Case: The DallasMavericks recent article in the field of human resource management is entitled Everyone Hates Performance Evaluation and it has popular among become and employees alike. The managers nagereason r s very for the popularity is that most of us have had (or know of) negative experiences with performance evaluation and thus the title resonates with us personally. Performance evaluations are often disliked because they tend to be subjective and often not related to important performance objectives. For example, all too many performance appraisals rely solely on subjective individual traits like initiative or professionalism or, even worse, attractiveness, height, or charisma. Aware of the common weaknesses in evaluation, and how those weaknesses manifest themselves in the evaluation of professional basketball players, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team, decided to do things a different way. Partnering with Wayne Winston, a professor of decision sciences at Indiana University, and author of the book Math-letics, Cuban sought to evaluate his players in a more objective way—one in which their evaluation was not tied solely to individual statistics.

1. How are professional basketball players typically evaluated, and what are problems/limitations with those typical appraisals?

2. If you were a team owner, on what measures would you want your players evaluated?

3. Would it be worth a significant investment in performance evaluation? Why or why not? What benefits could be achieved?