Two Hats Are Better Than One: How Managers’ Role Identity Complexity Impacts Performance Management

We introduce the concept of performance management (PM) identity complexity, integrating research on identity, work identity complexity, and perspective-taking with managers’ PM-related responsibilities, and propose that managers’ PM identity complexity acts as a resource that benefits PM effectiveness. We extend extant PM research that has primarily positioned managers in a PM giver role (i.e., as raters) to suggest that managers navigate multiple roles, including both PM giver and PM receiver, as part of PM. That is, managers not only provide ratings and feedback to direct reports during PM, they also receive evaluation and feedback from their own supervisors. When a manager has a salient, or activated, PM receiver identity while enacting the role of PM giver, we define this as greater PM identity complexity, and we expect managers vary with regard to their level of PM identity complexity. The current research examines the implications of managers’ PM identity complexity for both evaluative (i.e., ratings) and developmental (i.e., feedback) PM across two studies, a longitudinal field study and an experimental study. Results are largely supportive of our hypotheses positioning managers’ PM identity complexity as an important predictor of rating quality, through perceived difficulty reactions, as well as a key contextual factor moderating the relationship between direct reports’ feedback orientation and feedback seeking behaviors.