Faculty Performance Appraisal

Edited by Alexander L. Gabbin, Scott N. Cairns, and Ralph L. Benke Jr.

250 pages, copyright 1990

Faculty Performance Appraisal reports the results of a broad search for business and non-business literature on faculty performance appraisals. Articles were selected for this volume with two objectives in mind: (1) to discover what business school faculty and researchers might learn from the work of others on the faculty appraisal process; and (2) to stimulate additional research by bringing together some of the best thinking on faculty performance appraisal.

• Performance Criteria: Section I examines performance criteria for promotion, tenure and salary decisions. The changing nature of performance criteria; the relative importance placed on teaching, research and service at differing colleges and universities; the empirical relationships between rewards and faculty performance; and a comparison of faculty performance between academic business departments are all addressed in the section's papers.
• Teaching as a Criterion: This section begins with a paper which extensively reviews research findings on student evaluations and ratings of teachers. Three articles which follow examine the validity and reliability of faculty teaching assessment. The final paper examines 60 specific teaching behaviors and identifies determinants of effective teaching.
• Research as a Criterion: This section's first paper provides a conceptual framework for recognizing productivity differences between faculty in different disciplines. The importance assigned to different kinds of research and service activities by 345 department chairs from AACSB-member schools is also examined in another article.
• Improving the Appraisal Process: The penultimate article identifies 49 appraisal improvement strategies offered by more than 200 authors and institutions. The final paper addresses conceptual and measurement issues of effective faculty performance appraisal.