Foundations and Evolution of Performance Appraisal

Introduction and Context

Performance appraisal is one of the oldest and most consequential practices in human resource management. It connects individual work with organizational purpose, provides evidence for employment decisions, and creates a formal opportunity for employees and managers to discuss expectations, results, capability, and future development. Yet appraisal is also one of the most contested HR practices. A poorly designed system can produce anxiety, rating errors, perceptions of unfairness, and compliance-oriented conversations that do little to improve performance. A well-designed system can clarify priorities, support learning, strengthen accountability, and improve the quality of managerial decisions.

The term routine performance appraisal refers to the periodic and structured evaluation of an employee’s work against agreed expectations or standards. It commonly occurs quarterly, semiannually, or annually. Routine appraisal should not be confused with the broader process of performance management. Performance management is an ongoing managerial and organizational system involving planning, monitoring, feedback, development, recognition, and review. A routine appraisal is one event or cycle within that larger system.

Contemporary organizations increasingly combine formal reviews with frequent conversations, project-based feedback, peer input, employee self-assessment, work analytics, and development planning. The central challenge is therefore not whether routine appraisals should exist, but how they can remain useful in environments characterized by hybrid work, agile projects, changing skills, greater attention to inclusion, and heightened expectations of procedural fairness.

Learning Objectives

After completing this chapter, the reader should be able to:

1. Define performance, appraisal, and performance management.
2. Distinguish routine, continuous, developmental, and administrative evaluation.
3. Explain major historical developments in performance appraisal.
4. Analyze the purposes and limitations of appraisal systems.
5. Identify the interests and responsibilities of key stakeholders.
6. Evaluate contemporary industry expectations concerning fairness, evidence, technology, and employee development.
7. Apply appraisal concepts to a managerial case.

1. Core Concepts and Terminology

Performance

Performance is the set of behaviors, actions, and results through which an employee contributes to organizational objectives. It is broader than output alone. A useful conceptual distinction is between:

• Task performance: effectiveness in activities formally required by the job.
• Contextual performance: behaviors that support the social and psychological environment, such as cooperation, reliability, and constructive communication.
• Adaptive performance: the ability to respond effectively to new technologies, customers, priorities, or working conditions.
• Counterproductive work behavior: actions that harm colleagues, customers, resources, or organizational functioning.

Performance should be defined in relation to the job, time period, resources, and operating context. For example, sales revenue may be an appropriate indicator for a sales role, but it is insufficient as the sole indicator for a compliance officer, software engineer, or care professional. Performance is also multidimensional: speed, quality, safety, customer experience, teamwork, and ethical conduct may all matter.

A distinction between performance and outcomes is essential. Outcomes are often influenced by factors outside an employee’s control, including market conditions, team interdependence, technology, workload, and managerial decisions. Consequently, a fair appraisal evaluates both results and the behaviors or capabilities that produced them, while recognizing relevant situational constraints.

Appraisal

Performance appraisal is a systematic process of assessing an employee’s work and communicating a judgment or developmental interpretation of that work. It usually includes:

1. establishing expectations;
2. collecting relevant evidence;
3. comparing evidence with standards or objectives;
4. discussing the assessment;
5. recording conclusions and agreed actions.

Appraisal is not synonymous with criticism, ranking, or salary review. It may support those activities, but its quality depends on whether the evidence is job-related, sufficiently comprehensive, and interpreted consistently.

Performance management

Performance management is the integrated process through which an organization translates strategy into individual and team contributions. It includes goal setting, role clarification, coaching, observation, feedback, development, recognition, formal review, and sometimes reward or corrective action. It is therefore both a managerial practice and a governance system.

A simple conceptual sequence is:

Strategic purpose → role expectations → work and behavior → evidence and feedback → review and development → revised expectations

The sequence is not strictly linear. New information, changing priorities, or employee development may require expectations to be renegotiated during the cycle.

Standards, objectives, competencies, and indicators

A standard describes an expected level or condition of performance, such as an error rate below an agreed threshold. An objective describes a result to be achieved within a specified period. A competency is an observable combination of knowledge, skill, ability, and behavior associated with effective performance. An indicator is evidence used to assess progress or achievement.

