How would you take each of the following results-based criteria into consideration with each “employee”?

a. Consider the level of difficulty of objectives. How difficult was the goal? How do you determine the level of difficulty?

b. Consider important gradations to achieving the goals.

c. Considering possible factors that may influence whether objectives were achieved (e.g., the hare was tired that day

& this may be out of his control).

This children’s fable may be a bit of a hyperbole when observed from this perspective, but it happens often in business climates.
Causal attributions were discussed in Chapter 4 as an issue in diagnoses. Our assessments of cause are major determinants of the evaluation of performance. For example, someone who does well because of supreme effort might receive a higher evaluation than someone who does well but seems to achieve the performance level without putting forth much effort. Similarly, someone who, in our opinion, did not do well because he or she did not try would likely be evaluated more harshly than someone whose poor performance seemed to be due to lack of ability.