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Dealing with Poor Performance: Supervisor Attributions and the Cost of Responding 1
Author(s) -
Heerwagen Judith H.,
Beach Lee Roy,
Mitchell Terence R.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1985.tb00906.x
Subject(s) - attribution , supervisor , psychology , social psychology , congruence (geometry) , process (computing) , attribution bias , cognitive psychology , computer science , economics , management , operating system
The Green and Mitchell (1979) model of the process by which supervisors diagnose and deal with the causes of subordinates' poor performance is based upon attribution theory. The notion is that the supervisor makes an attribution about the cause of the poor performance and then selects an appropriate response or solution to deal with the problem. Two ways in which this can lead to an inapprorpriate solution are, first, a bias toward making internal attributions and, second, an aversion to using costly, even though appropriate, solutions. This study demonstrates that it is possible to prompt participants to make more external attribution about poor performance. It also demonstrates that whichever attributions they make (either internal or external), the solutions they select to deal with the poor performance are congruent with their attributions provided that the solutions do not have explicit implementation costs associated with them. However, when implementation costs are made explicit, costs influence solution selection and reduce the congruence between the attributions and the selected solutions. The possible implications of this finding for success in dealing with poor performance are discussed.