Perspectives on Models of Job Performance

Contemporary models of job performance are reviewed. Links between task performance, contextual performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, counterproductivity and organizational deviance are pointed out. Measurement issues in constructing generic models applicable across jobs are discussed. Implications for human resource management in general, and performance appraisal for selection and assessment in particular, are explored. It is pointed out that the different dimensions or facets of individual job performance hypothesized in the literature are positively correlated. This positive manifold suggests the presence of a general factor which represents a common variance shared across all the dimensions or facets. Although no consensus exists in the extant literature on the meaning and source of this shared variance (i.e., the general factor), rater idiosyncratic halo alone does not explain this general factor. Future research should explain the common individual differences determinants of performance dimensions.