The Accuracy of Managerial Prediction of Employee Preference

Abstract

The extent to which managers could accurately predict what items/activities their employees report as preferred was examined. First, managers were asked to rank order a list of items/activities they thought their employees would most prefer to be incorporated into a performance improvement plan. Next, employee preference for these same items was assessed directly using an employee-reinforcer survey. The results of the managers' predictions were then compared to the results of the employee-reinforcer survey using Kendall rank-order correlation coefficients. Correlations ranged from -1 to 1, with a mean of 0.11. The number of participants for whom managers correctly identified the most preferred item/activity was also assessed; managers correctly predicted the most preferred item/activity for 15 of 27 employees. The results suggest that some managers are good at predicting their employees' most preferred item/activity, but most managers are poor at predicting the preferences for less preferred items and activities. Implications of this finding for the assessment of preference among employees and the use of preferred items and activities in performance improvement plans are discussed.

Key Words:

• Prediction of preference
• reinforcer assessment
• reinforcer identification
• reinforcer survey
• stimulus preference assessment