International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol.

21, 76–96 (2019)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12177

How Does Performance Management

Affect Workers? Beyond Human Resource
Management and Its Critique
1
Dale Tweedie , David Wild, Carl Rhodes and Nonna Martinov-Bennie
Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia, and 1 UTS Business School, NSW
2007, Australia
Corresponding author email: dale.tweedie@mq.edu.au

While performance management (PM) is pervasive across contemporary workplaces,

extant research into how performance management affects workers is often indirect
or scattered across disciplinary silos. This paper reviews and synthesizes this research,
identifies key gaps and explores ‘recognition theory’ as a nascent framework that can
further develop this important body of knowledge. The paper develops in three main
stages. The first stage reviews ‘mainstream’ human resource management (HRM) re-
search. While this research analyses workers’ reactions to performance management in
some depth, its focus on serving organizational goals marginalizes extra-organizational
impacts. The second stage reviews more critical HRM research, which interprets perfor-
mance management as a disciplinary, coercive or inequitable management device. While
this literature adds an important focus on organizational power, there is scope to analyse
further how PM affects workers’ well-being. To develop this strand of PM research, the
third stage turns to the emerging field of recognition theory independently developed
by Axel Honneth and Christophe Dejours. The authors focus especially on recognition
theory’s exploration of how (in)adequate acknowledgement of workers’ contributions
can significantly affect their well-being at the level of self-conception. Although recogni-
tion theory is inherently critical, the paper argues that it can advance both mainstream
and critical performance management research, and also inform broader inquiry into
recognition and identity at work.

Introduction ple are ‘working together in an optimum fashion to

Performance management (PM) is a pervasive prac-
tice that organizations use to measure and manage
employees’ work. In contemporary usage, PM refers
to a more or less integrated set of systems for direct-
ing and evaluating workers’ performance (Aguinis
2009; Aguinis and Pierce 2008; Ayers 2015; Briscoe
and Claus 2008; Spence and Keeping 2011). Perfor-
mance management includes objective setting, per-
formance appraisal, reward and incentive strategies
and career planning, which all aim to ensure that peo-
†
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this article is available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1468-2370/homepage/teaching___
learning_guides.htm.
achieve the results desired by organizations’ (Biron
et al. 2011, p. 1294). Performance management’s pro-
ponents argue that – when done well – PM improves
employees’ performance, engagement and commit-
ment (Festing et al. 2012; Gruman and Saks 2011).
Performance management has been heralded as the
lynchpin of strategic human resource management
(HRM) by connecting employee management to or-
ganizations’ overall objectives (Bowen and Ostroff
2004). Although there are gaps in research on how
PM is actually used (DeNisi and Smith 2014), extant
evidence finds that PM varies substantially across in-
dustries, professions and roles. In professional work,
PM often entails an initial meeting to set goals,
ongoing monitoring and an annual performance re-
view. In non-professional jobs, PM can be used


C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington
Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
mechanically and even coercively. For example, in
some call centres, computer programs automatically
assess workers against predefined quantitative targets
(Taylor et al. 2002). ‘Feedback’ then consists of puni-
tive measures when workers miss these targets (Taylor
and Bain 1999).
Performance management practice and research
has a long history. Thompson (1967, 1980) showed
how industrialization entailed a mass relocation of
home or seasonal labour into the institutionalized
and time-bound surveillance of the shop floor. This
trend arguably culminated in the Taylorist strategy
to document and control the entire labour process
(Braverman 1998). While Taylorism has faded as an
explicit management system,1 the aspiration for struc-
tured methods to direct, measure and assess work-
ers’ performance remains. Performance management
research dates from at least the 1920s (DeNisi and
Pritchard 2006), and proliferated with the burgeoning
of HRM since the 1980s. Performance management
research is closely linked to management practice,
with corporations, the public sector and not-for-profit
organizations all developing explicit PM programs
(Becker et al. 2011; Carter et al. 2011; Winstanley
and Stuart-Smith 1996).
This paper reviews research into how PM affects
workers, with the aim of making three contributions
to extant literature. First, although there have been
numerous prior reviews of various aspects of PM lit-
erature (e.g. DeNisi and Smith 2014; Guest 1997;
Iqbal et al. 2015; Lefkowitz 2000; Levy and Williams
2004), our review has a distinctive focus on how PM
affects workers’ personal interests and well-being.
Thus, in contradistinction to reviewing how work-
ers’ reactions to PM, for example, impact organiza-
tional efficiency (e.g. Cawley et al. 1998), we review
how using PM to enhance organizational efficiency
affects workers themselves. Second, whereas existing
research typically bifurcates between what is some-
times termed ‘mainstream HRM’ and ‘critical HRM’
(Thompson 2011), this paper thematically reviews
both literatures. Third, this review explores the po-
tential of recognition theory (Dejours 2007; Honneth
1995, 2010) to inform future PM research. The pa-
per thereby responds to calls to integrate recognition
theory into broader organizational and management
1
Although not in all countries or industries; see for example
Taylor and Bain’s (1999) and Carter et al.’s (2011) discussions
of call centre work. Some theorists also argue that Taylorist
ideas persist in other contemporary industries without being
labelled as such (e.g. Mingers and Willmott 2013).

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
77
research (e.g. Dashtipour and Vidaillet 2017; Grover
2013; Harding et al. 2012; Islam 2012).
The review has three main stages. After briefly
introducing our review method, stage one examines
how ‘mainstream HRM’ (henceforth, HRM2 ) con-
ceptualizes PM’s effects on workers through several
research phases. Consistent with prior reviews, we
find HRM has developed an increasingly nuanced
analysis of workers’ reactions to, and perceptions of,
PM systems, and of the social context in which PM
occurs. However, this increasingly socialized analysis
of how PM affects workers has paradoxically intensi-
fied HRM’s characteristic framing of PM as primarily
serving strategic organizational goals. In Fournier and
Grey’s (2000, p. 17) terms, HRM retains a ‘performa-
tive’ focus on how PM ‘contributes to the production
of maximum output for minimum input’.
Stage two reviews ‘critical HRM’ (henceforth,
CHRM) research into how PM affects workers. While
some scholars contrast CHRM with critical manage-
ment studies (Thompson 2011), we locate CHRM as a
subset of critical management studies focused on hu-
man resource issues. Inter alia, CHRM research into
PM is ‘anti-performative’ (Fournier and Grey 2000)
in its rejection that PM should be assessed in terms of
whether it makes organizations more efficient. While
not exhaustive, we distinguish three broad theories
that inform this research: (i) labour process theory; (ii)
Foucauldian theory; and (iii) theories of ‘conflicting
rationalities’. One of CHRM’s key achievements is to
redress the conspicuous absence of power in main-
stream HRM research. Yet our review finds scope for
CHRM to analyse further how PM can affect work-
ers’ health and well-being, in addition to, or ‘beyond’,
PM’s capacity to construct docile or compliant worker
subjectivities.
Stage three introduces recognition theories by
Axel Honneth (1995, 2007a,b, 2010) and Christophe
Dejours (2007, 2012, 2014; Dejours and Bègue 2009)
alongside a growing secondary literature (Austen
et al. 2016; Dashtipour and Vidaillet 2017; Deranty
2012; Grover 2013; Klikauer 2016; Tweedie and
Holley 2016). Honneth and Dejours view adequate
acknowledgement of workers’ contribution to pro-
duction as critical to workers’ capacity to sustain an
autonomous or healthy self-conception. Since recog-
nition theories articulate pre-conditions of workers’
2
We use the label ‘HRM’ for mainstream HRM literature
simply because of the dominance of this literature, without
implying that it is the more legitimate - or the de facto -
perspective.
78
well-being, recognition-theoretic approaches to PM
necessarily move beyond HRM’s ‘performative’
instrumental approach. Recognition theories also
offer a framework to articulate and empirically re-
search how PM affects workers’ basic psychic health
and functioning. Consequently, although recognition
theory has important limitations, we argue it has
potential to enhance both mainstream and critical PM
research. Insofar as workers’ reactions to PM provide
insight into how workplace recognition and subjec-
tivity are interrelated, recognition theories of PM can
also help address calls to apply recognition theory to
other areas of management research (e.g. Dashtipour
and Vidaillet 2017; Grover 2013; Harding et al. 2012).
Method
Our review aimed to ascertain key themes in HRM
and CHRM research that addresses how PM affects
workers most directly. Hence, we did not review ev-
ery PM paper, but instead analysed the most relevant
texts in depth. Our paper selection focused on three
issues: (i) the purposes of PM; (ii) internal develop-
ments within and between HRM and CHRM research;
and (iii) the role, significance and experience of the
‘employee’ in PM. We make no claim to capture all
responses to these issues. In particular, our study fo-
cused on academic literature, and so has the limitation
of excluding the extensive professional management
literature. However, our review captures influential
ideas in how both mainstream and critical literatures
approach PM’s impact on workers. This enables us to
identify and analyse potential future research contri-
butions.
We selected relevant literature in three steps. First,
we conducted an extensive database and journal
search for relevant articles. Since we aimed to
document how PM literature has developed, we
did not set limits on articles’ dates of publication.
The initial full database searches were conducted
from May to July 2015, with searches for potential
updates until May 2016. We used our institution’s
‘multi-search’ function to search 67 databases simul-
taneously, including leading business-specific (e.g.
Business Search Premier) and generic (e.g. expanded
Academic and JSTOR) academic repositories and the
most highly cited management and organizational
studies journals. We also independently searched
management and organizational studies journals
in Social Science Citation Index’s (SSCI) business
subject category. Our primary search terms, which
were ‘performance appraisal’, ‘performance mea-

