Public Administration ETDs

Publication Date

5-22-1970

Abstract

The proposition of this thesis is: personnel performance evaluation structured as an integrated part of a management process of work assignment and review which involves participation by the employee can be a useful vehicle for employee motivation through the job in government research and development activities. Although performance evaluation is only one of the many facets of the supervisor's job, structured as proposed, it is found to have potential as one means of sustaining and increasing employee motivation in the R&D environment. This thesis seeks to assist the R&D supervisor in carrying out his day-to-day personnel management responsibilities through a work-centered approach to performance evaluation. Therefore, it analyzes areas over which the individual supervisor normally has some degree of control, i.e., the work assignment and review process. Using a descriptive approach, the method of attack is to analyze and evaluate research-based management and motivation studies in an effort to determine if the proposition of the thesis can be conceptually supported. The works of Douglas McGregor; Herbert H. Meyer, Emanual Kay, and J. R. P. French, Jr.; and Rensis Likert are the major ones considered under the participation in decision-making part of the thesis proposition. The prospect of motivation through the job is examined by analysis and evaluation of the research of Frederick Herzberg, Donald C. Pelz and Frank M. Andrews, M. Scott Myers, Victor Vroom and others. In the part of the thesis devoted to a specific look at performance evaluation within NASA and three of its field centers, source materials used consist of official performance evaluation plans, the comments of Agency personnel administrators and R&D personnel, and the first-hand experience of the writer as a personnel specialist in two of the subject NASA centers. The conclusion of this study is that the proposition of the thesis is conditionally supported from a conceptual standpoint. Some of the conditions found essential to the workability of the proposition are: management philosophy and behavior conducive to a reasonable degree of employee participation in decision-making in matters relating to his job; challenging work; individual need structures in which the noneconomic motivators are largely prepotent; and supervisors skilled in work planning and organization and human relations. This conclusion is further conditioned by the need for more experimental research on the whole subject of the man-job relationship. The integrated approach to performance evaluation does not provide a quick solution for employee motivation problems in R&D organizations. An extended period of staff and supervisory training is anticipated to be necessary to effectively implement this approach. However, the recent studies of job factors and motivation show this to be an area of great significance to the supervisor and employee in a time when economic factors appear to have lost much of their former potency.

Degree Name

Public Administration

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

School of Public Administration

First Committee Member (Chair)

Albert H. Rosenthal

Second Committee Member

Lloyd Wilber Wooruff

Third Committee Member

John Mace Hunger

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

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