The Relationships Among Performance Appraisal Satisfaction, Career Development and Creative Behavior

The impact of performance appraisal satisfaction on employee attitudes and behavior is well established in the literature. Employees who are satisfied with performance appraisals at work are expected to be more satisfied and motivated at work. However, current research has not empirically established whether performance appraisal satisfaction leads to creative behavior at work. Creative behavior is one of the key factors that helps companies to remain competitive in the market. One of the main objectives of this paper is to investigate the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and creative behavior. Another objective of this research is to examine the relationship between satisfaction with appraisal and perceptions of career development which is considered a top priority for many employees. Career development at work remains a highly sought element that employees look for in a job. Although performance appraisal systems are expected to include discussions of career development, there has been limited studies which explicitly tested whether satisfaction with appraisal can positively impact perceptions of career development at work. A sample of 128 respondents from the country of Lebanon took part in this study. All variables of interest including performance appraisal satisfaction, career development, and creative behavior were measured using well-established scales. All scales achieved acceptable Cronbach's alpha levels in this study. Regression analysis showed that performance appraisal satisfaction is positively related to both creative behavior and career development. Moreover, this study tested the role of career development in the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and creative behavior. Mediation analysis showed that career development fully mediated the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and creative behavior. In other words, when career development was entered into the equation, the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and creative behavior became insignificant suggesting full mediation. This demonstrates that companies that fail to build effective career development systems at work may not be able to secure employee creativity, regardless of whether the performance appraisal systems are considered satisfying by employees. Discussions and management implications are presented in this paper. The paper concludes with the study limitations and offers suggestions for future research.