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
D. Tweedie et al.
surement’ and ‘performance management’, returned
over 61,000 results. A secondary search used terms
more specific to our topic, including: ‘employee
impact’; ‘ethics’; ‘justice’; ‘history of’; ‘purpose of’
and ‘wellbeing’, to narrow the results. With duplicate
results removed, this produced 295 texts.
Our second step reviewed titles and abstracts to
narrow the sample further to academic texts that ad-
dress employees’ experiences of PM most directly.
We initially identified 64 articles to review in-depth.
For heuristic purposes, we divided these into HRM
and CHRM approaches (Thompson 2011) based on
either self-categorization or our own analysis. Forty-
eight articles belonged to HRM and 16 to CHRM. Our
third step examined the bibliographies of the entire
refined sample, which revealed a further 38 articles:
21 HRM and 17 CHRM. Since we aimed to identify
the main debates and themes, we paid especially close
attention to highly cited texts. Our final list included
102 texts. We analysed these texts in detail, including
documenting core themes, theories and methodolo-
gies. After this analysis, we re-searched the databases
cited above and key social and organizational theory
journals for texts using ‘recognition’ with ‘Honneth’
and/or ‘Dejours’. Journals searched included philos-
ophy (e.g. European Journal of Social Theory; Criti-
cal Horizons) and organizational studies (e.g. Human
Relations; Organization) journals, which have previ-
ously applied or cited recognition theory. Rather than
including all search findings, we used just those texts
that addressed the specific gaps in HRM and CHRM
our formal review identified.
HRM and PM
This section reviews PM research in HRM. Themat-
ically, we distinguish three HRM research phases fo-
cused on, respectively: eliminating measurement er-
ror (Phase I); understanding PM’s ‘social context’
(Phase II); and integrating PM into organizational
strategy (Phase III). Our review of these phases be-
low identifies a paradoxical double-movement in how
HRM literature analyses PM’s impact on workers.
Specifically, HRM research considers workers’ per-
ceptions and experiences in progressively more depth,
but simultaneously commits more strongly to a ‘per-
formative’ (Fournier and Grey 2000) perspective of
tailoring PM to strategic organizational efficiency,
rather than to workers’ interests or well-being.
Although not all the functions that HRM attributes
to PM directly concern organizational efficiency,
this performative lens is generally at least implied.
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
For example, HRM researchers typically distinguish
administrative PM functions, which drive human
resource decisions such as salary and promotion
(Brown and Warren 2011; Cleveland et al. 1989;
Landy et al. 1982; Pulakos 2009; Scullen and
Mount 2000), from developmental PM functions
such as employee motivation and education (Banner
and Cooke 1984; Cheng 2013).3 However, even
HRM research into PM’s developmental functions
is typically set within a strategic-organizational
framework. For instance, while Latham et al. (2005,
p. 77) describe PM’s primary goal as motivating
employees to improve, they also compare managers
to professional sports coaches who must ‘cut’ poor
performers. This illustrates how workers’ well-being
is relevant in HRM only insofar as it affects organi-
zational performance. Most HRM scholars explicitly
presume that aligning individual behaviours with
organizational goals will make organizations perform
better (DeNisi and Sonesh 2010; Gruman and Saks
2011; Macey et al. 2011; Mone and London 2010).
HRM Phase 1: Eliminating measurement error
It is well-documented that the primary aim of HRM’s
initial PM research phase (1920–1980/90) was to
make performance appraisal more accurate (Ban-
ner and Cooke 1984; Budworth and Mann 2011;
DeNisi and Pritchard 2006). While researchers noted
PM’s importance to organizations (McGregor 1957;
Thorndike 1949), in practice ‘researchers and orga-
nizations focused an inordinate amount of energy on
developing the “right” rating format and procedure
to increase rater accuracy’ (Longenecker and Ludwig
1990, p. 961). As Keeping and Levy (2000) indicate,
appraisal effectiveness is concerned with how well an
appraisal system assesses the factors that managers
believe enhance individual, departmental and firm
performance. These factors can include measuring
outputs, project goals, personality traits or observable
behaviours. However, prior literature finds ratings in-
variably inaccurate irrespective of which performance
factors managers choose.
This drive for accuracy stimulated new measure-
ment instruments and techniques. The industrial-age
of performance appraisal began with trait-based
3
Aguinis (2009) identifies six purposes for PM, adding strate-
gic (goal-alignment), communication, organizational main-
tenance and documentation. However, these purposes are
(arguably) sub-sets of the broader distinction between ad-
ministrative and developmental functions.

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79
assessment scales (e.g. graphic-rating scales), which
remained popular despite considerable problems with
rater bias and a perceived disregard for employee
development (Bernardin and Buckley 1981; Wiese
and Buckley 1998). The ‘management-by-objectives’
systems that emerged in the 1950s aimed to address
the shortcomings of trait-based models by focusing
on providing employee development and feedback
against job specific goals. However, management-by-
objectives suffered from limitations and perceived
biases, such as tending to privilege quantifiable over
qualitative aspects of job performance, and poten-
tially making employees responsible for outcomes
outside their control (Goodale 1977).
With the increasing popularity of behaviourism
in psychology in the 1960s, organizational psy-
chologists Smith and Kendall (1963) devised the
Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS),
intending to produce a measurement tool that was
psychometrically sufficient (i.e. valid, reliable, dis-
criminating and useful). However, BARS, and other
behavioural instruments such as the Behavioural
Observation Scale, were no more accurate than their
trait-based predecessors (Schwab et al. 1975). In
the late 1970s, Bernardin and Pence (1980) found
decreasing rater error actually decreased rating accu-
racy. Such results were part of a gradual shift in focus,
culminating in Landy and Farr’s (1980) far-reaching
review finding that research on rating-scales failed
to demonstrate that any one format was superior.
Landy and Farr (1980) argued the PM field needed to
broaden its focus from rating scales to other elements
of performance evaluation, such as rater and ratee
training (see also Budworth and Mann 2011; Spence
and Keeping 2011). Nevertheless, this shift from rat-
ing scales to raters did not remove researchers’ almost
obsessive concern with rating accuracy (DeNisi and
Pritchard 2006) or substantively reduce measurement
errors (Scullen and Mount 2000). Research more fo-
cused on raters also largely ignored how PM affected
workers independent of organizational imperatives.
HRM Phase II: PM’s ‘social context’
Starting in the 1980s and culminating in the 1990s,
HRM researchers began to question systematically
the assumption that rating accuracy was the appro-
priate criterion to assess PM systems (Bretz Jr et al.
1992; Ilgen et al. 1993). Focus shifted to the ‘social
context’ of performance measurement and appraisal
(Longenecker and Ludwig 1990). This shift was
triggered by the conclusion, such as in Bretz Jr et al.’s
80
(1992) influential review, that the longstanding
agenda to eliminate measurement errors sidelined
investigation of what makes performance appraisals
(in)effective. Bretz Jr et al. (1992) concluded that
performance appraisal researchers needed to improve
their understanding of PM’s social and organizational
context.
This ‘social context’ framework drove much of the
PM research agenda from the 1990s onwards. As
Levy and Williams (2004, p. 883) elaborate, this new
research agenda included:
the social-psychological process of performance ap-
praisal (Murphy and Cleveland 1991), the social
context of performance appraisal (Ferris, Judge,
Rowland and Fitzgibbons 1994), the social milieu
of performance appraisal (Ilgen et al. 1993), perfor-
mance appraisal from the organizational side (Levy
and Steelman 1997), the games that raters and ra-
tees play (Kozlowski, Chao and Morrison 1998), or
the due process approach to performance appraisal
(Folger, Konovsky and Cropanzano 1992).
The social context phase entailed widespread ac-
ceptance that PM’s effectiveness depended in part
on how primary users react (Levy and Williams
2004; Murphy and Cleveland 1995), and that even
robust evaluation is likely to be ineffective with-
out employee support (Cardy and Dobbins 1994).
To gain a better understanding of these social dy-
namics, PM researchers examined various proxi-
mal variables, including: ratee perceptions of jus-
tice, motivation and reactions to appraisal (Brown
et al. 2010; Cawley et al. 1998; Greenberg 2011;
Jawahar 2010; Lefkowitz 2000; Robbins and DeNisi
1998), supervisor–subordinate relation, leadership,
rewards and punishments, and appraisal goals. Re-
searchers also acknowledged distal factors such as
organizational culture, societies’ socio-political sys-
tems, economic conditions, legal climate and technol-
ogy changes (Miller 2003). However, these factors
remained largely unexamined empirically owing to
measurement difficulties (Levy and Williams 2004).
Although HRM Phase II studied workers’ reactions
to PM in some detail, it retained – and arguably rein-
forced – the primacy of organizational interests. The
HRM researchers’ main motive for studying PM’s
social context was to create managerial processes
that better serve organizations’ goals. This motive
is especially evident in HRM research into workers’
perceptions of fair and unfair performance appraisal
(e.g. Brown et al. 2010; Jawahar 2007; Keeping and
Levy 2000). Early research focused on distributive

