Management Science Letters 3 (2013) 1789–1794

Contents lists available at GrowingScience

Management Science Letters

An investigation on effective factors influencing employee performance: A case study

Hamid Reza Alavi*, Farshid Abdi, Mohammad Mazuchi, Mohammad Kazem Bighami, and Atefe
Heidari

Industrial Engineering Department, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
CHRONICLE ABSTRACT

Article history: Human resources are considered as one of the key components of any organization to reach its
Received January 10, 2013 objectives. Human resources help organization performance doing organizational duties and
Received in revised format making employees’ improvement. Because of this, employee performance appraisal has
23 April 2013
changed to one of the most important issues for top managers. Performance appraisal is
Accepted 29 April 2013
Available online necessary to select useful strategies for increasing productivity of human resource management
May 1 2013 along with productivity of employee to get strategic targets. In this study, we extract effective
Keywords: factors on increasing of employee performance and subsequently, present some suggestions to
Performance appraisal managers of academic organizations. The study was performed on some employees who
Employee productivity worked for Islamic Azad University in 2012. Cronbach alpha was equal to 99.4% for employee
Path analysis performance appraisal, which confirmed the overall survey. To recognize key factors we used
path analysis technique too. The results of the study revealed that in this school, employee
performance in practical field was higher than expected, but in terms of operational and
behavioral fields, they were in the middle stage.
© 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Human resources are considered as one of the key components of any organization to reach its
objectives. Human resources help organization performance doing organizational duties and making
employees’ improvement (Levinson et al., 1972). According to Mozaffari et al. (2012), the success of
any firm depends on the quality of its management and management quality, in turn, depends on
decision quality and information quality on the quality of its measurement and proportion. They
presented a model for strategic planning of Islamic Azad university of Semnan. Mozaffari et al. (2013)
presented a new framework for performance evaluation system using strategy map. Kohneh et al. (2013)
implemented a hybrid of analytical hierarchy process along with balanced score card to measure the
performance of five different civil registry offices in Tehran, Iran. They also used fuzzy terms to handle
uncertainty in input numbers and using some technique convert fuzzy numbers into crisp values. Danaei

*Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: alavi_hamidreza@[Link] (H. R. Alavi)

© 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

In recent decades, there is an increasing attention on human resource management. More specially, in
universities, performance appraisal has been one of the new knowledge in this filed. Competency
appraisal statistically and scientifically using psychological methods plays an important role on
human resource performance measurement. For the first time, after the industrial revolution,
performance appraisal of employee was performed, scientifically. In addition, during the last two
decades, performance appraisal has experienced significant changes. First, the author concentration
changed from a purely quantitative operation to a cognitive process. Second, researchers considered
the effect of organizational and social structure on the evaluation and outcomes of appraisals.
Murphy & Cleveland (1995) in their first book about performance appraisal showed that to appraise
performance, we need a new model or a new approach. They believed that we could need a new
model because of two reasons, during appraisal we do not show relationship between appraisal and
scientific appraisal in related researches. Managers have comprehended that an organization can act
successfully by considering efficiency and effectiveness. Therefore, in this field profit alone is one of
the different scales of performance measurement.
The purpose of the most of the definitions of organizational performance is the capability to survive
and an organization that is efficient but not effective cannot survive and act better than an
organization that is effective. Therefore, most organizational theories expect to cover both efficiency
and effectiveness (Campbell, 1970). Evaluation of organizations must go beyond of scientific
techniques (Levinson, 1972). There are various methods to evaluate employee performance (Byers&
Rue, 2008) but recognizing which method is the best for organization depends on the purpose of
organization, and usually to evaluate employee performance more than one method may be needed.
Snell and Boulanger (2007) grouped performance appraisal methods as fallow:
- Methods based on personal characteristic such as: combined standard scale method, descriptive
method, etc.
- Methods based on behavior or behavioral method such as: check list method, behavioral rank scale
method, etc.
- Methods based on results such as: MBO method and BSC method.
Recently studies have shown good communication of managers with employee and listen and pay
attention to employee suggestions can help them improve their performance significantly (Budd,
2010). This effect is significant especially when organizations follow their strategies and they are
strategy-oriented organizations. Shuck (2011) stated that we must help employee participate in
organization affairs as much as possible, he believed that this action help employee increase their
performance. On the other way, work environment is considered as one of the key important and
effective factors in improving performance and increasing employee participation (Busck, 2010).
Other effective factors like salary and having a performance appraisal system can improve employee
performance too. In this study, we evaluate employee performance considering operational, practical
and behavioral scales and to recognize effective factors on improvement of employee performance.
In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the effect of various factors on performance
of employees who worked for Islamic Azad University, South branch. This paper is organized as
follows. We first present details of the proposed model in section 2. Next, we present details of our
results and concluding remarks as well as possible suggestions are given at the end.
 H. R. Alavi et al. / Management Science Letters 3 (2013) 1791

2. Method
This research is an inductive one and the conceptual framework is as fallow:
2.1 Procedure
In terms of research process, to evaluate important issues in university, we interview with educational
vice-president of school about quality of questionnaires. In this research, we used two types of
questionnaires: The first one was used to evaluate scales of performance appraisal, which were
common in related books and papers. These scales grouped in those parts: behavioral factors with 12
questions, operational factors with 9 questions and practical factors with 9 questions. The second one
was used to evaluate effective factors on employee performance appraisal. Questions were 23 and 9
factors, performance based payment, salary, welfare service, working time, mutual relation of
manager and employee, job pleasure, job security, performance appraisal system and job
environment, were evaluated.

