EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AND CAREER ADVANCEMENT IN NIGERIAN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS: AN EXPLICATORY REVIEW

ARIMIE, Chukwuyem Joel
Department of Political Science and Public Administration
Benson Idahosa University, Benin-City
jarimie@biu.edu.ng
OROBOSA, A. Ihensekhien
Department of Economics, Banking and Finance
Benson Idahosa University, Benin-City
oihensekhien@biu.edu.ng
ABSTRACT
Employee performance appraisal is a focal aspect of human resources management. It analyzes employees’
performance and ensures that employee performs at the desired level to achieve organizational objectives.
This paper examined issues of performance appraisal and career advancement in Nigerian public
organizations. The paper adopts a qualitative research method. It depended on secondary data from
scholarly journals and Management by Objective theory as a framework of analysis. The study oserved that
performance appraisal does not only promote organizational performance but provides potency in
determining employee capacity, skills acquisition, and experience for career advancement. The paper
concluded that Nigeria’s public organizations’ performance appraisal systems have been inundated with
scores of challenges, and that the current appraisal systems negates the assumptions of MBO. The
inaccurate rating system used on Nigeria’s public organizations to appraise employees does not provide
adequate data that would identify high-potential employees for advancement into managerial positions.
They paper recommends that, for personnel performance appraisal to be potent, the full support of
management and staff must be solicited, that an appraisal format must be designed specifically to address
areas of concern to top echelon of public organizations in other to address the haphazard approach used
by managers to appraise employees. The paper further recommends that comprehensive training
programmes should be developed for managers responsible for conducting performance appraisals in
ministries, department, and agencies of government.
Keywords: Career advancement, confidential appraisal, employee performance appraisal, open appraisal,
open-secret appraisal