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D. Tweedie et al.
outcomes (especially pay). Subsequently, researchers
added ‘procedural justice’ constructs to capture the
importance workers place on fair processes such as
‘voice opportunities, and consistency’ (Thibaut and
Walker 1975). Later research incorporated ‘interac-
tional justice’, composed of interpersonal (how peo-
ple are treated) and informational (what is commu-
nicated) factors (e.g. Colquitt 2001). However, the
primary motive for this research was improving in-
dividual and organizational performance rather than
achieving justice for workers (Brown et al. 2010;
Cawley et al. 1998; Jawahar 2007; Latham et al.
2005). In Levy and Williams’ (2004, p. 897) sum-
mation: ‘if participants do not perceive the system to
be fair, the feedback to be accurate, or sources to be
credible then they are more likely to ignore and not use
the feedback they receive’ (see also Cropanzano et al.
2007; Greenberg 1986; 2011). Consequently, HRM
researchers argued, performance appraisals workers
view as ‘unfair’ are unlikely to advance management’s
goal of making workers and organizations perform
better (Cardy and Dobbins 1994).
The strategic organizational emphasis of HRM was
palpable from the beginning of the social context
phase, as in Folger et al.’s (1992, p. 171) statement
that ‘perceived injustice [in PM] can result in prob-
lems for the organization’. This baseline instrumental
framing has driven HRM research into how ‘ethical’
evaluation procedures are linked to the distal goal of
improving organizational performance (e.g. Aguinis
2009). Moreover, since the quantitative, survey-based
methodologies that dominate HRM research typically
specify their research models variables up front, they
can limit research participants’ (i.e. workers’) capac-
ity to articulate other effects – especially effects ex-
ternal to organizational interests or goals.
HRM Phase III: Improving organizational
performance
The HRM Phase III links PM research even more
strongly to organizational goals. The context for
Phase III is the substantial gap between what theo-
rists argue PM is supposed to do (i.e. align, develop
and improve employees) and what practitioners think
it actually does. For example, Posthuma and Cam-
pion’s (2008) extensive survey found only 13% of
employees and managers and 6% of chief executive
officers thought their PM systems were useful. Con-
sequently, HRM has increasingly researched how PM
can improve organizational performance in practice
(Ayers 2015; Brown et al. 2010; DeNisi and Sonesh
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
2010; Dusterhoff et al. 2013; Gruman and Saks 2011;
Kim and Rubianty 2011; Spence and Keeping 2011;
Wiese and Buckley 1998). Phase III retains Phase II’s
emphasis on PM’s social context, but focuses more
closely on integrating PM practices into organiza-
tions’ strategic management systems.
One feature of Phase III HRM literature on PM is
a two-sided organizational model of goal-alignment
and aggregated individual and/or team performance,
which aims to link individual employee performance
more directly to macro-organizational performance
measures, systems or outcomes. In turn, this
literature emphasizes how management tools that
encourage individual employees to improve contin-
uously potentially provide competitive advantages.
This approach drives much contemporary HRM re-
search into PM, especially the growing research into
interrelations between PM systems and employee
behaviours. Performance management research
continues to examine employees’ perceptions of,
and reactions to, appraisal processes (Cheng 2013;
Dusterhoff et al. 2013; Gruman and Saks 2011;
Jacobs et al. 2014; Qiu et al. 2015; Thurston and
McNall 2010; Tsai and Wang, 2013). However, PM
researchers increasingly analyse these processes
within the broader organizational performance
context. For example, whereas early review articles
called for research into social factors (e.g. the man-
agerial role), more recent reviews call for closer study
of how individual appraisal is linked to firm-level
outcomes such as profitability (DeNisi and Pritchard
2006; DeNisi and Smith 2014). Thus, Phase III PM
research aims to interpret PM’s impact on workers
within a more integrated account of how individual
or team performance achieves organizational strategy
and boosts profits. In focusing more tightly on links
between workers’ and organizations’ motives, HRM
Phase III research invariably shifts attention further
away from how PM may affect workers’ well-being
without affecting organizational strategies or profits.
Critical HRM and PM
Critical research into PM commonly starts from
perceived shortcomings of HRM (Barlow 1989;
McGivern and Ferlie 2007; McKenna et al. 2011;
Newton and Findlay 1996; Townley 1993; Wilson
2002). While CHRM literature is highly diverse, one
key distinction is that CHRM is ‘anti-performative’
in the sense of challenging HRM’s attempt to frame
PM within an instrumental–organizational logic. This

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81
different political agenda leads to differences in how
CHRM studies and interprets PM’s effects on work-
ers. For example, where empirical research in HRM
is overwhelmingly quantitative, empirical research
is CHRM is overwhelmingly qualitative.4 The clas-
sic criticism of qualitative approaches is the diffi-
culty of inferring broader empirical trends. However,
CHRM’s qualitative approach also signals its agenda
to uncover hidden mechanisms of power or ideology
embedded within PM practice. For instance, narra-
tives are especially apposite to uncovering mecha-
nisms of power and conflict other methods cannot
easily access (Rhodes and Brown 2005).
This section analyses three influential CHRM ap-
proaches to analysing how PM affects workers. Our
review is necessarily partial, first because CHRM
is more theoretically diverse than HRM. Second,
CHRM literature on PM lacks well-defined bound-
aries, because PM is implicated in multiple critical
literatures, which encompass workplace surveillance,
control and resistance (e.g. Mumby 2005; Paulsen
2014). Nonetheless, we focus on three influential
critical approaches: (i) labour process theory; (ii)
Foucauldian theories; and (iii) notions of ‘conflict-
ing rationalities’. While not always discrete frame-
works, this typology is heuristically useful to draw out
how different critical literatures conceptualize PM’s
effects.
CHRM: labour process theory and related
‘pre-Foucauldian’ critiques
Labour process theory is a Marxist approach to study-
ing work in organizations based on Braverman’s
(1974) seminal work. This theory aims to defend
workers’ agency against managerial control by con-
ceptualizing workplaces as sites of class struggle.
On this view, the work process of extracting surplus
value from labour is beset by competing pressures for
worker control, resistance and consent (Thompson
2010). Labour process theorists conceptualize PM
as a control mechanism that enables management to
maintain domination over workers. We consider two
exemplars of this approach in detail.
Although not explicitly labour process theory,
Barlow’s (1989) influential critical reinterpretation
of PM’s measurement deficiencies invokes similar
themes. In common with early Phase II HRM (e.g.
4
Of the 12 CHRM papers in our sample that reported empir-
ical research, 10 were qualitative, and 2 combined methods.
No papers only used quantitative methods.
82
Folger et al. 1992), Barlow (1989) argues that
performance appraisal has intractable measurement
errors. However, Barlow (1989) claims that PM
systems persist precisely because they are ineffec-
tive. For him, PM provides ideological justification
for coercive managerial power, but its lack of
measurement rigour means it fails to constrain how
power is actually wielded. Barlow’s (1989, p. 513)
case study finds PM ‘epitomized values of efficiency
and rationality’, while institutionalizing ‘an ideology
which sought to enlist participants’ positive effort
and continuing compliance, despite the inegalitarian
nature of business organizations’. Consequently, PM
emphasized worker accountability while eschewing
management accountability.
Newton and Findlay (1996) explicitly apply labour
process theory to PM. For them, managers not only
exercise control through de-skilling and overt indus-
trial discipline, as for Braverman (1974), but also
through complex social processes that encourage
workers to ‘regulate and police their own behaviour’
(Newton and Findlay 1996, p. 46; cf. Burawoy 1979).
Newton and Findlay (1996) implicate PM in this
socio-ideological control in two interrelated ways.
First, PM makes employees’ performance more vis-
ible, and thereby more subject to overt management
control. Second, PM encourages workers to internal-
ize organizational goals. This internalization is espe-
cially important where production systems shift from
tightly controlled bureaucratic labour towards more
open-ended processes requiring greater worker au-
tonomy (see also Sennett 2006). More open-ended
production requires employees to exercise ‘autonomy
and discretion’ in organizations’ interests. From this
perspective, HRM’s emphasis on ‘goal alignment’
through PM is a corollary of labour processes that
increasingly require this type of ideological control.
More recent labour process research contests the
internalization thesis, while still framing PM as en-
forcing managerial power and class interests. Thomp-
son (2013) argues the ‘internalization thesis’ pre-
supposes an illusionary degree of worker autonomy.
For him, broader changes in capitalism (e.g. finan-
cialization) have increased management power and
curtailed workers’ autonomy (Cushen and Thompson
2016; Thompson 2013). Without substantive worker
autonomy, Thompson (2013) argues, PM largely ex-
ercises coercive rather than normative control (see
also Barley and Gideon 1992). While Thompson
contests socio-ideological readings of PM’s impact,
he shares Newton and Findlay’s (1996) and Bar-
low’s (1989) concept of PM as a management tool to

