Other Important Questions: When, How, and Why Do Cultural Values Influence Performance Management?

Adler et al. (2016) raise some controversial issues about whether performance rating systems should be eliminated or not. We strongly believe that the decision to do away with performance ratings is premature because more research needs to be done, as suggested by “the better questions†that Adler et al. listed at the end of the focal article. We propose that those questions can be extended further by testing them in other cultures and supplemented with these questions: When, how, and why do cultural values influence performance management? Given the nature of our increasingly diverse workforce in which employees with different cultural values work together within the same organization, it is crucial to identify and document the influence of culture on performance appraisal practices. In this commentary, we briefly summarize research to date on the influence of cultural values on performance management and identify some important future research directions.