Organizational Linkages Understanding the Productivity Paradox (1994) / Chapter Skim
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8 MODELS OF MEASUREMENT AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH ON THE LINKAGES BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY
8 MODELS OF MEASUREMENT AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH ON THE LINKAGES BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY
Pages 193-213
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From page 193... ...
It makes goals very explicit, serves to identify the work to be done, influences individual and organizational choice behavior, and helps to define what will be rewarded and punished. That is, measurement is a powerful influence on individual and organizational productivity and performance.
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From page 194... ...
A basic axiom of measurement is that the validity of a measure can only be judged against the specific objectives or purposes of measurement (American Educational Research Association et al., 19851. In the current context, one major goal is to support the modeling of the linkage between individual and organizational productivity.
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From page 195... ...
, it provides a useful stepping stone for talking about how to develop a measurement model of individual and organizational productivity in the IT industry (for a fuller discussion of the prototype, see Campbell, 19911. The specifications for modeling the latent structure of individual performance begin with a definition of performance.
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From page 196... ...
Individual differences in how well such tasks are executed are the focus of this performance component. Non-job-specific task proficiency reflects the fact that the vast majority of individuals are required to perform tasks or take actions that are not specific to their particular job.
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From page 197... ...
It includes the performance behaviors directed at articulating goals for the unit or enterprise, organizing people and resources to work on them, monitoring progress, helping to solve problems or overcome crises that stand in the way of goal accomplishment, controlling expenditures, obtaining additional resources, and representing the unit in dealings with other units. Next, performance components must be distinguished from performance determinants (the causes of individual differences on each perbuoyance component)
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From page 198... ...
Performance could suffer because procedural skill was never developed, because declarative knowledge was never acquired, or because one or the other has decayed. Also, some data suggest that the abilities that account for individual differences in declarative knowledge are not the same as those that account for individual differences in procedural skills (Ackerman, 19881.
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From page 199... ...
This would be a very poor description of the latent structure. However, one would hardly expect the determinants of core task performance to be the same for jazz musicians, graphic artists, professional golfers, theoretical economists, the clergy, farm managers, and so on.
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From page 200... ...
One advantage of ratings is that their content can be directly linked to the basic performance components by straightforward content validation methods (e.g., critical incident sampling or task analysis)
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From page 201... ...
the measurement operations themselves do not capture the appropriate determinants. For example, when defined as the number of units produced divided by labor costs, individual productivity can be increased simply by cutting salaries, and the measurement operations can validly reflect the change.
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From page 202... ...
How best to do that is a research issue. Unit of Analysis and Locus of Measurement In the performance model, a major concern is whether individual differences on the performance measurers)
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From page 203... ...
hardware productivity (e.g., the output versus costs for a 486/ 33 processor compared with a 286/25 processor under standardized conditions) ; · hardware user productivity (e.g., replacing al1286/25 personal computers with 486/33 machines in a data analysis facility)
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From page 204... ...
should not contribute to individual differences in performance scores produced by the measure, as when evaluating the effects of a skills training progrnm. In such an instance, the measurement goal is to determine whether the specified technical skills have in fact been mastered, not whether the individual chooses to use them in the actual job setting.
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From page 205... ...
Again, the choice of measurement operations is very dependent on the measurement objectives. Moving from individual performance to a consideration of individual and group productivity makes the explication of determinants a bit more complicated.
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From page 206... ...
Various chapters in this report provide a more detailed view of one or more of these productivity determinants. The critical issue is that the specific determinants of a specific component of organizational productivity constitute the linkage with which this report is concerned.
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From page 207... ...
The central concern of this very large domain of research and practice is how the contributions of individuals to the effectiveness of the larger unit can be optimized by the strategy of decentralizing the management functions. Such a strategy should lead to better communication, coordination, and problem solving, and to higher motivation and commitment.
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From page 208... ...
One could fail to find a significant relationship because of a low N (e.g., too few firms in the sample) , because the observed indicator is not a valid measure of the appropriate dependent latent variable, or because the productivity measure is not really under the control of the information technology, no matter how good or bad the technology is.
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From page 209... ...
the determinants of score differences on the measure accurately reflect the measurement objectives. The score variation on measures of individual productivity should be under the control of the individual.
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From page 210... ...
The theory may change as more evidence accumulates, but there must be a starting place. Certainly, the people most involved with IT productivity issues can offer a theory of its latent structure that goes beyond identifying ad hoc measures that happen to be available and can provide some reasonable specification for the determinants of the basic IT productivity components.
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From page 211... ...
Over time, this interplay between a conceptual framework and specific measurement applications should steadily increase understanding of IT productivity and how it should be measured. One way to aid such investigation would be to develop an IT productivity measurement manual that would incorporate the working model and a set of procedures such as those suggested in Chapters 6 and 7.
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From page 212... ...
American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education 1985 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
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From page 213... ...
Ekeberg 1989 The evaluation of an integrated approach to measuring organizational productivity. Personnel Psychology 42:69-115.
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