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D. Tweedie et al.
control workers. The dispute is whether this tool is a
relatively blunt coercive device or more subtle ideo-
logical instrument.
CHRM: Foucauldian theory and debates
The dominant CHRM approach to PM draws on
Michel Foucault, with early uptakes focused on Disci-
pline and Punish (Foucault 1991). This research fol-
lows authors such as Rose (1989), Townley (1993),
Grint (1993), Coates (1994), Barratt (2008) and
Sewell et al. (2012), who apply Foucault’s thinking to
management and organizations. Like labour process
analyses, Foucauldian studies of PM foreground man-
agerial power. However, instead of locating power in
conflicting class interests, Foucauldian theories em-
phasize how discursive processes frame and create
power relations, and how these framings subjectify
and discipline workers and render them ‘docile’ to
managerial demands. This Foucauldian standpoint
represents PM as a management practice that con-
structs and maintains particular worker subjectivities,
making the employee a ‘knowable, calculable and ad-
ministrable object’ (Miller and Rose 2006, p. 5). Fol-
lowing Foucault, the ability to ‘know’ something cre-
ates a power relation through which it is disciplined.
Townley (1993) uses Foucault (1991) to argue that
even ‘socialized’ HRM research misrepresents PM’s
function by misunderstanding the structure of orga-
nizational power. For her, the worker/manager di-
chotomy already locates workers within organiza-
tional power relations, implies how workers should
act, and assumes disciplinary instruments organiza-
tions use to reproduce workers’ organizational loca-
tion and actions according to explicit and implicit
organizational norms. From this perspective, HRM
analyses of PM’s ‘social context’ (Phase II) are at
best extremely partial, because they naively presume
the organizational power that makes PM possible. For
Townley (1993), PM systems are instruments or tech-
niques of power that disperse throughout an organi-
zation, rather than hierarchical control. This disper-
sal influences workers to internalize organizational
norms, becoming disciplined by their ‘own’ norma-
tive commitments.
While stressing how PM channels management
power, Foucauldian theories also emphasize that the
knowledge/power relations PM produce, with their
attending subjectivities and organizational structures,
are always dynamic (Coates 1994). Foucauldian the-
orists focus on PM’s more pernicious consequences,
especially how PM makes the working self into a
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
willing, unquestioning, unresisting servant of man-
agerial power. However, the dynamic element of Fou-
cauldian theory – the ‘productiveness of power’ – can
also leave open the possibility that some forms or
aspects of PM might have benefits for workers, al-
beit unintended and indirect. For example, Townley
(1993, p. 235) writes:
The emergence of a managerial role gives formal
power but may detract from the authority and effec-
tiveness likely to be required to introduce change,
and thus be eschewed. Equally the productive role
of power with appraisal acting as an aid to subjec-
tive well-being may lead to support for certain types
of appraisal processes. [emphasis added]
Consequently, whereas labour process theorists see
PM as an unequivocally negative intervention in a
class struggle between labour and management (or
capital), Foucauldian CHRM has introduced more
ambiguous themes. For example, Grey (1994) notes
how the concept of ‘career’ disciplines accounting re-
cruits, but also how accountants themselves mobilize
the ‘career’ construct in PM discourse. This multi-
faceted use of PM implicitly introduces ambiguities
about how career-centred PM norms affect profes-
sional accountants’ well-being, even granted Grey’s
(1994, p. 495) conclusion that the ‘project of self-
management through career is a more productive and
economical form of management control than disci-
plinary power . . . could ever be’.
Two alternative uses of Foucault in PM research
question earlier applications of disciplinary mod-
els of power (Foucault 1991). Weiskopf and Munro
(2011) use Foucault’s later writings on biopower
(Foucault 2003) and neoliberal governmentality (Fou-
cault 2007) to contend that HRM discourse has im-
plicit neo-liberal presumptions about society, employ-
ment relations and workers that standard Foucauldian
readings overlook. Alongside other critical scholars
(Du Gay 1996, 2004; Hjorth 1999), Weiskopf and
Munro (2011) apply Foucault’s concept of ‘govern-
mentality’. For them, HRM is part of a discursive
formation that reconstitutes individuals as calculative
economic or entrepreneurial selves to render them
malleable to being governed (Jacques 1996; Weiskopf
and Munro 2011). Performance management is one
manifestation of this misleading organizational dis-
course. The second adaption of Foucault’s work in-
terprets PM as monarchic power. Monarchic power
represents ‘sovereign’ control, in contrast to the disci-
plinary power of governmental norms and discourse.
According to Newton and Findlay (1996), the rights