Good objectives are relevant, understandable, achievable with appropriate support, and time-bounded. The familiar SMART framework—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—can improve clarity, but it should not be applied mechanically. Excessive measurability may encourage employees to optimize a metric while neglecting quality, ethics, or less visible work.

2. Distinguishing Forms of Evaluation

The terms used in organizations are sometimes inconsistent. The following distinctions clarify purpose, timing, and consequences.

These forms overlap but should not be treated as identical. A continuous conversation may be developmental without producing an administrative rating. Conversely, an annual review may be administrative while still including developmental discussion. Separating purposes helps prevent a single meeting from becoming an incoherent mixture of coaching, pay negotiation, discipline, and career counseling.

Routine versus continuous appraisal

Routine appraisal provides structure, documentation, and comparability. It is useful when managers need a formal record or when employees require a predictable opportunity to discuss performance. Its weakness is temporal distance: an annual conversation may address events that are no longer memorable or relevant.

Continuous evaluation reduces recency effects and allows problems to be corrected before they become severe. However, it requires managerial discipline and can become intrusive if every activity is monitored. Continuous feedback should not mean continuous surveillance. The appropriate frequency depends on the work, risk, employee experience, and pace of change.

Developmental versus administrative evaluation

Developmental evaluation asks, “How can this employee become more effective?” Administrative evaluation asks, “What employment decision is justified by the evidence and policy?” Developmental evaluation emphasizes learning, capability, resources, and future contribution. Administrative evaluation emphasizes consistency, documentation, eligibility, and organizational governance.

Combining the two can create tension. Employees may be reluctant to disclose weaknesses when they believe every admission will immediately affect pay or promotion. Some organizations therefore use separate conversations or clearly distinguish the developmental and administrative components of the same cycle.

3. Historical Evolution

Early administrative roots

Early industrial organizations used inspection, supervision, piece rates, attendance records, and disciplinary systems to control work. These practices were often focused on compliance and output rather than employee development. Scientific management, associated particularly with Frederick Taylor, emphasized standardization, measurement, task analysis, and managerial control. Its contribution was the recognition that work expectations should be explicit and observable. Its limitation was a narrow view of human motivation and performance.

Rating forms and trait assessment

During the twentieth century, organizations increasingly adopted supervisor rating forms. Employees were rated on traits such as initiative, dependability, cooperation, or leadership. Trait ratings were administratively convenient, but they often suffered from vague definitions and inconsistent interpretation. Two supervisors could assign the same rating for different reasons.

Military personnel systems during the First and Second World Wars accelerated the use of structured ratings and forced distributions. These systems demonstrated the value of standardized assessment but also revealed the dangers of ranking people when performance is interdependent or when rating categories are poorly designed.

Management by objectives

Peter Drucker’s management-by-objectives approach shifted attention from personality traits to agreed results. Managers and employees jointly clarify expected contributions and later assess achievement. Objectives improve role clarity and accountability, but objective-based systems can become narrow when goals are unstable, difficult to measure, or dependent on other employees.

Behavioral approaches and competency models

Behaviorally anchored rating scales and behaviorally based systems attempted to connect ratings to concrete examples of effective and ineffective conduct. Competency models expanded the focus to capabilities such as customer orientation, analytical thinking, collaboration, and innovation. These approaches improved behavioral clarity, although they remain vulnerable to cultural bias and excessive complexity.

Strategic and multi-source approaches

From the 1980s onward, performance management became more explicitly linked to strategy, organizational learning, and human capital. Multi-source or 360-degree feedback introduced perspectives from peers, subordinates, customers, and self-assessment. Such feedback is valuable for development, especially where work is collaborative, but it requires confidentiality, rater training, and safeguards against popularity contests.

Contemporary evolution

Many organizations now replace or supplement annual ratings with quarterly check-ins, project reviews, coaching, real-time recognition, agile goal adjustment, and digital platforms. The movement is not a complete rejection of formal appraisal. Rather, it reflects a shift from an isolated annual event toward a connected system of evidence, dialogue, and action.

4. Theoretical Foundations

Goal-setting theory

Goal-setting theory proposes that specific and challenging goals can improve performance when employees accept them, receive feedback, and possess the ability and resources to pursue them. In appraisal, this theory supports clear expectations and progress discussions. It also warns against goals that are impossible, conflicting, or excessively narrow.

