The performance review is dead! Long live the performance review

Wharton professor Peter Capelli once raised the question: Is employment in an organization a contract or a relationship?

In a knowledge worker context, it is a bit of both. The employment contract specifies job responsibilities, competencies, and skills required to perform the job. However, it is also a relationship because feedback and performance are often dependent upon peer and manager interactions and perceptions about performance. In the absence of hard data and well-defined metrics, measuring actual output for an employee makes the performance review process fraught with pitfalls.