The office politics error as a new dimension in performance appraisal implementations: a case study and conceptual model in Malaysian financial sector

Abstract

Performance appraisal in human resource management is a function that evaluates employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities in executing their job. To assess this appraisal, the employees’ key performance index (KPI) can be used. Recently, office politics has been indicated as an activity that may ruin employee-employer relationships and turn the office ecosystem unharmonious. The influence of organizational politics must be avoided during the performance appraisal process. This work depicted practical knowledge and theoretical gaps of the previous studies. Among them are leniency, straightness and stereotype behavior errors. This research was conducted to assess dimensions of organizational politics as one more error in the employee’s performance appraisal. The presented study considered a questionnaire directed to 274 officers and clerical staffs who were selected randomly through proportionate stratified sampling method in one of the Malaysian government financial sectors located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In total 271 questionnaires were returned and used in this study. This work employed Questionnaire of Political Considerations in Performance Appraisal by using robust statistical techniques for testing and validating the results. This study has successfully extracted three reliable dimensions of politics in performance appraisal, namely acquiring benefit, human relations, and control. In addition, this work developed a new conceptual model together with a dynamic and practical recommendation for top management in this field used to avoid the extant error factors.