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
83
that labour contracts bestow on employers grant them
monarchic power. Consequently, PM is organized ‘in
a manner that is broadly convenient to management
and to the need to control the labour process’ (Newton
and Findlay 1996, p. 52). This second Foucauldian ap-
proach unequivocally rejects that the organizational
power PM channels could ever act as an ‘an aid
to [workers’] subjective well-being’ (Townley 1993,
p. 235). Instead, it contends – with labour process
theory – that the system operates against workers’
interests.
CHRM: PM and ‘conflicting rationalities’
An alternative critical framing conceptualizes PM
as part of ‘conflicting rationalities’, typically using
Habermas (1984), whose overarching critical agenda
is to evaluate what social conditions enable or impair
autonomy. He closely links autonomy to ‘communica-
tive rationality’, which refers to collective determina-
tion of principles and actions based on ‘rationally mo-
tivated assent’ without coercion (Habermas, 1984, p.
287). Communicative rationality contrasts to instru-
mental rationality, in which external goals drive deci-
sions, and where people are viewed as means towards
these ends. Habermas (1984) views both commu-
nicative and instrumental rationalities as legitimate
and necessary (Breen 2007). However, he argues that
instrumental logics and imperatives threaten to sub-
sume or ‘colonize’ the communicative rationality au-
tonomy requires.
Broadbent and Laughlin (2009, 2010, 2013) use
Habermas’ instrumental–communicative binary to
distinguish two types of PM: (i) ‘relational PM’,
based in communicative rationality and consent;
and (ii) ‘transactional PM’, driven by instrumental
rationality and managerial power. For Broadbent
and Laughlin (2009), relational PM is potentially
‘emancipatory’. However, PM has become increas-
ingly transactional, thereby ‘colonizing’ relational
PM norms. Townley et al. (2003) similarly distin-
guish PM as a public accountability device (i.e.
communicative logic) from PM as an instrument for
implementing organizational goals (i.e. instrumental
rationality). Townley et al. (2003) also argue that
instrumental PM can ‘colonize’ its communicative
potential. Using a case study methodology, they
document how a new PM system putatively aimed
at enabling ‘reasoned justification’ of managerial
decisions was eventually overwhelmed by instru-
mental organizational pressures. However, although
Townley et al. (2003) find that PM’s instrumental
84
logic ultimately ‘colonized’ its accountability role,
they do not argue PM inevitably functions this way.
On the contrary, Townley et al. (2003) use their
Habermasian dichotomy to contend that PM might
promote the ‘moral’ goal of accountability. Thus,
like early Foucauldian approaches, this ‘conflicted
rationality’ approach at least leaves open the pos-
sibility that some forms of PM could have either
pathological or ‘emancipatory’ effects.
Although CHRM research leaves open that some
forms of PM might conceivably benefit workers, there
is scope for further elaboration of when such bene-
fits might occur. The fullest exploration of this is-
sue in CHRM literature is Townley’s (1999) study
of PM in academia. Townley (1999) draws on Mac-
Intyre (1984) to analyse PM as a clash between in-
strumental organizational demands and the ‘practical
reason’ embedded in professional (academic) com-
munities. However, since Townley’s (1999) case study
finds that PM undermines practical reason and profes-
sional norms, PM’s constructive possibilities are im-
plied rather than substantively developed. Other criti-
cal literature also considers that PM systems might at
least be made less harmful. For example, like Town-
ley et al. (2003), Ball (2010, pp. 100–101) simulta-
neously acknowledges PM’s pathological effects and
its potential to be otherwise:
As part of what is seen as ‘good’ management
practice, it [PM] can confer benefits on the em-
ployee if conducted in a humane, balanced way,
and is considered on a case-by-case – organization-
by-organization – basis. However, the introduction
of broader debates around information use, rights,
power and social structure highlights how surveil-
lance in the workplace may serve to perpetuate ex-
isting inequalities and create new ones.
To be clear, all these CHRM perspectives retain
CHRM’s characteristic ‘anti-performative’ stance,
because their focus is on workers’ interests or well-
being rather than corporate efficiency. However, in-
sofar as some CHRM research suggests PM could
benefit workers in some conceivable circumstances,
there is scope to clarify further when PM harms work-
ers and when, if ever, it might work in their favour.
Responding to CHRM: PM,
recognition and identity at work
So far, we have reviewed HRM and CHRM
approaches to how PM affects workers. We

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
D. Tweedie et al.
distinguished three HRM stages, which focus on: rat-
ing accuracy; studying social context; and closely
linking PM to macro-organizational goals. Each
HRM stage analyses workers’ well-being primarily in
terms of the organizational benefits it yields (see also
Beer et al. 2015; Greenwood 2013). We also distin-
guished three CHRM perspectives, which primarily
use qualitative methods to explore how PM affects
workers. CHRM’s key achievement has been to ex-
pose how PM channels management power. In so do-
ing, CHRM has elaborated flaws in HRM’s performa-
tive assumptions and how PM power harms workers.
This final section reviews how Honneth’s and De-
jours’ recognition theories might help build on past
CHRM research. Honneth and Dejours also reject
that organizational goals are primary, and stress how
power pervades workplace relationships. In these re-
spects, recognition theories of PM are effectively sub-
strands of CHRM. However, in focusing on the need
for esteem and respect at work to sustain autonomous
subjectivities, recognition theories have potential to
analyse aspects of how PM affects workers’ well-
being that HRM and CHRM are yet to explore sys-
tematically. Other management researchers have also
called for recognition-theoretic analysis of worker
subjectivity (Dashtipour and Vidaillet 2017; Grover
2013; Harding et al. 2012). By offering insights into
the dynamics of recognition under one pervasive man-
agement practice, recognition theories of PM can po-
tentially help management researchers in other fields
answer these calls.
Introducing recognition theories
As a Frankfurt School Critical Theorist, Honneth
(2009) shares Habermas’s (1984) agenda to critique
and reform social practices that impair autonomous
self-development. However, where Habermas focuses
on discourse, Honneth (1995) focuses on identity and
self-relations. Honneth (1995, 2007a,b, 2010) starts
from a Hegelian concept of autonomy as intersubjec-
tive, in which being fully autonomous requires others
to acknowledge us as such (Deranty 2012; Hegel
1977). Honneth’s (1995) distinctive contribution is to
use psychology and empirical sociology (e.g. Mead
1934; Winnicott 1965, 1971) to distinguish three
types of recognition that sustain autonomy in practice,
and to link each type to specific developmental stages
and social spheres. Honneth’s (1995) methodology
is primarily negativistic: He infers pre-conditions of
‘healthy’ identity-formation by studying empirical
cases where recognition is denied, rather than by
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
Table 1. Honneth’s spheres of recognition
Recognition type Sphere Self-relation
Love Intimate relations Self-confidence
Rights Civil Society Self-respect
Esteem Work Self-esteem
‘positively’ analysing ‘successful’ cases of au-
tonomous self-development. For example, Honneth
(1995) reconstructs a central role for affective bonds
in childhood – one formative type of recognition –
from studies of mental illness in adults who lacked
such bonds. Honneth (1995, 2010, 2014) argues that
social and organizational researchers can similarly
trace key pathologies to denials of recognition in civil
society or work, respectively. Since these pathologies
stem from fragmentations of social collectives, they
are best viewed as symptoms of social malfunction
or alienation, rather than as cases of ‘narcissistic
individualism’ (Knights and Clarke, 2017).
The three types of recognition Honneth (1995) dis-
tinguishes are love, rights and esteem (Table 1). Each
type of recognition is primarily (although not exclu-
sively) derived from a particular social sphere: love
from intimate relations (e.g. family); rights from civil
society (e.g. laws); and esteem from work.5 In each
sphere, recognition is an intersubjective enabler of in-
dividual autonomy. For example, shared legal rights
formally recognize a person’s fundamental equality
with others, which helps sustain the base level of self-
respect that autonomous action requires. Conversely,
denying legal rights can impair this self-relation. For
instance, Honneth (1995, pp. 120–121) observes that
racially discriminatory laws can induce ‘a crippling
feeling of social shame’ in the subjects these laws
disparage.
Although work clearly entails rights claims in Hon-
neth’s sense (Tweedie 2010), Honneth (1995, 2010)
focuses on work as a sphere of esteem. Where rights
recognize a person’s equality with others, esteem ac-
knowledges his or her particular social contribution.
From this perspective, performance evaluations are
proxy judgements about the value of workers’ social
contribution. Voswinkel (2001, 2012) further distin-
guishes two types of esteem: appreciation for service,
such as long-term work for one institution; and admi-
ration for ability, as for especially talented workers.
Voswinkel (2012) argues that transformations in
5
While Honneth primarily addresses paid work, there is no
reason while work cannot be much more broadly defined to
incorporate householder labour. See Budd (2011).

