. Here, a quality control chart is proposed that is particularly useful when workers' ratings are categorical on the ordinal scale of measurement. The proposed chart can aid managers in implementing Deming's teachings on performance appraisal. It will aid managers in understanding variation among workers and distinguish between common causes and special causes affecting a certain work system. The manager will then be able to determine who is performing within the bounds of the system, out of the system on the good side, or out of the system on the poor side.