Proliferation and Propagation of Breakthrough Performance Management Theories and Praxes

The first article by Ruales Guzman et al provides a systematic literature review of quality management in relation to productivity. This review is meaningful, as quality management has long been researched or presented as core to productivity due to quality being defined as a level ultimately required by the customer. The second article, by Couturier and Sklavounos, focuses on the performance management aspect to examine specifically the meaning of the now commonly used expression, performance management system (PMS). Armstrong's article which follows takes the specific aspect of strategy mapping, which originated in the 1990s and earlier, but popularized by Kaplan and Norton's (2000) seminal work, and revisits it using a realist synthesis. The next article, by Shet et al, does just that by looking explicitly at organizational effectiveness in the form of superior performance for the firm. Based on the leadership competency model (LCM) which has emerged more recently in the people-based literature, the authors trace the need to appraise the workforce in a futuristic manner to the early work of McGregor (1957) with the origins dating back to the once dominating and breakthrough Taylorist perspectives of over a century ago. The fifth contribution in this special issue, by Kumar and Thakur, follows on from the view of the need to develop performance measures and evaluates the use of methods to determine performance success. The next article, by Garg, also considers the efficiency of organizations, from a well-known cognitive work theory, known as high performance work practices (HPWP) from around the 1990s (eg. Huselid, 1995) although their origins may have been earlier under different guises. In a similar vein, the next article by Shen examines the cognitive underpinning of human performance through the leader-member exchange relationship between supervisor and subordinates. In this study, Shen reveals the influence of organizational identification on organizational citizenship behaviour and the moderating effects of turnover intention. Based on social exchange theory, famous in the 1960s (Blau, 1964), Shen finds the quality of relationships within a firm is important, due to the positive moderating effects found present between the superior and subordinate, and can improve overall firm performance and individual satisfaction. Overall, she argues that organizations should strive to improve a subordinate's organizational identification to encourage extra-role behaviours. This research was limited in that the quantitative study does not define or provide a richer context of the circumstances in which the 'quality' of the relationship of employees in the firm is understood. Hence, the last article by Bui et al fills this gap by providing a reflective practice perspective on the relationship between employees and employer, to understand the cognitive emotions and feelings of employees who escape redundancy during major organizational downsizing. The article augments scenario planning methodology, a well-known technique first used in the 1960s (Wack, 1985), with those specific emotions known in the human resource management literature as the survivor syndrome (Brockner et al., 1986) to show they benefit one-another.