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85
contemporary workplaces, including decentralized
corporate structures and weaker bonds between busi-
ness and employees, have shifted esteem at work from
appreciation towards admiration. The extent of this
transformation is contested (Doogan 2009; Sennett
2006; Tweedie 2013). Nonetheless, insofar as con-
temporary PM primarily rewards individual ability,
the spread of PM systems may have similar effects.
Although Dejours (2007, 2012, 2014; Dejours and
Bègue 2009) has distinct theoretical premises (Der-
anty 2010, 2012), he can be read as extending Hon-
neth’s (1995) account of the constitutive function
of recognition more deeply into concrete work and
management practices. Where Honneth focuses on
generic social esteem, Dejours (2012) analyses the
role of esteem at work from colleagues, managers or
clients. Dejours (2007, 2012) defines work as – to
a greater or lesser extent – a struggle against a ma-
terial and social reality that resists one’s efforts to
control it. In an original reinterpretation of psychoan-
alytic theory (Dashtipour and Vidaillet 2017; Deranty
2012), he argues that this struggle challenges the ba-
sic self-confidence that healthy subjectivity requires.
For Dejours, the key analytic question work raises is:
what enables people to sustain the challenge working
poses to essentially fragile self-identities?
Dejours views esteem at work as one critical cop-
ing mechanism. He distinguishes two main types:
esteem for the usefulness of one’s work, primarily
from management or clients; and esteem for the qual-
ity (or ‘beauty’) of one’s work, which colleagues
primarily provide (Dejours 2012). Dejours argues
‘colleague’ (Tweedie and Holley 2016) or ‘peer’
(Dashtipour and Vidaillet 2017) recognition is es-
pecially meaningful, because only colleagues fully
understand the skills each other exercises. For exam-
ple, hospital managers might admire surgeons who
efficiently complete their patient list, and patients
(i.e. ‘clients’) appreciate good outcomes. However,
only other surgeons have the technical knowledge
to fully understand – and therefore fully esteem –
high-quality or ‘beautiful’ surgery work (Tweedie and
Holley 2016).
For Dejours, workplace esteem imbues work with
meaning that makes it bearable. Ideally, esteem trans-
forms workers’ at least initial experiences of stress
and ‘suffering’ at work into self-development, while
‘misrecognition’ inhibits this capacity:
When the quality of my work is recognized, all my
efforts, angst, doubts, disappointments, discourage-
ments become full of meaning. All that suffering had
86
not been in vain; not only has it contributed to the
division of labour, but it has made me, in return, a
different subject from the one I was before recogni-
tion. [ . . . ] Without the benefice of recognition of his
or her work, and failing the power to thereby access
the meaning of his or her lived relation to work, the
subject faces his or her own suffering, and it alone.
(Dejours 1998, p. 37; cited in Deranty 2008, p. 453)
Dejours’ (2007, 2012) analysis foregrounds how
management affects group dynamics. If esteem is crit-
ical to healthy self-relations, and if only colleagues
can fully esteem work quality, workplace relation-
ships that sustain mutual recognition are one key de-
terminant of well-being. From this perspective, a full
analysis of the ‘social context’ of management prac-
tices such as PM must closely monitor their effects on
collegial working bonds. This is one reason Dejours’
(2012) research methodology eschews individual sur-
veys or interviews for contemporaneous discussions
with entire work collectives.
Recognition theories of PM: concept and empirical
application
We now explore how recognition theory might ex-
tend PM research, drawing on Honneth, Dejours and
a nascent conceptual (e.g. Deranty 2008; Klikauer
2016) and empirical (e.g. Austen et al. 2016; Molin-
ier 2012; Tweedie and Holley 2016) secondary lit-
erature. Although empirical research using recogni-
tion theory is at an early stage, recognition theory
offers a coherent social research framework (O’Neill
and Smith 2012). This section shows how further ap-
plication of recognition theory in PM research can
articulate aspects of how PM affects workers that
HRM and CHRM are yet to explore fully. Recognition
theory also offers tools to help analyse these effects
empirically.
Conceptual applications – framing PM research.
Since recognition theory views workers’ well-being
as normatively primary, it can help address calls for
more explicitly normative theorizing of management
practices in both HRM (Beer et al. 2015; Greenwood
2013) and broader work and management research
(Grote and Guest 2017). Honneth’s norms are explicit
in his Frankfurt School agenda to critique social
practices that impair autonomous self-development
(Deranty 2009; Honneth 2009; Tweedie 2018). This
agenda can move beyond focusing on either PM’s fair
or unfair distribution of economic rewards to criti-
cally evaluate ways that PM can be pathological to self

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D. Tweedie et al.
relations. For example, call centre research suggests
that computerized performance assessment systems
that only measure call times can induce suffering
by failing to recognize workers’ efforts to meet cus-
tomers’ needs (e.g. Cutcher and van den Broek 2006).
Prior critical research theorizes how such practices
are coercive (Taylor and Bain 1999). Building on this
research, Honneth (1995) provides a way to norma-
tively theorize how automated PM systems may also
threaten autonomy more subtly, by undermining the
healthy self-relations autonomous action requires.
Since Dejours’ (2012) research is based in ‘clini-
cal’ studies of workplace pathologies, his norms are
less overt. Nonetheless, Dejours’ clinician’s stand-
point implies a normative defence of companies’ obli-
gations to protect workers’ health. For example, De-
jours’ (2015; cf. Dashtipour and Vidaillet 2017) em-
pirical studies of serious workplace pathologies in
major companies, including violence and workplace
suicides, implicate PM’s capacity to breakdown work-
place collectives as one key causal factor (cf. Clegg
et al. 2016). In his critique of these PM practices
for ‘destroy[ing] individuals lives, social bonds and
communities’ (Deranty 2008, p. 444), Dejours (2000,
2012) mobilizes an ethical defence of workers’ well-
being as a basic normative standard.
Although neither Honneth nor Dejours offer ethical
‘rules’ for using PM, their analyses can help address
calls to theorize and research PM’s ethical signifi-
cance at both workplace and social levels (e.g. Beer
et al. 2015; Greenwood 2013). At the workplace level,
Honneth and Dejours offer a strong normative-ethical
case for managers and companies to at least design
and implement PM systems with much greater care
for their serious potential harms. If deeper capital-
ist structures drive corporations to adopt harmful PM
systems, then recognition theories can also ground
social critiques of these capitalist economic logics
for systematically misrecognizing workers’ contribu-
tions.6 In either case, recognition theory is one way to
locate empirical research into PM’s effects within an
overarching normative-ethical narrative. Beer et al.’s
(2015, p. 428) ‘avowedly normative’ review of HRM’s
thirty-year history highlights how HRM needs such a
narrative, because in past HRM research ‘employee
6
Although Honneth’s broadercritique of capitalism is con-
tentious (e.g. Freyenhagen 2015; Jütten 2015), his analytical
framework does provide a basis for normatively critiquing
systemic economic forces that harm subjective self relations
(e.g. Hartmann and Honneth, 2004).
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
well-being and societal well-being were structurally
neglected’ (Beer et al. 2015, p. 431).
Since theories also affect what questions re-
searchers explore (Kuhn 1996), another conceptual
application of recognition theory is to direct research
attention towards PM effects on workers that prior
HRM theories overlook. Since identity extends be-
yond the office or factory floor, recognition theory
especially directs analytical attention to several ways
in which PM can affect workers’ well-being outside
the workplace. First, recognition theories highlight
how PM’s capacity to render work visible or invisible
(Miller and Power 2013) can directly affect work-
ers’ psychological well-being. Illustrative studies are
Austen et al. (2016) and Molinier (2012), who ap-
ply Honneth and Dejours, respectively, to PM in care
work (cf. Gregoratto 2016). Both studies partly at-
tribute care work’s psychological costs to the invis-
ibility or ‘misrecognition’ of core work tasks. Most
notably, care work responds to patients’ vulnerability
and needs, but PM neither documents nor values this
work. For instance, Molinier (2012, p. 269) observes
how ‘in the hospital’s case, quality indicators are rates
of falls, numbers of iatrogenic infections, and so on –
care is never mentioned’.
Second, recognition theory directs attention to how
PM can affect recognition between workers. Dejours
(2007, 2012) particularly advocates qualitative re-
search with work groups to unpack how PM affects
group bonds. Dejours’ own research finds individu-
alistic performance measures, including quantitative
measures and individual performance reviews, foster
competition and isolation that fragments work collec-
tives. Dejours and Bègue (2009) claim the spread of
these PM practices is one key driver of the psycho-
logical strains evident in many modern workplaces,
including increasing anxiety, mental illness and even
workplace suicides. However, although some quali-
tative interview-based research explores how PM af-
fects workplace bonds (e.g. Kalfa et al. 2017), there
is relatively little secondary research into these is-
sues, especially using Dejours’ (2012) group-based
methodology.
Third, recognition theories direct attention to how
PM could affect broader social relations. Both Hon-
neth and Dejours maintain that work shapes social as
well as individual development, because the relations
to self and others that working cultivates affects how
workers (inter)act in other social spheres. As Deranty
(2008) summarizes, Dejours claims that individual-
ized PM systems foster pathologies that spill into civil
society:

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
87
The picture that Dejours draws of contemporary
workplaces is one where lying is instituted, real-
ity denied, where suffering, as a result, cannot be
said. Consequently, broader forms of social injus-
tice are for him directly rooted in the pathologies of
the workplace. (Deranty 2008, pp. 444–445)
Causal connections between PM and social
pathologies are difficult to research empirically.
Nonetheless, unless the work sphere is hermeti-
cally sealed, it is at least possible that using PM to
change workers’ motivation and behaviour has extra-
organizational effects. Yet, despite HRM’s (e.g. Phase
III) explicit agenda to ‘align’ workers’ behaviour with
organizational goals, extant HRM research makes al-
most no attempt to assess wider social ramifications
of this agenda. Recognition theory provides impetus
to, and a theoretical framework for, addressing this
HRM oversight.
Empirical applications – analysing PM’s affect.
Recognition theory also offers empirical manage-
ment researchers a ‘phenomenologically more nu-
anced’ (Smith 2012, p. 90) account of PM’s harms
or benefits, either as an independent research frame-
work or combined with other perspectives. Molin-
ier’s (2012) case study of care workers cited above
illustrates how researchers can use recognition the-
ory as an independent framework to analyse how PM
practices that systematically misrecognize care work
can affect workers’ subjectivity. However, recognition
theory can also augment other interpretative frame-
works. For instance, Dashtipour and Vidaillet (2017)
have recently used Dejours to expand Isabel Menzies’
(1960) classic case study of management at a Lon-
don teaching hospital. By showing, inter alia, how
patients’ ‘gratitude’ did not replace peer recognition,
Dashtipour and Vidaillet (2017, p. 27) argue ‘De-
jours’ perspective can bring out certain issues that
are implied, but not made the centre of attention by
Menzies’.
More broadly, Sayer (2007) identifies recognition
as one element of dignity at work, and Islam (2012)
uses Honneth to argue that affirming dignity can pro-
vide an ethical frame for HRM. Therefore, recogni-
tion theories could form part of research into how PM
affects workplace dignity. To date, the most common
empirical use of recognition theory is to conceptualize
subjects’ experiences of (mis)recognition revealed in
qualitative research (e.g. Tweedie and Holley 2016).
However, since recognition theory posits causal links
between management practices such as PM and
88
Table 2. Recognitive ‘tools’ for analysing PMs harms or benefits
Recognitive form
Theorist Positive Negative
Honneth Appreciation
Admiration
Community
Recognition
Appraisal respect
Ideological
recognition
Misrecognition
Non-recognition
De-recognition
Dejours Acknowledgement
Gratitude
Colleague or ‘peer’
recognition
well-being, it also has potential to be used to for-
mulate and test hypotheses (e.g. Austen et al. 2016).
Recognition theory’s key empirical contribution
is a nuanced typology of types of recognition and
misrecognition, which are linked to specific harms
or benefits (Table 2). On the ‘positive’ side, extant
research distinguishes several ways in which recog-
nition might benefit workers, which empirical PM
research could assess more closely. For example, ‘ap-
preciation’ (Voswinkel 2012) and ‘appraisal respect’
(Grover 2013) are both organizational-level iterations
of Honneth’s concept of social respect. On the ‘neg-
ative’ side, critical research conceptualizes several
potential harms. Klikauer (2016) distinguishes
multiple ways in which organizations or managers
could deny recognition, and defines misrecognition
more specifically as denials of workers’ contribution
driven by inequitable organizational power. If CHRM
theorists are right that PM enforces inequitable or-
ganizational power, recognition theory can build on
that conclusion by analysing psychic impacts of this
inequity.
Although recognition-theory research often inter-
prets denials of recognition as ‘unjust’, ‘injustice’ has
a different meaning – and therefore different empiri-
cal research practice – from these concepts in HRM’s
7
Klikauer (2016) also discusses a fourth form of negative
recognition – pathological mass-recognition between leader
and follower. However, this form is not relevant to PM.
D. Tweedie et al.
Source Meaning
Voswinkel (2012, 2001) Esteem for service
Esteem for product
Tweedie and Holley (2016) Social recognition for job value (e.g. in
cleaning work)
Grover (2013) Organizational respect for contribution
Honneth (2007b); Smith Disingenuous recognition, recognition as a
(2012) substitute for higher wages or improved
conditions
Klikauer (2016);7 Austen One-sided recognition due to unequal power
et al. (2016); Zurn (2012) (Klikauer 2016); ignoring aspects of work
(e.g. in care work) (Austen et al. 2016)
Deliberately disregarding
Shift from recognition to misrecognition
Dejours (2012) Of reality of work
For usefulness or beauty of work
Tweedie and Holley (2016); Recognition for work quality
Dashtipour and Vidaillet
(2017)
‘organizational justice stream’ (esp. HRM Phase II).
In HRM, injustice denotes workers’ perceptions about
whether PM violates norms such as distributive jus-
tice, typically studied with surveys (e.g. Cheng 2013).
By contrast, in recognition theories of PM, injustice
denotes the suffering PM can induce. Following
Honneth’s ‘negativistic’ methodology, recognition
theories’ primary strategy to research organizational
injustice empirically is to seek out cases of unjustified
suffering, especially those linked to self-identity and
self-relations. This might entail formal psychological
instruments. To date, however, most research has
focused on self-reported stress or suffering in semi-
structured interviews (Molinier 2012; Tweedie and
Holley 2016) or focus groups (Dejours 2012). One ad-
vantage of these methods is to acknowledge that PM
could induce psychic harms that are partially opaque
to subjects themselves. Unpacking such harms would
require close attention to tensions or contradictions
in how workers narrate their experiences.
The recognition-theoretic vocabulary documented
in Table 2 has potential to enhance empirical research
in three ways. First, this vocabulary can articulate
effects of PM on workers’ well-being for which alter-
native theories lack a comparable language. As noted
above, HRM is typically uninterested in well-being
effects that do not directly affect organizations’ goals.
While CHRM’s ‘anti-performative’ stance is clearly
concerned with worker well-being, the theories re-
viewed above have not so far developed a language to

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
articulate PM’s recognitive impacts. Since recognitive
impacts are already evident in CHRM’s qualitative re-
search, recognition theory offers a way of drawing out
and clarifying these effects.
Analogous to Dashtipour and Vidaillet’s (2017)
recognition-theoretic (re)reading of Menzies’ (1960),
close analysis of Townley’s (1999) empirical study of
how PM affects academics shows how recognition-
theoretic vocabulary can articulate ‘certain issues that
are implied, but not made the centre of attention’ in
past CHRM research. Consider these quotes:
It [PM] would be useful if it led to the recognition of
a lot of effort which goes into work which is never
recognized. If there was recognition then it would be
helpful. If not, then no. (Chair, Faculty of Arts).
It would spoil relationships if there was a formal
review. If things are formalized they spoil relation-
ships (Chair, Faculty of Science). (Townley 1999,
pp. 288–289)
Townley (1999) interprets these views as revealing
an underlying conflict between PM’s instrumental-
organizational logic and the ‘practical reason’
embedded in professional academic communities.
In addition, however, Townley’s (1999) subjects also
articulate here aspirations to have others acknowl-
edge their work, and to sustain the collegial bonds
that enable such recognition (cf. Kalfa et al. 2017).
Recognition theory foregrounds these aspirations,
and can help articulate their structure and impli-
cations. For example, the Faculty of Arts’ Chair
demands appreciation rather than admiration, and
the Faculty of Science’s Chair remarks suggest the
individualizing effects of PM that Dejours analyses.
Dejours also provides a robust psychological account
of why the deterioration of workplace relations
matters to the basic psychic functioning of the people
who constitute academic communities, in addition to
affecting shared professional norms.
The broader point is that clashes between PM’s
strategic-organizational logic and other norms also re-
quire ‘selves’ sufficiently robust to advance or defend
these logics. Recognition theory’s empirical contribu-
tion is to provide a vocabulary with which to articulate
these underlying impacts at the level of identity, in a
way that builds on Townley’s (1999; Townley et al.
2003) and Broadbent and Laughlin’s (2010, 2013)
analyses of how PM also affects workers at the level
of rational discourse. Thus, by analysing workers’
subjective aspirations, recognition theory can com-
plement ‘conflicted rationality’ narratives of PM by
articulating a motive for resisting PM systems that do

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89
not adequately acknowledge workers’ contributions,
and by providing a descriptive vocabulary to artic-
ulate the visceral disappointment or suffering when
these aspirations are denied.
Similarly, recognition theory can articulate aspects
of workers’ PM experiences with which CHRM is
characteristically concerned, but which extend be-
yond power relations or dynamics alone. Recognition
theories acknowledge that PM can channel organiza-
tional power or class interests. Indeed, a fundamental
insight from Honneth’s Hegelian tradition is that
power invariably structures recognitive demands,
most famously in Hegel’s (1977) ‘master–slave’
dialectic where the ‘master’ only accepts recognition
from subjects he acknowledges as equal (Redding
2012). Nonetheless, one theme of Honneth’s (1997;
see also Sinnerbrink 2011) critical engagement with
Foucault is that a too narrow focus on power risks
losing sight of other aspirations or social processes
that also structure our relationships and institutions,
including consent (Habermas) and recognition (Hon-
neth). Dejours (2012, p. 220) articulates a similar
view: ‘Real work organization is a product of social
relations. But – and this point is crucial – the stakes of
the discussion cannot be reduced to power relations.’
In arguing that analysing workplace organization
cannot be reduced to power, Dejours emphasizes that
power is one of many social dynamics that affect
workplace relations.
In practical empirical terms, therefore, recognition-
theoretic vocabulary can help articulate another layer
of the relational and organizational dynamics through
which PM affects workers. For example, Tweedie and
Holley’s (2016) case study of cleaning workers found
workers were cognizant of how their employers and
work community systematically marginalized their
contribution. However, these workers also aspired
to have their community adequately recognize their
work’s ‘usefulness’ and ‘beauty’. A compelling
analysis of these workers’ experiences requires
interlocking narratives of power and recognition.
Workers’ incapacity to demand either the appreci-
ation or admiration their work merits reflects their
marginalized organizational position. Recognition-
theoretic language, and the underlying model of
the subject from which it stems, is then needed to
articulate why workers demand this recognition.
If the language of power unveils institutional and
relational dynamics of struggles between workers
and managers, recognition theory helps articulate –
in Dejours’ terms – the stakes of this struggle, at
least insofar as workers’ identity is concerned.
90
A second way in which recognition-theoretic con-
cepts can augment empirical PM research is by si-
multaneously describing both PM’s pernicious and
potentially beneficial effects, and analysing complex
interplays between these dynamics. To return to PM
in universities, it has been widely observed that uni-
versities’ PM systems tend to recognize certain kinds
of research ‘performance’ at the cost of misrecog-
nizing – or de-recognizing, in Klikauer’s (2016) ter-
minology – both teaching quality and less presti-
gious research areas and methods (Kalfa et al. 2017;
Messner 2015). It might also be argued, following
Voswinkel (2012), that increasing ‘admiration’ for
research performance commensurately degrades ‘ap-
preciation’ for university service. However, as Mess-
ner (2015) notes, these same PM systems can also
recognize the ‘usefulness’ and ‘beauty’, in Dejours’
(2012) sense, of academic research contributions that
might go unnoticed in university cultures that priori-
tize group allegiance over performance, by providing
‘outside legitimacy’ to these contributions. The in-
creasingly differentiated concepts of recognition in
Table 2 can help articulate these sometimes contra-
dictory or ‘paradoxical’ effects of PM at the level of
self-identity.
A third potential empirical contribution of recog-
nition theory is to posit causal relationships between
PM and workers’ well-being that quantitative research
could test or elaborate, either in isolation or combined
with other approaches. Quantitative research using
recognition theory is at a very early stage. Nonethe-
less, one example of stand-alone quantitative recog-
nitive research is in Austen et al.’s (2016) mixed-
method study of whether social recognition affected
care workers’ intention to leave their employment.
Consistent with Honneth’s (1995) theory, Austen et al.
(2016) find a strong negative correlation. Austen et al.
(2016) primarily use recognition theories to concep-
tualize the findings of an existing survey instrument.
However, the vocabulary in Table 2 could refine future
research instruments. For example, although Austen
et al. (2016) do not distinguish appreciation from
admiration, their follow-up interviews suggest that
their survey compounds both recognitive types. Fu-
ture surveys could explicitly build such distinctions
into the research instrument. The links between dif-
ferent recognitive processes and workers’ well-being
could also augment broader studies of how PM af-
fects well-being, including in the outlying cases of
HRM research that claims a legitimate interest in this
question (e.g. Edgar et al. 2015).

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
D. Tweedie et al.
Issues and limitations. Recognition theories have
several important issues and limitations for future
research to address. One set of conceptual issues
concerns what constitutes legitimate recognition (e.g.
Laitinen 2012), and therefore when misrecognition
merits normative critique. Managers might use disin-
genuous recognition to control workers (cf. Fraser
and Honneth 2003). For example, an annual PM re-
view might praise workers’ accomplishments without
augmenting pay or conditions. However, if ‘admira-
tion’ in Voswinkel’s (2012) sense is genuine esteem
for workers’ skills, not all workers’ efforts will merit
such esteem. Consequently, as Habermas (1982) ob-
served, not all misrecognition is unethical. Honneth’s
(2007a,b, 2010) response is to posit additional crite-
ria that genuine recognition must meet. However, as
a set of formal theoretical principles, these criteria
can seem ad hoc modifications of his earlier ‘nega-
tivistic’ methodology of extracting normative claims
from empirical cases of stress or suffering.
Core recognition theoretic concepts also need fur-
ther empirical development, especially in light of
prior work and management research. For example,
although Honneth (1995, 2010) uses influential psy-
chological and sociological texts (e.g. Mead 1934;
Winnicott 1965, 1971), he engages little with ex-
tensive empirical qualitative workplace research that
shows recognition is demanded in multiple complex
ways from different actors or roles (e.g. customers vs.
colleagues), at different organizational levels and hi-
erarchies and in different social and economic classes.
Consequently, Honneth’s framework has relatively lit-
tle elucidation of how recognition might be demanded
or offered differently in concrete sociological con-
texts. Drawing more closely on key qualitative work-
place research texts that touch on demands for recog-
nition (e.g. Collinson 1992; Sennett and Cobb 1972;
Terkel 1974), even when theorized differently, could
add further empirical substance to Honneth’s con-
cepts. Drawing on this past body of qualitative re-
search could also further develop recognition theory’s
account of how recognition and power intersects in
practice.
Finally, although recognition theory offers a rich
descriptive vocabulary for empirical PM research,
HRM theorists might reasonably question how some
distinctions in Table 2 would be operationalized, espe-
cially in quantitative research. For example, formally
evaluating how PM ‘misrecognition’ and ‘derecogni-
tion’ affects workers requires conceptually slippery
judgements about what drives or motivates PM
How Does Performance Management Affect Workers?
practices. Even granting that the over-arching
recognition theory categories are useful for empirical
research, there are likely to be limits on how far
quantitative research in particular could apply some
of the more fine-grained conceptual distinctions
discussed above.
Conclusion
We have argued that recognition theory can help
address limits of HRM, while also acknowledging
and building on criticisms of PM that CHRM has
developed. We initially showed how HRM progres-
sively socialized its PM analysis, while paradoxi-
cally strengthening its performative focus on orga-
nizational goals and strategies. Our review of CHRM
distinguished three influential critiques of HRM’s in-
strumental approach. In these critiques, PM is largely:
(i) a form of class control (in labour process the-
ory); (ii) a form of discursive control (in Foucauldian
critiques); or (iii) a site of tension between commu-
nicative and instrumental rationalities (Habermas and
MacIntyre). Critical HRM’s key achievement is to
reinsert a much needed account of power into PM
research.
Finally, we turned to recognition theories to help
build on, and respond to, criticisms of HRM that
CHRM has articulated, but has left scope to explore
further. Honneth and Dejours both argue that recogni-
tion has a central role in constructing the self-relations
that enable healthy and autonomous human agency.
They then argue that workers’ exercise of their pro-
ductive capacities is a critical sphere in which the
value of their social contribution is recognized (or
not). The empirical basis of this claim is a ‘method-
ological negativism’, which infers the centrality of
recognition to self-identity from subjective suffering
that occurs when recognition is denied. In Harding
et al.’s (2012, p. 57) summation: ‘[t]o be denied recog-
nition, or to be misrecognized, is to suffer distortion
of one’s relation to one’s self and injury to one’s iden-
tity’. Thus, distortion and suffering in self-relations
can bear witness to aspirations for recognition that
have been denied.
Recognition theory’s contributions to management
research stem from its particular combination of
normative and descriptive claims. Since Honneth and
Dejours conceptually link recognition to autonomous
self-realization and well-being, recognition theory is
overtly ethical. Yet, this ethical narrative is founded
on descriptive empirical claims about psychological

C 2018 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
91
and social pre-conditions of well-being. As such,
recognition theory has potential to advance prior
PM research at two levels. First, recognition theory’s
overtly normative agenda can enable researchers
to address calls, including from within mainstream
HRM, for more explicitly normative analysis of PM’s
effects on workers. Second, recognition theory’s
typology of forms of recognition offers a rich vocab-
ulary for describing, and potentially testing, how PM
affects workers’ health or well-being. These effects
include power, but also go beyond – or alongside –
power dynamics to focus on aspirations for acknowl-
edgement and respect. Improved understanding of
recognitive dynamics between workers, managers
and organizations also offers wider insights for
management research into identity and subjectivity,
including issues of dignity (Islam 2012; Sayer 2007),
gender (Harding et al. 2012) and respect (Grover
2013) at work. Thus, although there is relatively
limited empirical PM research using recognition
theory to date, the paper shows the state of current
research into PM’s effects on workers across HRM,
CHRM and these nascent empirical applications
of recognition theory. It also shows potential for
further marshalling recognition theory to address
under-explored areas of PM research and to advance
wider management research issues and debates.
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