Team Performance Measurement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Team Performance Measurement - Essay Example Even though performance evaluation can be a successful process that acts as a basis for human resource development in healthcare organizations, there is a likelihood of various challenges being encountered especially if some of the team members consider it to be a punitive undertaking by the management. In a situation whereby individual accomplishments are valued more than teamwork (Sangvai et al. 2008), the junior staff in the healthcare cadre may regard performance measurement as an undesirable process due to their minimal contributions in the hierarchical structure where physicians dominate leadership and public trust. Such attitudes of inferiority may hamper the process of performance measurement as some team members feel intimidated (Castka et al. 2004). Members of a team usually have different perceptions regarding their individual performance and that of others. Some perceive themselves as the top performers, which may present a challenge in the performance measurement process when the continuous feedback to the group reveals results that are contrary to their expectations. If such individuals are rated below their counterparts in the preliminary results, they are likely to be de-motivated and discontented, thereby lowering their performance. Enthusiasm of such team members to participate in subsequent performance measurement processes may decrease; hence delaying the evaluation exercise and the ultimate results (Schrader & Lawless, 2004). Even though a strong team is expected to pursue shared objectives, the different roles require individual performance evaluation so that the management can determine the career development needs for each employee (Sanwong, 2008). This presents a major challenge since the teams normal workflow is affected by the idiosyncratic approach that promotes individualism rather than collective accomplishment of tasks. Some of the team members are likely to develop a pessimistic attitude thereby reducing their

Personal affirmation leads to greatest triumph or worst defeat Essay

Personal affirmation leads to greatest triumph or worst defeat - Essay Example It is through personal affirmation then that he realizes his greatest victory or worst defeat. This notion is aptly illustrated in the two novels namely A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul and The Old man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. A House for Mr. Biswas (House from now on) is a mammoth epic of nearly six hundred pages that illustrates one man's refusal to accept fate and to rise above the circumstances. It chronicles the life of Mohan Biswas who has just one dream all his life i.e. to win his independence by having his own place. He wants to be able to free himself from the clutches of the Tulsi family and while he dies at the young age of 46, he is one contented man having gained his independence. It is as early as in the prologue that we learn about Mohan's mission when we see that he is a sacked reporter who is dying at the age of forty-six in his own place "on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth," on Sikkim Street, Port-of-Spain: How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it [a house]: to have died among the Tulsis, amid the squalor of that large, disintegrating and indifferent family; to have left Shama and the children among them, in one room; worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one's portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born... In this he resembles Santiago of The Old Man and the Sea who is not an ordinary aging protagonist himself. From the very beginning Hemingway creates a portrait that alerts us that we are not dealing with an ordinary character when we learn that: "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish" ( Hemingway 1952, 9). That Mohan's life would be extraordinary is clear from right from the auspicious time of his birth. He was born at midnight which according to Hindu myths was not a very fortunate time. The pundit prophesizes that Mohan would be a liar and lecher and the midwife feels he would be the cause of his father's death. As luck would have it, he inadvertently causes his father's drowning and is forced to live with strangers. It is during really tough times that he gets the brutal lesson of "ought oughts are oughts," which if we recall Lear's words means that "Nothing will come out of nothing." But Mohan is not the one to believe that. He was willing "to create himself and his world out of nothing." (Boxill, p. 37) The actual struggle begins when Mr. Biswas is dismissed from his position as a live-in pundit apprentice and from there on starts his solitary journey: "The neighbours had heard, and came out to watch Mr Biswas as, in his dhoti, with his bundle slung on his shoulders, he walked thr ough the village" (pp. 56-7). It is after some odd jobs that he finally lands a place with a powerful, conservative, land-owning family, the Tulsis who admire his sign-painting skills. Once inside their house, Biswas loses his independence completely. The Tulsis are a cunning lot who trap Mohan into marrying their daughter Shama because of his high caste. From their on,