Further Evaluation of the Accuracy of Managerial Prediction of Employee Preference

Abstract

Previous research (i.e., Wilder, Rost, & McMahon, 2007) has suggested that managers perform poorly when predicting items and activities which their employees state that they might like to earn as part of performance improvement programs. The purpose of the current study was to replicate the earlier study conducted by Wilder et al. (2007) with a larger and more diverse sample of managers and employees. One hundred employees and 15 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 directly assessed using an employee reinforcer survey. Kendall rank-order correlation coefficients were used to compare the results of the managerial rank with the employee reinforcer survey. Correlations ranged from −.6 to 1, with a mean of .25.

Keywords:

• incentives
• prediction of preference
• reinforcer survey
• stimulus preference assessment

Notes

Sarah Casella is now a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan.