Cho, Inchul (2017-12). Adopting a Supervisor's Perspective to Increase Self-Supervisor Agreement in Work Performance Ratings: The Role of Performance Dimensions and Culture. Doctoral Dissertation.
Thesis
It is theorized that changing a rater's perspective should improve rater congruence. Specifically, when employees assess their own performance from their supervisor's perspective (supervisor-perspective ratings), self-rated performance becomes less biased, resulting in improved correspondence between "self-" and supervisor ratings. Despite the growing popularity of using supervisor-perspective ratings in the literature, unanswered questions remain. First, little research has explicitly examined how self-ratings change as a function of different perspectives. Thus, it is unclear how adopting a supervisor's perspective actually alters self-ratings (mean shift of self-ratings). Second, despite the presence of two congruence indices (mean differences and correlations), prior research has focused on either mean differences or correlations, not both. Therefore, it is not clear whether instructing employees to adopt their supervisor's perspective is a viable way to increase both types of correspondence. Third, it is unclear if using a supervisor-perspective ratings alters and further influences ratings of all types of job-related behaviors (task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior). Last, little is known about whether and how adopting a supervisor's perspective influences rater congruence in an Eastern culture. The objective of this dissertation was to enhance our understanding of how adopting the supervisor's perspective influences the congruence between self- and supervisor ratings. Specifically, three studies were conducted. The purpose of Study 1 (180 employees from M-Turk) was to examine how adopting a supervisor's perspective changes self-ratings of work performance dimensions in the U.S. The purpose of Study 2 (143 Korean employee-supervisor dyads) was to explore the extent to which the presumed findings from the U.S. occur with a matched sample of Korean employees and their supervisors. The purpose of Study 3 was to meta-analytically investigate 1) the mean shift due to adopting a supervisor's perspective, 2) the magnitude of congruence (r and d) between self and supervisor ratings, and 3) whether culture and work performance dimension moderate the mean shift and congruence. By synthesizing the findings from all three studies, this dissertation provides a quantitative summary of the magnitude and boundary conditions surrounding the supervisor-perspective effect, advancing research on self-supervisor rating congruence.