Expectancy theory

Expectancy theory explains motivation through perceived relationships among effort, performance, and outcomes. Employees are more likely to invest effort when they believe effort can produce performance, performance will be recognized, and the resulting outcomes are valuable. An appraisal system loses motivational credibility when ratings appear arbitrary or when strong performance has no meaningful consequence.

Organizational justice

Three forms of justice are particularly relevant:

• Distributive justice: perceived fairness of outcomes such as ratings, pay, or promotion.
• Procedural justice: perceived fairness of the method used to reach decisions.
• Interactional justice: perceived respect, dignity, and adequacy of explanation during the process.

Employees may accept an unfavorable outcome more readily when procedures are transparent, evidence is relevant, voice is allowed, and the manager communicates respectfully.

Control and development perspectives

A control perspective views appraisal as a mechanism for aligning behavior with organizational requirements, monitoring results, and supporting accountability. A development perspective views it as a mechanism for learning, capability growth, and future contribution. Effective systems balance both perspectives rather than assuming that one can replace the other.

Systems perspective

Performance is produced by an interaction between person and context. Role design, tools, workload, leadership, team coordination, technology, and organizational culture may enable or constrain performance. A system that attributes every problem to individual deficiency risks unfairness and fails to identify process failures. Appraisers should therefore ask not only “What did the employee do?” but also “What conditions shaped the result?”

5. Purposes and Stakeholders

Organizational purposes

Organizations use appraisal to:

• align work with strategy;
• clarify accountability;
• identify development needs;
• support succession and talent decisions;
• recognize contributions;
• inform compensation or promotion;
• document performance concerns;
• identify barriers in systems and processes;
• meet governance, professional, or regulatory requirements.

No appraisal system can optimize all purposes equally. A system designed for developmental candor may not be ideal for high-stakes pay differentiation. Purpose should therefore be declared before measures and ratings are chosen.

Stakeholder interests

Employees seek clarity, respectful treatment, useful feedback, growth, recognition, and protection from arbitrary decisions. They also need an opportunity to explain contextual factors and challenge factual errors.

Managers need practical tools, time, evidence, and authority to set expectations and address performance problems. They are both assessors and participants whose own leadership affects employee performance.

HR professionals design policy, train participants, monitor consistency, advise on difficult cases, and protect process integrity. HR should not simply administer forms; it should evaluate whether the system produces valid and equitable decisions.

Senior leaders seek strategic alignment, risk control, workforce capability, and reliable information for talent decisions.

Customers, colleagues, regulators, and professional bodies may have legitimate interests where performance affects safety, service quality, confidentiality, or public trust.

6. Evidence, Measurement, and Judgment

Appraisal requires judgment because many important contributions cannot be captured by one metric. Evidence may include:

• agreed objectives and milestones;
• work products and quality records;
• customer or stakeholder feedback;
• project documentation;
• behavioral examples;
• learning and capability evidence;
• attendance or safety records where job-relevant;
• self-assessment and reflective accounts.

Evidence should be relevant, timely, sufficiently representative, and attributable to the employee or team being assessed. Managers should distinguish facts from interpretations. “The report was submitted two days late” is evidence; “the employee is careless” is an inference requiring broader support.

Common rating errors include:

• Halo effect: one strong characteristic influences all ratings.
• Horns effect: one weakness contaminates the entire assessment.
• Recency effect: recent events receive disproportionate weight.
• Leniency or severity: a manager rates unusually high or low.
• Central tendency: a manager avoids high and low ratings.
• Similarity bias: the manager favors people with similar backgrounds or styles.
• Attribution error: results are attributed to personality while situational causes are ignored.
• Contrast effect: an employee is judged against another employee rather than the standard.

Calibration meetings can improve consistency, but calibration must not become pressure to distribute ratings artificially. Managers should discuss evidence and standards, not merely negotiate numerical outcomes.

7. Contemporary Industry Expectations

Modern employers increasingly expect appraisal systems to demonstrate the following characteristics:

1. Strategic relevance: measures reflect meaningful contribution rather than activity alone.
2. Frequent dialogue: formal review is supported by timely conversations.
3. Agility: goals can be revised when priorities or conditions change.
4. Employee voice: employees can participate in goal setting, self-assessment, and review.
5. Inclusion: standards are applied consistently while reasonable accommodations and contextual differences are recognized.
6. Manager capability: supervisors are trained in feedback, documentation, bias awareness, and difficult conversations.
7. Evidence quality: decisions rely on multiple relevant sources rather than impression alone.
8. Developmental value: the process identifies learning, career, coaching, and resource needs.
9. Transparency: employees understand criteria, consequences, and appeal routes.
10. Data responsibility: digital tools use proportionate, secure, explainable, and job-relevant information.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Performance platforms can automate reminders, aggregate objectives, identify overdue reviews, and support trend analysis. Artificial intelligence may summarize feedback, suggest development resources, or detect inconsistent language. These applications create substantial risks. Algorithms may reproduce historical bias, infer sensitive characteristics, overvalue measurable activity, or obscure the reasoning behind a rating. Electronic monitoring can also damage trust when employees do not know what is collected or how it is used.

Human accountability remains essential. Organizations should establish a legitimate purpose, minimize data collection, validate tools, test for disparate impact, protect confidentiality, provide human review, and allow correction or appeal. AI-generated summaries should be treated as drafts, not authoritative judgments.

Legal and ethical governance

Appraisal criteria should be job-related and consistently applied. Organizations must consider employment discrimination law, privacy and data-protection requirements, record-retention rules, collective agreements, professional standards, and applicable disability-accommodation obligations. Legal compliance is a minimum, not a guarantee of ethical quality.

Ethically sound appraisal requires respect for dignity, confidentiality, transparency, proportionality, accuracy, and the opportunity to respond. Managers should avoid using appraisal as a surprise disciplinary mechanism. Serious concerns should be addressed promptly, with appropriate policy and procedural safeguards.

8. Designing a Sound Routine Appraisal Cycle

A practical routine cycle contains six linked stages:

1. Planning: clarify role purpose, objectives, standards, competencies, resources, and review dates.
2. Observation and documentation: collect representative evidence during the period.
3. Ongoing dialogue: provide feedback, recognition, coaching, and revised priorities.
4. Self-assessment: invite the employee to interpret achievements, obstacles, and development needs.
5. Formal review: compare evidence with expectations, discuss the assessment, and record conclusions.
6. Follow-through: agree development actions, support, accountability, and the next review cycle.

A high-quality review conversation is evidence-based and future-oriented. The manager should begin with the purpose of the meeting, invite the employee’s perspective, discuss achievements before gaps, examine causes rather than merely symptoms, and conclude with specific actions and dates.

Illustrative rating architecture

A rating scale can be useful when categories are behaviorally defined. For example:

The labels should not substitute for evidence. A rating is a summary judgment, not a complete description of performance.

9. Illustrative Case: Northstar Digital Services

Background

Northstar Digital Services, a fictional mid-sized software company, used an annual appraisal form based mainly on five-point ratings. Employees reported that goals changed during projects but were not updated in the system. Managers relied heavily on recent incidents, and promotion decisions were perceived as favoring employees who worked visibly in the office.

Problem

The company’s performance process produced low trust, inconsistent ratings, and weak development planning. Remote employees felt disadvantaged, while managers complained that the annual form required substantial effort but provided little practical guidance.

Analysis

An HR review identified four problems. First, the system confused routine appraisal with continuous performance management. Second, it emphasized ratings rather than evidence and conversation. Third, the criteria did not adequately distinguish technical results, collaboration, learning, and customer impact. Fourth, the organization had no clear process for revising goals when project priorities changed.

Approach and solution

Northstar retained a formal semiannual review for governance and compensation purposes but introduced monthly manager-employee check-ins. At the beginning of each project, teams recorded expected outcomes, dependencies, quality standards, and behavioral expectations. Goals could be revised with a dated explanation of the business reason.

Employees completed a short self-assessment before each formal review. Managers were trained to use specific behavioral evidence, consider context, and avoid rating employees against one another. Promotion panels reviewed work samples and documented evidence rather than relying only on the supervisor’s overall impression. The company also prohibited the use of raw digital activity measures—such as message counts—as independent evidence of performance.

Outcome

After two cycles, employees reported greater clarity about expectations and more timely feedback. Managers spent less time reconstructing events at year-end. The organization did not eliminate disagreement, but review conversations became more focused on evidence, support, and future contribution. Northstar continued to monitor whether remote and office-based employees received comparable access to challenging assignments and career opportunities.

Learning points

The case demonstrates that a useful routine appraisal does not require abandoning formal review. It requires connecting formal review to continuous dialogue, revisable goals, multiple evidence sources, manager capability, and transparent governance. It also shows that technology should support judgment rather than replace it.

Challenges and Limitations

Routine appraisal remains difficult for several reasons. Performance may be interdependent, making individual attribution uncertain. Some roles produce long-term or intangible value. Managers may lack observation opportunities, especially in distributed teams. Ratings can trigger defensiveness, reduce experimentation, or encourage gaming. Excessive documentation can burden employees without improving decisions. Forced distributions may create artificial competition and undermine collaboration. Finally, a technically elegant system cannot compensate for poor leadership, unclear strategy, inadequate resources, or a culture that punishes honest discussion.

The appropriate response is not to abandon assessment but to make its limits visible. Organizations should use appraisal as one source of evidence among several, review system outcomes for bias and reliability, and revise measures when they produce unintended behavior.

Best-Practice Principles

A graduate HR practitioner should apply the following principles:

• Begin with the purpose of the appraisal system.
• Define performance broadly enough to include results, behavior, adaptation, and ethical conduct.
• Set expectations collaboratively and revise them when work changes.
• Use evidence that is relevant, representative, and attributable.
• Separate observation from interpretation.
• Provide feedback close to the event.
• Train managers in bias, documentation, coaching, and difficult conversations.
• Give employees voice, explanation, and a meaningful review route.
• Treat development as an action plan, not a generic training recommendation.
• Use technology proportionately and preserve human accountability.
• Evaluate whether the system improves performance, fairness, capability, and trust.

Chapter Summary

Performance is a multidimensional contribution involving results, task behaviors, contextual contribution, adaptation, and ethical conduct. Performance appraisal is a structured assessment and communication process, while performance management is the broader cycle of planning, monitoring, feedback, development, review, and action. Routine appraisal provides periodic structure; continuous evaluation provides timely adjustment; developmental evaluation builds capability; and administrative evaluation supports formal employment decisions.

Historically, appraisal evolved from supervision and output control toward objectives, behavioral standards, competencies, strategic alignment, and multi-source feedback. Major theoretical foundations include goal-setting theory, expectancy theory, organizational justice, and systems perspectives. Appraisal serves organizational, managerial, employee, governance, and development purposes, but these purposes can conflict and should be made explicit.

Contemporary systems are expected to be strategic, agile, inclusive, evidence-based, developmental, transparent, and technologically responsible. Effective practice recognizes rating errors, contextual influences, legal duties, privacy risks, and the limitations of metrics. The strongest systems connect routine formal reviews with continuous dialogue, employee voice, fair procedures, capable managers, and concrete follow-through.

Key Terms

Performance: Behaviors, actions, and results through which an employee contributes to organizational objectives.

Performance appraisal: A systematic assessment and communication of an employee’s work.

Performance management: An integrated process of planning, monitoring, feedback, development, review, and action.

Routine appraisal: A periodic and structured evaluation of performance.

Continuous evaluation: Ongoing feedback and adjustment during work.

Developmental evaluation: Assessment directed primarily toward learning and capability growth.

Administrative evaluation: Assessment used to support formal employment or governance decisions.

Task performance: Effectiveness in formally required job activities.

Contextual performance: Behaviors that support cooperation and the work environment.

Adaptive performance: Effectiveness in responding to change.

Competency: A combination of knowledge, skill, ability, and observable behavior.

Objective: A defined result to be achieved within a specified period.

Performance standard: An expected level or condition of performance.

Indicator: Evidence used to assess progress or achievement.

Calibration: A process for improving consistency in managerial judgments.

Halo effect: The influence of one positive characteristic on all ratings.

Recency effect: Disproportionate influence of recent events on an assessment.

Organizational justice: Perceived fairness of outcomes, procedures, and interpersonal treatment.

Multi-source feedback: Performance information gathered from several relevant perspectives.

Employee voice: The opportunity to contribute information, explanations, and views to an appraisal process.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. Define performance appraisal and distinguish it from performance management.
2. What is the difference between routine and continuous evaluation?
3. Why can outcomes alone be an inadequate measure of performance?
4. Identify three common rating errors.
5. What is the purpose of a calibration meeting?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how performance appraisal evolved from scientific management to contemporary performance management.
2. Compare developmental and administrative evaluation, including the tensions created when they are combined.
3. Discuss how organizational justice influences employee responses to appraisal.
4. Explain the roles and interests of employees, managers, HR professionals, and senior leaders in appraisal.
5. Design the stages of a fair and effective routine appraisal cycle for a hybrid-work organization.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A manager rates an employee highly because the employee recently completed an urgent project, although earlier work contained significant quality problems. Diagnose the likely rating error and recommend a fairer assessment process.
2. An organization proposes using employee message counts and online activity as the primary performance measures for remote workers. Evaluate the proposal using validity, ethics, privacy, and systems perspectives.
3. Using the Northstar Digital Services case, identify two changes that improve fairness and two changes that improve developmental value. Explain how the organization could evaluate whether the changes worked.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best distinguishes performance appraisal from performance management?

A. Appraisal is continuous, whereas performance management occurs only annually.

B. Appraisal is a structured assessment, whereas performance management is the broader cycle of planning, feedback, development, and review.

C. Appraisal concerns only pay, whereas performance management concerns only training.

D. There is no meaningful distinction between the two concepts.

Correct Answer: B. Appraisal is a structured assessment, whereas performance management is the broader cycle of planning, feedback, development, and review.

Question 2

Which form of evaluation is primarily concerned with building future capability?

A. Developmental evaluation

B. Administrative evaluation

C. Routine payroll evaluation

D. Compliance inspection

Correct Answer: A. Developmental evaluation

Question 3

A manager allows one recent mistake to lower ratings for every performance dimension. This is an example of the:

A. Halo effect

B. Contrast effect

C. Horns effect

D. Central-tendency effect

Correct Answer: C. Horns effect

Question 4

Why should appraisal consider both results and behavior?

A. Behavior is always more important than results.

B. Results may be influenced by contextual factors, while behavior provides evidence about how work was performed.

C. Results cannot ever be measured.

D. Behavior eliminates the need for standards.

Correct Answer: B. Results may be influenced by contextual factors, while behavior provides evidence about how work was performed.

Question 5

Which principle is most closely associated with procedural justice?

A. Employees receive identical outcomes regardless of performance.

B. The method used to reach an appraisal decision is consistent, transparent, and allows employee voice.

C. Managers avoid documenting decisions.

D. Only numerical metrics are used.

Correct Answer: B. The method used to reach an appraisal decision is consistent, transparent, and allows employee voice.

Question 6

What is the principal purpose of calibration?

A. To force managers to assign a fixed percentage of low ratings.

B. To improve consistency by discussing evidence and standards across managers.

C. To replace employee feedback with algorithmic scores.

D. To eliminate all managerial judgment.

Correct Answer: B. To improve consistency by discussing evidence and standards across managers.

Question 7

Which practice best reflects continuous evaluation?

A. Waiting until year-end to mention performance concerns.

B. Providing timely feedback and adjusting goals as work conditions change.

C. Using only a final numerical rating.

D. Conducting promotion decisions without evidence.

Correct Answer: B. Providing timely feedback and adjusting goals as work conditions change.

Question 8

Which is an important governance safeguard when using AI in appraisal?

A. Allowing the system to make final decisions without review.

B. Collecting as much employee data as possible.

C. Testing for bias, explaining use, protecting data, and retaining human accountability.

D. Using activity counts as universal measures of contribution.

Correct Answer: C. Testing for bias, explaining use, protecting data, and retaining human accountability.

Question 9

Which evidence is most appropriate for a fair appraisal?

A. A single informal rumor about the employee.

B. A manager’s general impression formed on the review date.

C. Representative, job-relevant evidence collected across the review period.

D. Comparison with the most successful employee in another role.

Correct Answer: C. Representative, job-relevant evidence collected across the review period.

Question 10

What is a major limitation of a purely objective-based appraisal system?

A. Objectives can never clarify expectations.

B. Objectives may become narrow or unfair when priorities change or results depend on other people.

C. Objectives prevent all feedback.

D. Objectives are unrelated to strategy.

Correct Answer: B. Objectives may become narrow or unfair when priorities change or results depend on other people.