Managing Individual Performance Appraisal in Project Teams

The business environment in which organizations are struggling today, is a mosaic of transformations and perpetual changes, therefore, in this context of the dynamics of complex business processes, is absolutely necessary the presence of an effective base of performance appraisal to continuous employee motivation for organizations to register success. This chapter is looking at how supporting project teams define and monitor performance, achieves business results, and provides a strong base for good human resource practices, such as performance management and appraisal systems. The processes of performance appraisal are analyzed using the view of organizational justice, as seen by human resource directors, project managers, and project team members in their efforts to increase the engagement and productivity in project-based organizations. More and more, Romanian organizations recognize projects and project management as a strategic tool to optimize strategy execution by reducing product cycle durations and optimizing other critical dimensions as quality and costs. The strong Romanian industries like automotive, energy and the new star, software, are active promoters for modern project management techniques. Multidimensional client pressures — better quality at reduced costs and faster results — are translated into major tensions for organizational programs and projects. Project managers are forced to translate client requirements into project objectives, and the available resources seem to be scarce. There is a large volume of published studies describing the role of performance management approaches, concepts, and tools. However, one question that needs to be asked is how organizations should adapt their classical performance management processes (including appraisal) to the dynamic and fast pace changing realities of project management. This chapter comprises the conclusions related to a research executed in companies from automotive industry (15 project managers and 2 human resource managers), from IT (5 project managers and 1 human resource manager), and consultancy (3 project managers and 1 human resource manager).