Fig. 1. The proposed framework of the study

In our survey, 51% of the participants were male while 49% of them were female, while the average
age was 38. In terms of educational background, 39% of the participants only finished high school,
50% hold bachelor degree and 11% of the participants hold PhD degree.
2.2 Reliability
Using SPSS software, reliability of questionnaires was measured using Cronbach alpha, it was equal
to 99.4% for employee performance appraisal, and for the second one was 96.4, which confirmed the
overall survey.
2.3 Statistical method
In this research, we used Critical Path and Friedman Test methods to examine our hypothesis.
2.4 Critical Path Method
To test cause and effect models, mostly we used critical past method. We must draw a model as
framework to evaluate the effect of any variables and to recognize to some extent this effect is direct
and indirect. Using critical path method, we can gain simple information about cause and effect
processes. Critical path is an expanded type of regression technique and usually uses multiple
regressions to create cause-and-effect models. The purpose of critical path method is to extract
important factors. Quantitative estimations of cause and effect have indicated the relations among
some variables. Note that correlation data coming out of critical path method are just correlated and
not necessarily cause and effect type. If two variables A and B are correlated with each other it is
1792

possible that a new variable, third one, influences both variables of A and B. Therefore, cause and
effect inference that is gained from correlation is named cause and effect modeling.
2.5 Friedman Test
This test is used to compare rank mean in different groups and is used to reveal whether these groups
belong to one society or not. Scale in this test must be rank type. This test is nonparametric
corresponding of F test, and usually is used instead of F test in rank scales. Friedman test is used to
analysis two-way variance to compare rank mean of different groups.
3. Findings
Questionnaires 1 and 2 were distributed among all employees. The first questionnaire was distributed
among managers for employee appraisal and the second questionnaire was distributed among
employees for evaluation of effective factors on employee performance. 27 employees answered
questionnaires 1 and 31 employees answered questionnaires 2. Considering mean mark of evaluation
of any person, mean of society in study was gained 6.75 out of 10. This shows that performance was
high, most of frequencies were between 5 and 6.
Using questionnaire 2, we evaluated effective factors on performance where mean of factor for
employee and manager’s relationship was higher than other factors and standard deviation of factor
of work hours was lower than other factors. In questionnaire 1 three main factors including
behavioral, practical and operational ones were examined using 30 questions. Using Friedman test,
we determined the rank of three main scales. Based on the results for freedman, behavioral, practical
and operational ones were examined for 30 questions and mean rank for practically, behavioral and
operational were 2.46, 2.02 and 1.52, respectively.
In questionnaire 2 that we evaluated the effect of 9 factors on performance, considering numbers and
types of questions, to rank factors, we used Friedman test in SPSS software (18th version). Rank of
factors are summarized in Table 1 as follows,
Table 1
The results of Freedman test
Items Mean Rank
Mutual Relation Of Manager and Employee 8.18
Performance Appraisal System 6.17
Performance Based Payment 6.12
Salary 5.65
Working Time 4.57
Job environment 4.25
Job Pleasure 4.03
Job Security 3.75
Welfare Service 2.28

Using conceptual framework of research, the manuscript of critical path model was entered to Amos
16 and considering amount error, the fallow model was gained, in this model some factors affect
directly and some indirectly.
4. Discussion and Conclusion
Considering the results of evaluation in questionnaire 1, questions 22 and 24 that are practical ones,
were gained the highest marks. In addition, two questions 5 and 17 associated with practical scale,
question 5 related to behavioral scale gained the lowest mark. Considering the results of questionnaire
1, it was revealed that in this school, employee performance in practical field was higher than
 H. R. Alavi et al. / Management Science Letters 3 (2013) 1793

expected, but in terms of operational and behavioral fields, they were in the middle stage. Therefore,
they must be improved in these fields. Using Minitab15 software, with Pareto chart, we prioritized
effective factors on employee performance. According to the results, the most important factor was
recognized employee-manager relationships.
Suggestions
1. Improvement of operational and behavioral scale, especially factors of analysis and motivation
must be considered.
2. According to critical path that we got from the Amos 16, relationships between managers and
employees played essential role for improving performance. Therefore, we suggest that manager must
improve their relationships with their employees.
In the next stage, improvement of job security and then increasing salary and at last payment based
on performance appraisal system must be considered, seriously.
Future Research
1. Comparison of critical path results, methods of performance appraisal and performance
improvement factors models, like Achieve are suggested.
2. It is possible to consider critical path using three main scale of evaluation instead of evaluation
mark.
3. It is possible to perform a comparative comparison of employee appraisal in such a way that we
used in this paper and 360 appraisals.
4. Finally, it is possible to use two dependent variables of performance appraisal and job satisfaction
using critical path.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thanks the anonymous referees for their comments on earlier version of this
paper.
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